Quite a few people have recommended the Whisper XD to me. They’re full range. They’re dipole. They throw a huge wall of sound. And they sound great.
The last time I heard them, the bass was dipole too — that is, it was pretty weak. Other things against them: a mandatory 24bit/96kHz analog-to-digital-to-analog conversion in the required off-board crossover and then there’s the whole bi- or tri-amping thing.
Well, with the XD, there’s no requirement for anything other than a single amp as the big 15″ woofers are now driven by integrated bass amps. But the crossover is still 96kHz. Which means all those nice 192kHz files you sprung for … get down-rezzed? That’s a shame.
Anyway, the bass was tight. Everything seemed to hang well. The sound, and the quality of the sound, was … potent.
I get the feeling, from the setup and the distances between everything, that the XD was meant for a large room. Sure, there’s a DSP and all so you can do quite a bit of tweaking, but … no. It’s big and meant to be that way. All in all, I quite liked it. Not my favorite at the show, but certainly one of the best sounding speakers at Axpona.
