August 31, 2012

• XLO Signature 5.1 Speaker Cables, Pt 2

  I've had the XLO Signature 5.1 speaker cables in my system for a few days now and have clocked 30 hours of playing time on them.  So now would be a good time to give my initial impressions of them.  For those of you that like pictures, I've included one more that happens to also include my toes in the shot which is why it didn't make the first cut, but what the heck.  If I have to look at them, you can too.

  And since I have all this white space next to the remaining picture of the cables, I'm going to include something totally non-audiophile:  a photo of the Orchid House at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ that I visited yesterday.

       

   

  Listening Impressions:
  

  • The Signature 5.1 cables, more than any other characteristic, just get out of the way and allow you to hear the music and your system with very little editorializing.  Depending on your upstream components this can be a very good or bad thing because imperfections will be apparent.
  • They present the music from the quietest background of any cables I've owned.  Notes seem to keep trailing away and away into silence. 
  • The tonal balance is even but to a degree I haven't heard before, my system has a stronger bass foundation and increased sense of rhythm.
  • On the Solo Violin Works CD by Arturo Delmoni you can clearly visualize the bow being dragged across the violin's strings and while the recording is sometimes a bit bright, the violin is never steely.
  • Differences in sound reproduction between my Modwright/Music Hall CD25 and Oppo BDP-95 were readily apparent when listening to Hilary Hahn's Bach Violin Concertos SACD.  I expected the BDP-95 SACD rendition to be more smooth sounding than the CD layer played on the CD25.  In fact, while the BDP-95 may have been a tad more detailed, the tubed output stage of the CD25 presented a more musically involving experience.  This turned out to be an almost consistent difference between the two players when spinning both CDs and SACDs.
  • The DVD-A copy of Jackson Browne's Running on Empty was stunning.  The segue near the beginning of the track "The Road" from the studio version to the live rendition firmly plants Mr. Browne in your listening room.  He never leaves.  Neither do the musicians.

   

  I could go on in this vein with other examples but I would be stepping on the toes of other reviews I'll be doing shortly on footer tweaks, tube dampers and tube changes.  All of these changes have never been more clear or simple to differentiate than they have been since the introduction of these cables into my system.  I have never been more pleased with any other set of speaker cables.  The XLO Signature 5.1s are keepers.

   

  Thank you, John.

   

  • 6:45 am
  • 3 Comments