Review Details

Reference Series High Performance Three-way Floorstanding Loudspeakers

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on November 20, 2015):

I've had these a couple weeks now and sit down for some listening every evening not to mention that they get used as AV speakers when the TV is running.I got into the idea of upgrading my 15 year old home stereo system a few months ago and spent months researching brands, going to stores to demo gear, and reading tons of reviews online. After tons of reading I decided to take a bang for the buck approach instead of peaking out my budget on the first go around. I bought some excellent condition used Emotiva gear; the USP-1 pre amp, a pair of XPA-100 250w mono block amps, a Emotiva DAC, and a TEAC iPod dock. I made a list of potential speakers starting with the Fluance XL7F's and going up to a few options at $2k.After auditioning B&W 683's, CM-9's, CM-10's, Goldenear Triton 7's, Martin Logan Motion 40's, ESL's, and Magnepan 1.7's I still wasn't any closer to really figuring out which ones to buy or if it was worth it to spend 2 grand+ on a pair of speakers for my first system. I decided to start at the bottom of my list price wise and try the XL7F's since they have a 30 day return period and give them a try.First of all these things are humongous and really stand out in my living room compared to my old speakers. They look great cosmetically and have very robust sets of binding posts on the back about mid way up the speaker cabinet. That's one complaint I have about them is that they put the binding posts so high up on the cabinet instead of near the bottom of the cabinet like most other speakers I've looked at. You lose a good 2' of cable length if you don't want them to be hanging like suspension wires going to your stereo.As far as sound goes it's obviously not as good as some of the more expensive speakers I've demoed but it makes me wonder if it's really worth spending all that much more money for the better speakers. The only other speakers on my list under a grand were the EmpTek E55ti's which I've also heard good things about.I know break in is a contentious topic when it comes to speakers and maybe it's my imagination but these did seem to sound better after several days of use. I experimented with placement and moved them out a few feet from the back wall and about 6 feet from each other and toed in significantly to get the best results. They throw off a nice soundstage with pretty good centered vocals on most recordings and good instrument separation. I have no source for HD audio and only play 44.1 or 48k 16bit audio through my DAC but good quality recordings sound fantastic. Some better engineered recordings even seem to give off a more 3D soundstage presenting sounds far to the left and right of the speakers almost to the point of sounding like surround or side fill.These speakers also have considerable bass which is a plus for a tower like this.My only real complaint about these speakers is that they seem to have very pronounced mids. Supposedly this is due to them being crossed over at like 800Hz which seems odd based on all the other speakers I've looked at. On some recordings that already have a lot of mid sound in them it gets almost unbearable at higher volumes. I could do a lot to mitigate this I think if I had tone controls or an AV receiver with more control or even the ability to bi amp them and then maybe crossover the woofer a little lower. That's just speculation though. Tone controls would probably do the most but my preamp has none. Maybe there's a good reason they cross it over so high but I wish they would do it a little differently to tame the mids some.This isn't to say that it really hurts the sound of the speakers, it's just that it's about the only complaint I can find with these speakers and it's a minor one at that unless you are really picky or just have super high expectations. To be honest I didn't expect these to sound this good when I ordered them and have been pleasantly surprised. I still may try some other speakers just to see if it's really worth it to spend that much more money but it would have to be a big difference to justify it to me. The PSB Image T6 is one of the next ones I wanted to demo but they cost almost triple these at retail.For the cost and sound quality I could see myself being happy with these for quite a while if they hold up well.One other thing is that these can get very LOUD. I probably have more amp than I need pushing these since I can barely crack the throttle and keep it at a reasonable, evening listening level. I got up to about half volume just to try it out and they got unbearably loud but still remained pretty clear with no distortion that I could hear though they did seem to get a little more compressed and beamy and lose their sound stage but since I couldn't stand to be in the same room with them it seemed a moot point. -Verified purchase from Fluance trusted store.