Enjoyable Listening Session with XVX

[Charles]

About 2 years ago I received a call from an old friend totally unexpectedly. I was at a car dealership waiting on my sons car.

He had sold me my Mac XRT30's. He's about 17 years my younger. Extremely knowledgeable with high end. Both he and his wife are young well to do professionals, very successful.

There's a million dollar system with an XLF installed by PM somewhere in the south at a university. He was present at the installation and has heard the system often. It's in some special room.

So he came over yesterday at 4 pm for a listen. He thought I had Alexxes. He streams exclusively and has Pipe Dreams specially built for him by its designer, Mike Shields. Pipe Dreams were HP of tas favorite loudspeaker.

With a break for dinner of about 90 min we listened from about 4-10:30. At dinner we had an intense discussion of the high end especially speakers, but also Mac. It was extremely enjoyable. I learned a lot. Two things at dinner: He told me about how to circumvent/eliminate all the problems with bass and sealed systems which I did not understand at all. Had to do with crossover design called "pole something". He said he did not particularly like ported bass. Currently his PD's are not operational because he is re-building his room. He is only going to use the line array and build his own subs. Probably sealed and 4 of them using 12 and 15 inch drivers.

So what did he think? I played some harsh bright music trying my best to make the XVX sound as bad as possible. Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder. Not much bass but tremendous pace and energy and you gotta hear the mids of the XVX on this type music to believe it. But I really love this album and music and the sound.

Next I played the final two movements of Mahler's 6th. Dynamic range from .12 to 200 watts. Volume set at 75%. On the very softest notes the wonderful SN ratio was so obvious. Total blackness and quiet. On the 100 + decibel climaxes no sense of strain or harshness.

Next some fun music Dukes of Dixieland which he said was fun and nice.

He has album of CD's of about 100 audiophile that he kept when he sold high end equipment. He put on Stevie Ray Vaughn.

The one I remember the most was his Burmester demo CD he received at a show upon entering the Burmester room. The Chinese drum solo was amazing. Never heard anything like it. He said I had the best integrated sub system he has ever heard. Why? He couldn't hear the sub which he said was incredible.

Finally, we heard Trittico (RF-0052) Reference Recordings Dallas Wind Symphony and then the Saint Saens Organ (SACD Ode 1094-S Ondine). The latter was the only time you heard the Thor but the notes were so low they had no pitch, which is OK.

About three fourths of the way thru the session with the lights out he turned to me and said, "The ceiling is too low the speakers too close to the side walls it shouldn't sound this good. I can't hear the room I can't hear the speakers all I hear is the music."

He also said my system sounded considerably better than the million dollar XLF University System.

For a fellow that only streams, he had the best CD collection I've ever seen.

He just called and we talked for about an hour. He's going to get his system up and running by April and I'm going over to have a listen. It was a very enjoyable evening. It confirmed what I suspected, that I have achieved a very good sound in a very unlikely space.