Way back in 1999 two organizations that would loom huge in CNET’s check labs got their start off: Aperion Audio and Fluance. Whilst Aperion has stayed on its house theater route more than the last couple a long time, Fluance has branched out to devices these kinds of as the RT82 turntable, winner of our Editors’ Selection award. The business is on a serious tear, and the XL8F ground-standing speaker is the hottest illustration.
The XL8 assortment is a price tag-powerful house theater speaker assortment incorporating rears, facilities and bookshelves, led by these impressive ground-standers. The in shape and complete of the XL8F is deluxe for $600 (£600) a pair, and its pure size is unmatched by other speakers at its degree. The sound of the XL8F is open up and thrilling, but never shrill, and when fed a film soundtrack these speakers only zing. They are no slouch with new music either.
The XL8 features much superior price than Fluance’s flagship $800 Signature collection and a superior layout way too. The sound is also superior well balanced than what I remember from the Signature assortment.
Whilst the exact same money will buy you a very good bookshelf speaker from identify brands like Elac or Klipsch, if you certainly want the highest speaker for your money, the massive Fluance XL8F has no equal.
Design and style and features
Twin six.5-inch glass fiber motorists flank a 1-inch gentle dome tweeter.
Ty Pendlebury/CNET
The Fluance XL8F is a present day three-way ground-stander but it offers as a 2.5-way, with a bass driver hidden in the base. The Fluance has two, six.5-inch glass-fiber motorists divided by a 1-inch fabric tweeter (identified as a D’Appolito configuration, named soon after the designer who perfected the arrangement, Joseph D’Appolito). I did find that one particular of the mid driver’s dust caps looked a minor tough when considered up near — they are all created from a piece of glass fiber, and this one particular was not glued on square. But from the sofa I couldn’t really notify.
Somewhere else the complete is exemplary, and I favor the layout to the uncomfortable Signature collection with its small, yellow midrange driver at the top rated. The XL8F towers are fairly tall at 46 inches substantial, only 1.5 inches shorter than the monster Signature. They are deep, way too, in order to accommodate that base-mounted 8-inch bass driver.
Ty Pendlebury/CNET
The speaker cupboard tapers at the back, to minimize inside reflections, and culminates in two rear bass ports (so it is effective superior if you depart a number of ft length from the wall). The front baffle features a piano-black complete in a choice of either black ash or walnut for the sides.
The fixtures are just as deluxe as the rest of the speaker, beginning with a magnetically attaching grille. The gold plated binding posts are stable-wanting and there are two sets in circumstance you want to experiment with bi-wiring or bi-amping.
The speakers are rated at a 87dB sensitivity, indicating they could be driven by most receivers or amps, and are able of a 35Hz-25KHz frequency reaction.
Whilst no-one particular is really auditioning speakers in stores at the second, the business helpfully features a thirty-working day money back demo on speakers purchased through its site.
How does it sound?
As I anticipate from a speaker with a base-firing bass driver, the Fluance has a significant, daring sound, but it is really also able of subtlety I didn’t anticipate. That midrange-tweeter-midrange arrangement is in a position to reproduce lots of detail in new music and flicks, with a generously open up character. I when compared the speaker to my go-to reference speaker, the $900 Q Acoustics 3050i and identified that the Fluance sounded superior in numerous important areas, specially when it arrived to viewing films.
The Fluance XL8F’s combination of deep bass and a revealing midrange built it a perfect partner for the lobby scene from The Matrix. This scene mixes balletic gradual-mo, ricocheting bullet sound consequences and a pumping electro rating, and the Fluance welded them jointly in a satisfying way. While the Q Acoustics was in a position to manage the minimal-end portion superior, the Fluance sent the shout of “Freeze” and its echoing tail in a more revealing fashion.
Seeing Avatar, the Fluance demonstrated its keen ear with the lush rainforests of Pandora. All through the Thanator chase scene the simply click of Jake’s device gun was more jarring when he understood the Thanator needed a cat-individual food in its place of the elephant-like Hammerhead Titanothere. The sound of the chase was only more visceral when listened to on the Fluance than its counterpart. In comparison, the Q Acoustics have been a minor more inert, more bass-centered and slightly considerably less exciting overall.
When it arrived to new music the two have been near, but the Q Acoustics’ more laid-back top quality and top rated-to-base consistency gave it a slight edge. I listened to every thing from Claude Debussy’s nocturnes to jazz to rock new music, and identified that the Fluance’s abilities lay in new music with lots of detail. The XL8F can really give you a vivid feeling of the functionality area and make the speakers themselves vanish — as long as items will not get way too free.
For illustration, the opening times of Phoebe Bridgers’ Know The End gave me goosebumps when listened to through the Fluance, and this ongoing as the chorused electrical guitar slithered around powering the singer. At 2:forty five the bass drum that propels the second fifty percent of the song was deep and pulsing. Only when the song got really chaotic did the particulars come to be a clean.
Surprisingly the Q Acoustics presented a different song, and one particular which was in the end much more satisfying. The song’s intro guitars sounded greater, and in its place of being in thrall they have been thrust outwards into the listening area, enveloping me. When the song got busy the speakers stored every thing in emphasis superior than the Fluence, and the 3050i’s keen midrange on the chanted vocals and the enraged “rahhhhhh” have been more finely expressed.
Really should you buy it?
Yes, you can buy by yourself a fairly killer soundbar for $600, but you will find no way it could match the Fluance XL8F for either bodily existence or the means to reproduce a thundering film soundtrack. There are number of ground-standers that can do what the XL8F does — marry crushing bass electric power with an open up, comprehensive sound — and none of them price tag $600. The Q Acoustics 3050i is a more refined speaker, specially for new music, but it prices $350 more and it isn’t as nicely-designed. The Fluance XL8F features an remarkable price and if your finances is less than a grand, and you have the room, these speakers should be at the top rated of your audition listing.