Customer Review of the XTZ Sub Amp 1

Customer Review of the XTZ 100.49

"First things first. These speakers should come with a warning. Actually two warnings.

Delivery.

The first warning is to make sure you are not alone when taking delivery. The pallet weighs in at about 181kgs - 400lbs. The two huge boxes are securely ‘shrink-wrapped’ together. I had fun and games getting each box up our 6 foot high front steps. In the end I made a ramp and literally rolled the boxes up. Not easy. Each one weighs 87kgs – or just over 190lbs. Basically, it is doable if you are pretty fit, but best to have a friend.

Unpacking.

The packaging is superb, as you would expect for heavy, flagship devices such as these. You will need to keep the packaging, so a space large enough for two mega-coffins is required. Flat-packing, although an option, will destroy the integrity of boxes designed to be this strong. As above. Get a helper. The sheer weight of these magnificent creations is intimidating. Handling is awkward, and one slip could cause great damage – either to you or the devices. They are very slippery due to the lacquer finish and by virtue of being in their own ‘sock’ to prevent in-transit marking of the lacquer. Try using rubber gloves.

Once out of the packaging, take a moment to stand back and admire. These are awesome. They are magnificent. Even if you have owned large, high-end speakers before, you will still be seriously impressed. Mine are in the piano black finish. My partner, Penny, loves big speakers (I know, I know, but you just have to live with it…..), and she immediately christened them ‘my beautifuls’.

Also in the box.

Two sets of floor mounts. Metal cone type ‘spikes’, and also a set of high density rubber cones for delicate floors. A very good instruction manual. Details of design philosophy, construction (4” thick base, 3” thick baffles etc.), drive unit provenance – and here you get a significant clue as to the thought and design imperatives that have gone into creating these speakers. For example, Thiel midrange units with ceramic ‘cones’. If you design and build your own speakers as I have done for many years, these will set you back over $500 each, plus shipping, plus duty. Very tasty, very expensive.

There are probably only a handful of speakers in the world utilising these, and all the ones I know of cost over £10,000 a pair. So actual, as well as perceived value is being reinforced by the second. The crossovers are simply the best. Construction of same utilises the best of components as you will have by now, come to expect. But it is the sheer range of options. Active or passive. Mono,bi or tri-wiring. Ditto for ‘amping’. Selectable filter (via superb links) levels to alter bass/mid, mid/treble balance. Twin ports with bungs for room-tuning. XTZ seem to have thought of everything.

Positioning.

We have a pretty big listening room. About 10 metres long by 6-8 metres wide into a truncated ‘L’ shaped end. This works out close to 155cu metres. Plenty of space for low bass to make its presence felt. As this is my first dedicated stereo system for many years (more emphasis on home cinema set-up) there are no precedents to be followed in respect of prior or existing installations. In order to fit in with partner expectations (not entirely plain sailing then!), the short leg of the ‘L’ initially saw the speakers firing across the room and about 2.5metres apart and just over a metre from the wall. A set of solid mahogany double doors (more of which later) sit between them, and the equipment rack is situated immediately to the left of the doors, just to the right of, and behind, the left hand speaker.

Connections and Kit.

Cambridge Audio Azur 840 pre-power and matching CD player on a Spectral high end 4-shelf rack (18mm glass version – superb). All topped off with a Project Xtension with Ortofon 309D and a O tofon 2m Black. All very new and only had about 10 hours of running-in before the Divines arrived. I bought some of the XTZ cables offered on Audio Sanctum’s website. At £50 for a 3m terminated pair, I thought it would be fun to try them. And boy, am I glad I did. I have other very expensive cable and it does not sound as good as these amazing offerings from XTZ.

Interconnects have been varied, but include Artisan Silver Dream, and MIT balanced. I also have XTZ but have not tried them yet.

First Impressions.

There are few moments in life to compare with the first notes that flow from a really good pair of speakers. And then there are moments like this!! I was transfixed. The delicacy of the top and the ethereal imagery of the midrange just stopped me in my tracks. And this was from cold, and not run in. Hard to believe. Bass was firm and tight but clearly lacking as everything was so tight. So out came the port bungs and the link that gives +3dB at the low end. Better, much better.  So a few hours of a whole mixture of music just to get the suspension softened on the bass units in particular, but a noticeable easing in the mid and top was clearly occurring as well.

It’s about a month now, but due to work commitments only about 10 hours of programme material has been through the system. But what a difference in that time. And they are much louder for the same pre-amp volume. I would estimate about a 90dB efficiency, but they still require a fairly hefty amp to cope with transients well. These are very forgiving speakers. Soundstage is great almost whatever you do, but as always, careful positioning brings additional benefits. Nonetheless, these are not members of the ‘place to within a millimetre or else’ brigade.

I have recently tweaked the positions slightly. About a 5 degree toe-in and moved closer to the ‘back’ wall, so only 0.5m away now. Top port bung is now in and crossover link replaced to give a flat response.

Those double doors? BB King was playing – quite loudly and I made to leave the room. Such was the force of the image presence that I quite literally, stopped because I thought I was going to bump into someone. Incredible. That’s a first for me after 45 years of music listening.

Sound Quality and More Auditioning.

By now I was getting a lump in my throat every time I switched on. Nora Jones’ ‘You Turn Me On’ – she was there, in the room, singing to me. I turned the lights out and felt as if I could have danced with her. Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody – always difficult and can sound congested especially at high volumes. Amazing. Like never before. The extra detail in the mix, little things that I have never heard before. CD’s that have always been so-so, have suddenly come to life. A voyage of discovery.

It is as though my entire disc collection has been remastered. Eclectic or catholic taste, it really does not matter. You will be thrilled. Jazz, Rock, Classical, Opera, solo voice, solo piano, massed strings, and of course, Organ. I sat through Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, followed by Widor’s 5^th. Transfixed and palpitating with the delicacy of the higher registers and the majesty of the lower ones. The differentiation between the larger pipes being clearly and distinctly audible. In fact, for me, it was the first time when listening to Organ that I could perceive a soundstage with width, height and depth.

A good loudspeaker will present a seamless integration between the individual drive units. It’s hard to achieve. These babies have it all. Sit left, sit right, stand up, sit down. The image remains in place.

A good loudspeaker somehow does not get louder when you turn the wick up, instead the sound seems to expand into the room in a way that leaves you feeling pleasantly satisfied. You may recall the rock mocumentary ‘This is Spinal Tap’ – the one where the volume control on the amp ‘goes up to 11 man’. I tell you, with the Divines you get all the way to ‘12’ and there is still much more to come. I have run these briefly at deafening levels – not a hint of compression or congestion, just the feeling of ‘wow’.

A great speaker however, has all of the above but of itself, it disappears - simply connecting you to the performance so that you forget where you are. You exult, you cry. You cannot help it.

Concluding Remarks.

So there we are. Look beautiful, sound beautiful and I cannot fault them. Compare with speakers 2 or even 3 times the price and you will not want to stray. They are nowhere near fully run-in yet, so I expect more ‘wow’ moments as time passes. Clearly it will be possible to connect significantly more expensive kit than my Cambridge trio, but I am bound to say that, at present I am feeling that rare thing in a hi-fi addict. Satisfaction.

Oh, and that second warning referred to at the beginning. It’s a wallet warning. The 30-day home trial. Forget it. You absolutely will not be able to return them. They are Divine by name, and Divine by nature."

David Sobey, Northamptonshire UK.

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Customer Review of the XTZ A-100 D3 Integrated Amplifier

All i can say is WOW this thing is an absolute gem, i love it to bits, it does everything i want and more.  The onboard DAC thats a £2-300 saving straight off.  The soudstage the vocal the bass the high's is outstanding for this price GO buy one dont even think about it its a no brainer at this price, with a £2-300 equivilent DAC onboard its a steal.  Happy days ahead for me ive tried every type of music i have,
Rock, dance, soul, acoustic and concert video's and it shines with all of them.  Other integrated amps tried, 'CA 840A v2' no comparison what so ever this amp beats it hands down its in a different class altogether end of...  Buy it Now you wont be dissapointed i promise you and with an in home demo/money back deal nothing to loose really.

The A-100D3 can be viewed and purchased here.

Customer Review of the XTZ AP-100 Power Amplifier

My trial XTZ AP-100 arrived 2 days ago as promised (thanks Shaun for very prompt service and excellent product to boot!). Wow, 2 days later my minds made up, I am definitely getting one, just spoken with Shaun to confirm my intentions. To give some background my system is as follows (I will detail later what the new amp has brought to the party):

Michell Gyro S.E.
Michell Tecnoarm
Audio-Technica AT-oc9mlII
Icon Audio PS-1.2 Phono Stage
Arcam CD73T as transport
Squeezebox Touch for flac files & internet radio
Cambridge DAB 500 Tuner
Musical Fidelity M1 DAC
Musical Fidelity X10v3 tube buffer
Musical Fidelity X-Can v8 as my current preamp (only one input , but I have a solution for this).

All my stereo interconnects are Atlas Titan other than 1 length of Chord Silver Siren. My speakers are Monitor Audio RS8s with matching surround & centre, speaker cable is Black Rhodium Jive Bi-wire for Hi-Fi and Audio Innovations Silver Bi-wire for A.V. My other amps are an Audiolab 8000av Processor and 8000X7 Power Amp together with various A.V. ancillaries.

Now like many I have wrestled for years with the thorny problem of having a good A.V. system that delivers excellent Hi-Fi and how best to achieve this. By and large the Audiolab’s have delivered and have been a better compromise than previous solutions I have tried and for A.V. usage I have been more than happy. Of the two, however, for stereo usage the power amp is easily the stronger product & offers the choice of bi-amping or bridging with the 2 spare channels. I have tried all of the aforementioned and found bi-amping works best (I think the bridging implementation by Audiolab is less than brilliant as it could be forced in to overheating & shutting down at much lower volumes than in bi-amp mode, also in bi-amp mode it sounds less strained & far more fluid.)

The catalyst however and the utter culprit in causing this latest bout of "upgraditis" has been my Musical Fidelity X-Can v8 which was bought for headphone use a year and a half ago, there was an article in Hi-Fi Plus extolling its use as a pre-amp, ‘I must try that’ I thought and I haven’t looked back since. Indeed it wiped the floor with an Audiolab 8000q lent by a friend. I have this connected via the Processor’s tape outs which gives me multiple source switching (the processor can be put into standby once this is done, as far as I can tell this sounds just as good as plugging components directly into the back of the x-can). The caveat however is although it sounded pretty good it was less than convenient for A.V. use, 2 volume controls to juggle, muting only works on centre & rear speakers & although I am not an inveterate box swapper I wanted to get back the convenience and also further improve the stereo side of the set up.

Roll up the XTZ AP-100 Power Amp, honestly this is all I could possibly have hoped for, the build quality is sublime, all aluminium casework with huge slabs hewn from solid billet adorning the front & it looks resplendent in the two tone Black and Silver option which I was none too sure of before seeing it in the flesh, indeed I have just ordered mine with this livery.

As to the sound, well it might be early days but I am completely bowled over, stolen my heart it has, it’s that simple!! There have been huge gains in the mid-range and treble with much higher incision and definition. Cymbals and high-hats now sound much more natural & female vocal stuff sounds utterly glorious, Holly Golightly, Jenny Lewis and Janis Joplin have never sounded better. As to bass grip, slam and definition, well it’s had me doing double takes, those can’t really be my speakers, can they? Well they are and to think I had recently been considering whether the speakers were the weak link in my system, well even if they are, this is a sound I can live with for a long time to come I think.

AND DOES IT GO LOUD? Well yes it does and it seems pretty unflappable in doing so, I haven’t managed to force it into switching from class A to class A/B operation yet and I have certainly given it a goodly dose of the beans in trying. Indeed yesterday I had it hitting 119dB peaks for around 1 hour (measured 1 foot behind my listening position). I certainly felt it was capable of even more without being strained but in any case the aforementioned volume level was only an experiment into the capabilities of the amp and considerably above what I would normally consider sane.

GOOD VALUE? Well its only £520.00 (the amp it’s supplanting cost three times that), to me it seems ludicrously cheap hence my haste in completing the deal. A friend of mine, visited last night and was suitably impressed, when asked to guess the price (and normally he guesses ridiculously low) he said "oh about £2600.00”, imagine my smile of satisfaction. For me, now I feel I have the best of both worlds H-Fi and A.V.

Couple of things worthy of mention to anyone considering buying one should seriously consider whether they have the space, its 18 inches deep and it also runs hot. I have mine sat on top of a large and heavy oak desk with plenty of space around it, so top shelf of your Hi-Fi rack if your rack does not have open sides & as long as it is deep enough you will be fine.

So Shaun of Audio Sanctum you have made me a very happy man I now I feel I have a Hi-Fi that is capable of showing what my pretty decent source components can really do. You sir are a scholar and a gentleman so please accept my heartfelt thanks.

Best regards Chris Walker.

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