 Xhifi Xducer 2.1 Loudspeaker System
I was walking along the halls of the Westin–St.
Francis at HE2003, just sticking my head in the rooms to figure out which were worth later
visits. I was in a hurry and had flipped my press badge around so it couldn’t be seen
and exhibitors wouldn’t go into their fullblown show mode when I walked by. I was a
man on a mission and in no mood to tarry.
Then I blew into a room that was virtually empty. No big
speakers dominating the landscape, no comfy chairs, no dramatically backlit ficus bushes
-- just a tall desk with an Apple PowerBook, an iPod in its docking cradle, and a couple
of skinny sticks. But there was music -- Peter Gabriel's Secret World Live
[Real World 68086], to be exact. And it sounded good.
Now that was interesting. I was hooked. Mission
forgotten, I grooved on Gabriel's live set and waited for the man in the suit to notice
me. And waited.
Oh yeah -- I flipped my badge back around so the big blue
"PRESS" could be seen. Seconds later I heard an incredulous "Wes?"
Once again my expectations had been confounded. Howard
Schilling, Xhifi's CEO hadn't ignored me because he didn't know I was press, he simply
hadn't recognized me -- something about being half the man I used to be.
"You're skinny," Howard exclaimed.
"So are those," I said, pointing at the Xducer
2.1's 13" tall by 2" cylindrical XD1 satellite speakers. I peeked under the desk
and spotted the Xducer's prow-like 9.5" wide by 13" deep by 15" tall XDSW1
subwoofer module. "Ahh, there it is -- those little guys couldn't possibly
produce that much bass."
Howard beamed with pride. "So you like it?"
"I want these!"
"Can't have 'em. I just sold this set."
"Not this set, these. Any set."
To tell the truth, I had wanted that set. Heck, I
had an iPod and an iBook sitting on the desk back in my hotel room. All I needed were the
speakers to make the Beresford my home away from home.
But it was an audio show and the Xducers were a brand-new
product. What did I expect?
What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expect
generally happens
Actually, that whole expectation thing will
determine how you feel about the Xducer 2.1 -- or any other product, for that matter. If
the whole concept of a $795 desktop speaker system strikes you as prohibitive, you won't
like the Xhifi system, no matter how good it might be. Alternatively, if the very idea of
listening to music from a -- gasp! -- computer gives you the fantods, you won't
like 'em for a completely different reason. If you're an Apple design geek (and I mean
that in the most affectionate way), the very concept of wood-clad loudspeakers
might disturb your plastic dreams of modernity. Heck, you might even simply prefer the
concept of buying a used integrated and a nice pair of previously owned stand-mounted
monitors. No one I know would presume to call you wrong.
But if you like the striking looks of the Xducers,
or if your desktop space is at a premium, or if you just think they look or sound cool --
well, who would gainsay you?
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern
intellect
Xhifi is the sister company of Camelot Technologies and,
like Camelot, is run by Howard Schilling, Mel Schilling, and Doug Goldberg. If Camelot
Technologies represents the digital future, Xhifi represents the ways that the audio
future will be different from the present -- people use their music systems differently
now and they need new products that allow them to do so easily.
Boy, do I get that. I make my living writing about
music and technology, yet there are days when I feel I have to steal time from other
"vital" tasks in order to listen to music for pleasure. I find myself seated at
the computer for hours at a stretch and I reckon there's no reason I can't enjoy
good-sounding music as long as I have to be sitting there. That doesn't mean I only want
to listen to music at my computer -- after all, attentive listening requires intense
concentration (which, in my case, requires that I recline, close my eyes, and breathe
deeply and slowly -- a state my wife regards as essentially indistinguishable from
"goofing off"). Gosh, I'd never want to give that up, but it doesn't mean
I have to suffer when I can't inhabit the sweet spot.
So, when Xhifi decided that its first product should
introduce some sophistication -- both visually and sonically -- to cubicle warriors of the
world, it was as if they were reading my mail. I expect there are a lot of people who feel
the same way.
He hath indeed bettered expectation
The Xducer 2.1 is pretty much your basic three-piece
desktop loudspeaker system.
Sh'yeah.
Well, it does have a subwoofer that forms the center of the
system -- that's where all the connections are made -- and it contains a 60W class-B
amplifier that powers the woofer, as well as a 50Wpc class-D amplifier that drives the
satellites. None of that's so special, is it?
Actually, all of it is pretty different. The sub is
housed in a curved commode, clad in cherry veneer. Inside the ported, rigidly braced
cabinet, the down-firing 6.6" driver is held within a cylindrical (I can't help
myself) sub-enclosure. The whole structure is lifted off the desktop by a foursome of
"tiptoe" style feet.
The woofer is a JVC-designed pulped-paper high-excursion
jobbie with an eight-layer edge-wound voice coil. The amplifier module crosses the signal
over at 230Hz, which would be fairly high in a system designed to fill a room with sound,
but given the distances involved on your typical desktop, there doesn't seem to be much
problem with such a high crossover point. Xhifi says the amp is "a classic
high-current class-B design." It certainly seems to work as claimed.
 is pretty slick. Class D means digital
(well, sort of), which is, of course, an area where sister company Camelot Technologies is
known to have some (ahem) renown.
Simply put, in class-D amplifiers, the power devices are
either completely on or completely off, which makes them remarkably
efficient -- they waste nearly none of their energy as heat. To make class D work,
however, you have to employ Pulse Width Modulation (PWM).
PWM, through a process I won't go into here, creates a
series of pulses that cycle the output devices on and off while controlling the actual
amount of amplification employed.
And what's the point of all this techno-sorcery? A tiny
little amplifier that doesn't get hot or waste up to 90% of its energy. It's a technology
we'll all be encountering a lot in the near future.
The XD1 satellites incorporate the Aosis Direct Drive Stick
Acoustic Suspension design created at JVC's AV & Multimedia Laboratories. The Aosis
Direct Drive element is a 0.4" by 3.6" cylindrical shell-like (it's curved)
ultra-low-mass diaphragm driven by side-mounted voice coils that employ a pair of
high-output Neodymium magnets. The result, claims JVC, is a driver with a 360-degree
radiation pattern and upper-end extension to 50kHz! Oh yeah, and the torsional stability
provided by the long, thin driver resists breakups, and the single drive element means you
don't get phase cancellations from competing drive elements.
 The connections and controls on
the back of the subwoofer include a master volume control, a woofer volume control, phase
control, two pairs of clip-type speaker-wire connectors (one marked "reserved for
future use"), and a pair of RCA jacks. The XD1s have fairly hefty five-way binding
posts.
A final note on the physical package: The hull of the XDSW1
subwoofer and the bodies of the stick-like XD1s are clad in nicely finished cherry veneer
-- which you will either love or hate. As an old wood-butcher myself, I like wood, but I'm
intensely critical of poor joins, bad book-matching, and shoddy craftsmanship. The
craftsmanship on the Xducer is superb -- joins are perfect and the finish is like satin.
On the other hand, the system has curvaceous, modern styling that some folks will think
demands a "cleaner" look -- something like the polycarbonate Apple uses on its
iBook and iPod. I think that would look pretty cool, too, but I'm content with the Xducers
as is.
It's all a matter of expectations.
Experience is often what you get when you were expecting
something else
The 2.1 includes a pair of 3-meter speaker wires, which are
pretty standard "gimmee" quality speaker wires. It never occurred to me to
switch these for higher-quality cables until late in the review. D'oh! It made a big
difference when I spotted some Kimber Kable KCAG with tinned ends on one end and
spades on the other lying around the house. Of course, that bit of wire probably cost more
than the whole Xducer system, but the point is that the cables you use can make a
difference. Or perhaps I should say simply that the Xducer 2.1 is good enough to let you hear
the differences that cables can make.
Proving how literal minded I can be, when the 2.1 arrived,
I immediately installed it on our kitchen table, connected to my iBook and iPod. While the
system sounded pretty good running straight off my soundcard, it sounded even better
running off the iPod's docking-station output, which bypasses the player's volume control.
This necessitated that I use NHT's PVC and the sound was sooo much better for it.
product/nht_pvc.htm
But I have to confess that my imagination failed me and
this remained the system context in which I auditioned the Xducer. Until we moved, that
is.
In the post-move chaos, I was casting about for a simple,
easy-to-set-up home-office system. I grabbed the Classé CDP-10, the NHT PVC, the first
pairs of interconnects I saw, and the Xducer 2.1. After I connected it all together and
started playing "The Devil is Dope" by the Dramatics (Son of Stax Funk
[Stax CD-75]), my jaw nearly bounced off my desktop -- I should have known that a superb
$2000 CD player would sound better than a $1200 computer or a $500 MP3 player. Heck, I did
know that. But I certainly didn't expect it.
It’s grand, and you canna expect to be baith grand
and comfortable
I hate to sound like a broken record (you younger
audiophiles should ask an older one if you don't get this reference), but your response to
the Xducer 2.1 will probably be based on what you expect it to be.
It ain't a PA or even a dorm-room system. It's a desktop
system, designed for near-field listening. Place the XD1s further away than 4' from your
seat and you'll lose immediacy and three-dimensionality. You also need to place 'em near
ear level or tilt 'em back slightly if you are tall, as I am. (Fortunately, Xhifi ships an
assortment of rubber feet with the 2.1, making this simple.)
And then there's the matter of the XDSW1. Because of its
relatively high crossover point, I did not find that placing it on the floor under the
table produced integrated, full-bodied sound. It sounded okay, but getting the sub close
to one of the satellites (or somewhere between 'em) sounded a whole lot better.
But compared to the cheap'n'cheerful three-piece
"media" speaker packages that are the Xducer 2.1's primary competition, this
little system is a studio reference system.
Take, for example, its presentation of David Russell's
wonderful new CD of Latin American music for guitar, Latin Aire [Telarc 80612].
With the 2.1 mounted on a 30" desktop, tilted slightly back to project their sound up
above the hairline, where my ears reside, and the XDSW1 standing next to the left
satellite, I was enveloped with the sound of an acoustic guitar in a live room. String
transients had snap and the guitar's woody bloom was well defined and intensely present. I
could clearly hear the way the room's acoustic supported the instrument's sound, not
merely the direct sound of the instrument itself.
But what was startling was the way the system presented the
emotional validity of the music, whether it was the wistful reverie of Dilermando Reis' Se
ela Pergunta or the headlong rush of Antonio Lauro's Seis por Derecho. This was
the stuff of real music, not necessarily what you'd expect from a set of computer
speakers.
However, the 2.1 isn't without its limitations. Even
reproducing solo classical guitar, they ran into an occasional spot where the
sub/satellite concept (and their 230Hz crossover point) generated spatial specificity that
drew me out of my musical enjoyment and reminded me of the physical realities of small
speaker systems. In other words, some tones clearly emanated from the sub, rather than
from the soundfield created between the XD1s -- tones such as those created when Russell
taps the body of his guitar (a technique known in flamenco as golpe) on
Ponce's Scherzino Mexicano.
This didn't happen often -- I suspect that the percussive
transient created by the golpe, combined with the low resonance of the Tom
Humphrey-built instrument's tone box, provided a set of conditions custom designed to
bring it out.
Similarly, the Xducer 2.1 wasn't fantastic at stupid-loud
listening levels either. If you want to listen to, say, Television's Marquee Moon
[Elektra/Rhino 1098] at really excessive volume levels (and sometimes I do), the Xducers
just aren't up to it. However, you can crank 'em up way louder than anyone in a cubicle
ought to be playing music -- and even loud enough for me to rock out as much as I ought to
be doing while I'm supposedly working at the computer. Loud enough even for me to be
tempted to jack my Tele into my practice amp and see if I can't fit a new guitar line
between those of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd (fat chance!).
The Xducer can rock out. I loved the sound of the
newly remastered Marquee Moon on them. In fact, I can't stop playing it through
them. Heck, I'm listening to it right now. Let me crank it up for you . . ..
See? That's rock'n'roll.
Oh yeah, I forgot -- we're not streaming these reviews live
to you. Yet.
As I was saying, the Xducers can rock out, just don't
expect a pint to hold a quart -- if it holds a pint, it is doing all that can be expected
of it.
Gentleness can only be expected from the strong
I recently reviewed the NHT M-00
loudspeakers, which sell for $249/each, so they seemed like a natural comparison for
the Xducer 2.1 system.
The M-00s have a more industrial look: their textured black
finish and grille-free front baffle present an aesthetic almost diametrically opposed to
the warm wooden curves of the Xducers. It's a preference thing. The NHTs also offer set-in
bracket mounts that allow you to wall- or ceiling-mount them, which frees up some desktop
real estate. The M-00s also offer a choice between mid-field and near-field equalization,
so they do give you some additional latitude if you wanted to utilize them as a small room
system. I found the Xducer 2.1 less versatile in that context -- which is also, at least
partially, a reflection on the power difference between the 50W XD1 amp and the 75W M-00
amplifier.
Again, how you will react to these differences depends to a
huge extent on what you expect out of your system.
On the David Russell disc, the M-00s had no trouble
reproducing the Ponce's golpes without separating them from the string sounds.
However, the NHTs also clearly revealed their pro-audio heritage with a somewhat overly
clean presentation of the room acoustic. The Xducers might have lacked a little detail,
but they also had a very welcome warmth. For most of the recording, that was precisely the
sound I wanted.
Marquee Moon was more of a toss-up. The NHTs just
wanted to play loud and even LOUDER. They sounded great from the living room, when I
walked around the house "thinking" and playing air guitar. At my desk, however,
the differences were less extreme. The M-00s had more impact and detail (almost too much
at times), but the 2.1 wasn't far behind 'em and had a tube-like glow that I found very
seductive.
The two speaker systems weren't at all similar in many
ways, but the differences between them weren't day and night. If you prefer clarity and
power above all else, the NHT would be your preference. If you think sometimes there can
be too much of a good thing, the Xducers sacrifice a little of each for a more suave
presentation.
I'm cheap and easy -- I liked 'em both. I'm just a guy who
can't say no.
What'd you expect?
A critic is a man who expects miracles
I liked Xhifi's Xducer 2.1 loudspeaker system. I liked the
way it looks. I liked it on a technical level (I love this cutting-edge stuff!). And I
liked listening to it very much.
I expect you might, too.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
Xhifi Xducer 2.1 Loudspeaker
System
Price: $795 USD.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor.
Xhifi, Inc.
465 Pike Road unit 112
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006-1621
Phone: (267) 288-0199
Fax: (267) 288-0198
E-mail: info@xhifi.com
Website: www.xhifi.com
|
