XLO Reference Type 2, Part 6
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| Posted on July 9, 2020 at 17:25:11 | ||
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Posts: 7339
Location: Bay Area Joined: December 11, 2000 |
 After four excellent albums to begin their career, Metallica took three long years to come up with their fifth. When the eponymous Metallica came out as the 1991-92 school year began, what a disappointment. The songs were bland, and the production was glossy.  During that Fall 1991 quarter, I came home one weekend, to audition the Muse Model 100 power amp, at San Francisco's Sounds Alive. There, they had just received samples of the just-launched XLO Reference series.  In early June 1992, my friends, then all in college, reconvened in San Francisco. Metallica's one good song, "Wherever I May Roam," inspired us to go out, not just within San Francisco, but outside as well. We took boat rides on the Bay. But you know what? To this day, I have never actually stepped foot on Alcatraz.  Most of my girlfriends attended UC Berkeley. Though they weren't taking summer classes, we nevertheless spent time in the East Bay. ACS accompanied me to Berkeley's The Audio Chamber, where we saw XLO Reference products.  During that summer of 1992, some of us actually went to Kirby Cove, in the Marin headlands. If you go now, the swing is no longer there. Maybe if they had used audiophile cabling, instead of rope, the swing might have survived (just kidding!). But anyway, afterward, another girlfriend, KJ, accompanied me to San Francisco Stereo Plus. Although we were there to audition Adcom gear, it was used with Tara Labs cabling, our first exposure to that brand.  Tara Labs' current-production Air Forte costs 3-4 times that of the original XLO Reference Type 2. These two models sound radically different from each other. The Air Forte has a "pyramidal" soundstage. It narrows or tapers at the top. Images are proportional; bass is bigger than the mids, which are bigger than the treble. While the images are stable and firmly anchored in that pyramidal arrangement, the music seems to have only one speed. "Wherever I May Roam" oddly does not inspire you to be adventurous and go out. It seems stuck in first gear, and if you are sitting on a chair or sofa, you remain there.  The XLO Reference Type 2 projects more of a "picture frame" soundstage. Images are tightly in focus, don't waver, but are lacking in depth. The overall sound is clean, without airbrushing too much of the details (cf. Metallica's glossy textures). You are encouraged to go out, and while you may not have a destination in mind, the Type 2 maps out the soundstage, so you are not totally blind or lost.  At $3,995, the Tara Labs ISM The 0.8 Onboard is more than 12x that of the XLO Reference Type 2. Be that as it may, The 0.8 is that much better than the Type 2. And by "better," we mean that it fulfills the job of line-level interconnect: pass signal with minimum change, and protect against outside interference. By being that much more open and see-through transparent, The 0.8 gives you that "A-ha!" moment, when "Wherever I May Roam" inspires you to go out. You know exactly what to pack, and also understand that, you are going to have fun getting to and finding your destination(s). The 0.8 completes the journey by ensuring a safe and fun return trip, to a clean and protected home.  When you then switch to the XLO Reference Type 2, the sound contracts, becoming more like a scale model, instead of the real train. You feel like you're taking a late-80s/early-90s 2-door subcompact hatchback. You have to feed an iPod or Discman into the car stereo's cassette player, but you have tunes! You have to pack lightly, and use every nook and slot in the car. Heck, your jacket doubles as a pillow. But you have your friends, you are not going to go broke, and you get to explore. And maybe that closeness, that bond, gives you a new boyfriend/girlfriend. That is what the XLO Reference Type 2 is about. -Lummy The Loch Monster
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