Well I finished my first pair of XBL^2 motored speakers, and I'm happy with them. Here's a few pics I want to share, and my own listening impressions. 3/4" MDF, 1/2" external route and interal route for the driver, as well as a single internal brace. Paint is Rustoleum Hammered in dark grey. Exodus Long Binding Posts on the back. Very nice bullet proof posts.
The paint came out with a much better texture as I did closer and heavier coats. A little too heavy on the top of one, but overall as good as this paint can get. You can still see very small lines where the sides were joined, but those appeared a week after the paint was applied. It should be noted that the boxes were smooth enough to not feel any gap, so this is simply an artifact of the paint soaking in, or the glue taking more time to set.
A couple of the pics show you how the texture is on the boxes. With that internal brace they are very dead. The binding posts are quite nice too, and I sealed those with o-rings.
As for how they perform....
They love power. Lots of it. To fill a room with sound you better have 25-30W to push their power rating, but I bet 50W total per speaker would be better for peaks. But that's just me. Those cones can move too. I did some 20-80Hz sine waves and they move so much you'd swear they'd fall apart, but they don't. If they move several mm listening to music, it's not something to worry about as they'll move twice as far. I used my Promedia 4.1 amp to drive them and highpass them for some music, and I nearly ran out of headroom on the volume knob. Really ran out of gas. My Prioneer ProLogic receiver in stereo mode had plenty of poop though.
For a 4.5" driver that's meant to cover the full spectrum of music, they do surprisingly well. High frequencies are definitely present past my threshold of hearing (18-19khz), but seem a little soft. The bass is very much present, more than the box cutoff of 90Hz (sealed box) would have you believe. Placing them closer to a wall and for computer use a sub should not be neccesary for easy listening. For gaming, a sub would be nice for those explosions and car engines though.
The midrange is SWEET though. Very smooth. It's been said these have a very 'cohesive' sound to them and the lack of any crossovers also benefits the sound. I could agree with that. But being a full ranger, they do have their limits. High frequency dispersion is limited to +/- 15 degrees, and the bass will not pound your room. But for the price and what they can do, they are very nice. Even giving more power seems to not harm the music with massive distorition. Another nice attritute is the imaging, which is superb. Left, right or center or anywhere in between it's easy to locate stuff.
Music used:
Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Telarc recording: where the midrange and violins shine, Very nice to listen to.
Albert Cummings - True to Yourself: The bass and treble is lacking on the recording, so not a fair comparison of the drivers, but sounds as good as it can get without applying a sub or loudness contour to make up for it. Using loudness on this the FRs do nicely.
Waterworld Soundtrack - Swimming track: The instruments used on here really show the imaging power, sounds very natural.
Fanfare for the Common Man - Aaron Copland: Very good way to destroy lackluster speakers. Better use a sub and a highpass, but they do surprisingly well at moderate volumes.
Bottom line: Classical stuff does well on this, but for music where more bass is present such as electric blues/rock, it's nice to have a sub. Treble detail is slightly lacking. Good domes or planars trounce it, but that's to be expected, right? For my computer, I'll like them, but for filling my room I'm planning on a Exodus CX12 sealed sub to go with them and for movies.
