XTZ Cinema Series 3X12 Subwoofer Review

XTZ 3X12 Subwoofer Introduction

A few months ago I received an email asking if I would be interested in reviewing a subwoofer from XTZ Sound. I had seen the XTZ name tossed around a few times on the forums but knew little about the company and had never had firsthand experience with any of their products. When they mentioned sending in their largest subwoofer the 3X12 and I looked up the description of it, I thought it would be the perfect chance to find out what XTZ and their products are all about. 

XTZ Sound was founded out of Sweden in 2004 by Olle Eliasson, but as of today has a global presence. The XTZ brand currently has products in a wide range of markets from large powered subwoofers, to earphones, to the XTZ Room Analyzer systems. XTZ Sound focuses on internet direct sales and they have a number of interesting philosophies as well, such as “Product Quality over Marketing” and honest and accurate product information. XTZ also sources components from some of the most respected manufacturers in the world such as SEAS, Peerless, Accuton and Bang & Olufson. XTZ Sound also offers a 60 day “Buy & Try” return policy with no cost incurred by the buyer if the product is returned. With this kind of pedigree I’m surprised to say that I had not known about XTZ until perhaps a year or two ago. I’m aware of them now!

When the 3X12 showed up it was on a box truck strapped to a pallet and I was a bit taken aback at the size of the box containing it and the 5’x4’ pallet it sat on, once deposited into the middle of my garage. It was a little bit more than I expected. You would think that I’d be used to that by now. Contained in the box with the 3X12 itself is an owner’s manual, a set of white gloves, the set of three grilles to cover the drivers and the power cord. Unpacking wasn’t that difficult. Leverage is your friend. Use of a dolly for wheeling the 3X12 into place is highly suggested. If you do have steps to be navigated to get the 3X12 into your room, be prepared for you and a buddy to get a bit of a workout.

Unpacked the 3X12 is one big subwoofer. It measures 21” wide, 22” deep, 44.5” tall and tips the scales at a hair over 170lbs. Like I mentioned before…A few stretches may be in order if you have to take this monster up a set of steps. Despite its girth I like the looks of the 3X12. The front baffle has grilles and individual baffle covers for each of the drivers, a flared slot vent and a big round over on the edges of the baffles which all help to break up the large rectangular profile a bit. The finish is a dark matte black that is quite durable except for the speaker baffle covers which are a smoother, gloss black appearance. Another thing that jumps out once you see the 3X12 in person is that the cabinet side walls are not parallel. The cabinet is narrowest in the front by the driver baffles and widens substantially towards the back wall of the cabinet. I did not notice this in any of the pictures. The 3X12 is not going to disappear into the décor of a small apartment that is for sure, but it is a good looking system considering its size.

Design Overview

The 3X12 is a large bass reflex or vented design with a set of three 12” drivers arranged in a vertical array on the front of the enclosure and a large heavily flared slot vent below the drivers and also on the front of the enclosure. The amplifier system for the 3X12 is rated at 1500watts and the amplifier plate and controls are on the back panel of the enclosure. Each driver has an individual grille cover which is cloth covered and is easily removed or replaced. I decided not to use the grilles for the 3X12 as I liked the look better without them.

The drivers for the 3X12 are accessed by removing the piece of wood that holds each grille and becomes the front fascia of the subwoofer. Each driver has an individual cover baffle that holds the grille and driver mounting screws. The drivers can be removed by unscrewing four large star drive bolts from each baffle cover to access the driver mounting flange and then removing the screws holding the driver. The drivers are each a 12” nominal frame diameter and feature a pressed paper cone with a poly dust-cap embossed with the XTZ logo. The frame is stamped steel and the suspension system consists of a rubber half roll surround and a 6.5” diameter spider with a small spacer for extra clearance. The drivers utilize a single 2” diameter voice coil which appears to be 4 ohms nominal. The motors have a double stack of ferrite magnets which are about 6” in diameter and weigh 96oz. The back plate is adorned with the XTZ logo and the magnets are covered with a protective rubber boot. The motors also employ a shorting ring in them which lowers inductive, even-order distortions related to asymmetries in the motor system. The drivers are not massively overbuilt like some others but they are engineered well and there are three of them to share the work load, which often ends up performing better than a single “uber” driver.

         

XTZ Sound 3X12 Driver 

The amplifier system for the 3X12 actually consists of three 500watt rated, class D amplifier modules, each of which is in charge of powering its own driver. All are controlled by the same singular set of controls on the amplifier input plate which is on the back of the cabinet. Two of the modules are actually mounted to the amplifier control plate. The third is mounted off to the side on the left cabinet wall. The amplifier controls consist of the usual things like: Variable gain, a 0-180 degree phase control, variable low pass filter control with bypass setting via a toggle switch and a detachable power cord. The inputs consist of both RCA unbalanced and XLR balanced connections. There is also a direct pass through XLR out. There is an auto on/off toggle switch which only works for the unbalanced connections. The XLR balanced input needs to have the toggle set to always the always “ON” position.  Finally there is a toggle switch to control a room EQ setting. The settings are either “Anechoic” which is for larger spaces without significant boundary reinforcement or “Room” which reduces the deep bass level below 35Hz for smaller spaces which exhibit significant boundary reinforcement. The power cable for the 3X12 does not have a center ground pin utilized but since I used the balanced connections the entire time I experienced zero ground loop or noise issues even with the gain on the amplifier at maximum.

        

XTZ Sound 3X12 Amplifier Modules

The cabinet of the 3X12 is built from one inch thick medium density fiber board. The internal construction features a pair of large cross braces spaced at about the 1/3^rd points of the panels and connecting the side walls and front and back panels together rigidly. The slot vent is quite large and features a flared opening for less air noise at high output and it also helps to stiffen the bottom of the cabinet. The cabinet walls also have a generous amount of damping material on a number of the internal surfaces. As previously mentioned the side walls are not parallel and the cabinet widens toward the rear panel to a significant amount. This will help avoid standing wave issues between those internal surfaces. The driver cover panels are a thick piece of MDF machined with a couple of nice round overs that cover and hide the mounting screws and hold the grilles over the drivers. It’s a nice way to handle the issue of aesthetics and provide ease of driver access. The 3X12 has a relatively dead and well damped cab despite its large panel area, due to the efforts described above. The parts, build and finishing quality are all quite good. The impression is of a thoughtfully conceived and well-executed design.

XTZ Cinema Series 3X12 Subwoofer Listening Session and Use

The XTZ Sound 3X12 was placed in the front right corner of my basement HT room facing into the wall and plugged into the system with an XLR cable. I left the gain of the amplifier at its maximum and set the amplifier controls to always on, phase at 0 degrees, defeated the internal low pass filter and set the EQ to the “Anechoic” setting which matches with my room better. I allowed Audyssey to run its auto equalization on the system as this is what the average user will probably do and then afterward checked the balance of the XTZ 3X12 against the main speakers as I often find it to be off a bit. The low pass to the 3X12 was set at 100Hz inside of my Onkyo processor.

Music listening

After setting up the 3X12 in my room I casually listened to some music for a few hours to see if anything jumped out at me. Typically with a big vented sub the low bass frequencies in the 20-35Hz range will be a bit overpowering in my room when compared with the rest of the bass range. With the 3X12 this effect was still there to some extent but seemed to be less of an issue than with other vented subs I’ve used over the years. After a bit of EQ adjustment to pad down the 30Hz range a hair, things fell into place nicely.

I spent a number of days listening to both music and movies while taking notes and generally getting a feel for the 3X12 and how it performed. I ran through a number of favorites I use to test subwoofers out such as the NIN track Discipline which features a huge bloated kick drum and an ascending low frequency sweep towards the end of the song which starts out down near 20hz. The 3X12 had no issues with this even at a vigorous playback level and reproduced the very lowest parts of the sweep which most small subs simply fail to reproduce well. I also threw another two-channel music track at the 3X12 which is known for having a gratuitous low end mix. Flight of the Cosmic Hippo by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. This track has a ridiculous bass guitar mix and features a heavy amount of 25Hz centered bass in parts. Again the 3X12 easily delivered the goods on this even at high volumes and with apparent ease. Another favorite of mine I’ve been using is the Black Sails soundtrack by Bear McCreary. There are a number of tracks here with diverse and excellently recorded percussion sounds including some huge drum builds and weird instrumentation. Again the 3X12 laid down the bass fundamentals with precision and poise, even during some huge drum swells when I had gotten aggressive with the volume knob. Of course I also did a bunch of listening to rock and metal with ultra-compressed thumpy kick drum such as Gojira:L’Enfant Sauvage so I could see how the 3X12 would handle dense fast music and how well it could punch at high volumes. The 3X12 did not disappoint and could produce a solid chest thump if the volume was goosed up to appropriate levels on the right material. I also watched the Anesthetize blu-ray from Porcupine Tree which is pretty much my go to multi-channel live music recording. XTZ’s 3X12 was right at home here and produced clean bass tones up through the crossover region. Pitch definition was spot on and as had already been shown the dynamic reserves were easily up to the challenge of reproducing dynamic parts at high level with little to no compression. Excellent.

Movie listening session

While the 3X12 handled the bass duties I ended up watching a couple of movies that I had not seen before. One was John Wick which turned out to be quite the workout for the 3X12. I don’t think there was any bass that was particularly over the top in this movie but there was plenty of it to go around. There are tons of gun shots, body blows, ominous low frequency rumbles and even the occasional low frequency sweep for the 3X12 to sink its teeth into and with a playback volume of -10 from what would be REF level that is exactly what happened. This is a pretty loud playback level overall and is about as loud as I usually go without getting uncomfortable and fatigued over long periods. The 3X12 angrily dished out the gun shots and thuds when called for and really helped to put me there in the middle of the action. Once scene that stood out to me was where John Wick goes into a club and there is background music throughout most of the action which was already bass heavy to begin with but had all of the typical action bass noises even louder over top of that. Great stuff. Not the best movie ever or the best soundtrack but the 3X12 killed it on that one.

The XTZ 3X12 was also subjected to a battery of sub busting movie demo scenes in order to see how well it coped with extreme demands and whether it is protected well enough to avoid obvious distortion or even damage. I used the same -10 master volume that I playback movies at for all of the subwoofer reviews. These tracks are some of the most demanding tracks available when it comes to identifying weaknesses or causing distress to subwoofers. The fact is that most any subwoofer can do justice with light jazz or pop at room conversation level, provided it is setup right and doesn’t have major design flaws. The subwoofer is often the most heavily taxed and abused component of the speaker system for a couple of reasons. Deep bass is difficult to reproduce loudly, our ears aren’t very sensitive to it and a lot of people seem to enjoy it cranked up a bit. Nothing ruins your enjoyment quite like your sub making obnoxious noises, wheezing, shutting down, or clanking in distress in the middle of your movie because it doesn’t have enough output to do the job your listening habits demand, or it is not protected well enough to hide the fact at the very least. These demo tracks are perfect for finding out if a particular system has what it takes.

First on the list is the plane crash scene from Flight of the Phoenix. This is one of the loudest bass events I have found in any movie to this date and the 3X12 nailed it. The bass in this scene is just plain hot and contains a mix of frequencies culminating in a very loud 30Hz drone during the barrel roll of the plane. I didn’t hear any bad noises at all and it definitely provided the visceral effect of being in an airplane as the fuselage rips away around you.

The Hurt Locker has a number of sub punishing scenes but the 50-caliber being fired in the desert is my favorite. With this scene the subwoofer is asked to produce huge amounts of bass under 20Hz accompanied by a reduced but still significant level of upper frequency content. Very few bass systems reproduce this content fully. The 3X12 did pretty well here. The 3X12 provided a good sense of impact but did not seem to quite get the full force of the low frequency effect. This is due to a large amount of the content being well below the vent tuning and protective high pass filter of the 3X12. It must be stated for the record that this is an incredibly tough track to reproduce fully for anything less than a multi driver infinite baffle or sealed subwoofer array due to how deep the content is. However the 3X12 did not make any bad noises despite the content of this track and still produced a convincing high caliber blast effect. I’ve caused a bit of trouble with a number of subwoofers using this track so this was a good effort by the 3X12.

Demo scene number 3 is the rail-gun test scene from Batman: The Dark Knight. This scene isn’t particularly deep or taxing on most subwoofers but it has very loud and abrupt bursts of bass that are useful for judging how dynamic the bass system is in the middle and top of its bandwidth. Here the XTZ 3X12 was a powerhouse and produced a sharp and pronounced effect which blended perfectly with the mains. This is the type of scene where your subwoofer system can compress or get into the limiter which will limit the output and you may not even notice it, but if you have a powerful enough system that it can produce the full dynamics of the scene, it is a night and day difference. The 3X12 continually did very well on scenes like this containing very loud, abrupt dynamics.

Finally was the server room scene from the horror movie Pulse. This particular scene is one of the more demanding that has been released with loud, sustained, warbling bass centered at about 17Hz. To top it off there really isn’t a lot of accompanying noise in the soundtrack to mask the bass either. This scene makes a lot of subs, even very expensive ones, fall on their face, some subs skip this sub 20Hz content almost completely and don’t even try to reproduce it. Some systems will cut out and go into protect mode or get driven into audible distress very easily while trying to reproduce this content. This scene is particularly tough for ported subs since the port tuning is usually near the center frequency of this signal and it can cause the ports to chuff or compress. This is exactly why this piece is useful as it is just about a worst case scenario for many vented sub systems.  The recently reviewed RBH SX-1212P/R was quite impressive with this demanding material and the big XTZ sub also rose to the challenge and produced this scene with an equal amount of guts and deep bass fortitude. There was just a slight hint of port noise during this torture track but again this is pretty much a track designed to make a subs vent huff and puff a bit. This is the only time that I heard vent noise from the 3X12 during the listening sessions, so it is not a major concern unless the 3X12 is really being pushed to its limits. I could actually feel a bit of wobble in my couch frame with this track, which is not easy to accomplish on my basement slab. Overall I was quite impressed with the sound of XTZ’s 3X12 in my room.    

XTZ Cinema Series 3X12 Subwoofer Measurements and Analysis

The XTZ Sound 3X12 subwoofer was measured while placed outdoors, on the ground, in a large field, with the nearest large objects a minimum of 60ft away from it. The cabinet was lying horizontal on its side with the drivers and port facing towards the microphone. The microphone is an Earthworks M30 measurement microphone which was placed on the ground at a distance of 2 meters from the nearest enclosure face of the subwoofer, pointing towards the drivers and centered between the 3X12’s various radiators. The grilles were also left off. The amplifier was set to maximum gain, the low pass filter was bypassed and the Anechoic EQ setting was used for all measurements unless otherwise noted. For more info on the testing equipment and procedures please see the article here.

Powered Subwoofer Testing Outline and Procedures Overview

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: Low Pass Filter Settings

The XTZ 3X12 was measured in both vertical and horizontal orientations in order to find the one which offered the best response shape, output and blending of the driver and port output. An orientation with the XTZ 3X12 lying horizontal on its side with the drivers firing directly at the microphone was found to offer the best overall response. This is the orientation suggested by XTZ also. The microphone was placed so that the mic was centered between the three 12” drivers and the slot vent.

The first set of measurements, after settling on the cabinet orientation, captured the effect of changing the low pass filter setting. These can be seen in the graph above. The black trace is with the low pass filter bypassed. A number of settings were used ranging from maximum down to a setting of 40Hz. The low pass filter control was quite accurate, was very close to the indicated frequency and exhibited a 24dB octave roll off as advertised.

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: Effect of Room EQ Toggle on Frequency Response
Black trace: Anechoic / Red Trace: Room EQ

Above is the frequency response of the XTZ 3X12 with the room equalization toggle switch set to both positions. The anechoic setting produced a relatively flat response shape down to about 35Hz with a gradual roll off towards 16Hz below that point. The room setting triggers a slight boost of about 1.5-2dB above 100Hz and a shallow roll off towards the deep bass which appears to begin up near 100Hz if the two responses are merged up top. The responses converge again way down near 14Hz. The room equalization setting should work just as designed by reducing the deep bass energy in smaller spaces to keep it from becoming excessive or bloated sounding.  

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: Frequency Response as Tested

 

Above is the frequency response measurement of the XTZ Sound 3X12 as it was configured for the majority of the measurements. XTZ lists a frequency response of 16-160Hz for the 3X12 with no tolerance given and also lists a response of 22-160Hz as a sealed system, also with no tolerance given. With the low pass filter bypassed, the equalization toggle set to “anechoic” and the vent open the response of the 3X12 was measured to be within a 6dB total window from 19-242Hz and within a 10dB total window from 16-274Hz. The measurements also indicate that the port resonance is at about 175Hz but it is fairly well damped. That being the case the 3X12 would likely be best if crossed over no higher than 120Hz or so. With the same settings except the vent being plugged the response measured as 26-242Hz while staying within a 6dB total window and from 18-274Hz while staying within a 10dB total window. (Note: This is the only mention of running the 3X12 system sealed I found in any of the literature. The system did come with a large foam plug in the vent but there are no other settings on the amplifier or other indications that it is expected to be run as a sealed system. I did measure the system with the vent plugged, in what would be the sealed configuration, but the very steep high pass filter is still in effect, so the system does not effectively utilize the shallower 12dB octave roll off of a sealed system and would lose a large amount of headroom around the vent tuning as well, so in my personal opinion it would be a waste to run this sub without the vent open. That being the case and due to there being no mention of the sealed operation mode other than a single response spec in the manual, I decided to forgo an entire set of measurements on the system with the vent plugged.)

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: Group Delay

The group delay chart for the 3X!2 subwoofer is characteristic of a bass reflex system which employs a steep high pass filter for protection just below the vent tuning frequency. Both the vent resonance and the electronic filter cause some delay in the energy of the system which shows up in the group delay chart. In the case of the 3X12 it remains well below 1cycle of delay until down close to 22Hz. The delay increases until it reaches about 1.5 cycles from about 13-17Hz. It is generally considered that group delay of less than 1 cycle is inaudible in the bass frequencies and that it becomes less of an issue at the deepest frequencies. Since the 1 cycle threshold is not crossed until down near 20Hz or even lower there is nothing of audible concern in the group delay graph in my opinion. I certainly never heard any smearing or sluggishness from the 3X12.

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: Long-Term Output Compression

The long-term output compression measurements for the XTZ Sound’s 3X12 indicate a stout system with impressive output capabilities. The measurement starts at a baseline drive level which produces 90dB referenced to 50Hz at 2 meters using a very slow sine wave sweep which puts a heavy demand on both the amplifiers and drivers. The output is then increased by 5dB for each subsequent measurement until the system makes obvious distress noises or severely compresses the output. The 3X12 is stoic and resolute up to and through the measurement that asks it for 110dB over much of the upper bass range. At this point it is still maintaining its basic response shape well and is not compressing much. The next 5dB increase in output demand causes the 3X12 to start compressing noticeably near the vent tuning at about 18Hz. Another full 5dB increase produced broad band compression and virtually no increase in the deep bass output so the testing was stopped there. Note that by this point the 3X12 was producing about 107dB at 20Hz and 115 to 118dB above 30Hz which is a lot of output in an outdoor measurement setting. Also noteworthy is the fact that the 3X12 produced all of that output with nothing more offensive than a bit of port wind noise. I didn’t hear any cabinet rattles, speaker distortion, or mechanical noises. Combined with the in room listening sessions this proves that the XTZ guys have this baby very well protected and you won’t accidently grenade it with the wrong signal. Heck, you can’t really get it to sound bad no matter what you throw at it.

Note on Output Compression Testing: This is by far the most demanding measurement type conducted on the subwoofers during our testing and it mercilessly reveals any issues with overload, port compression, port noise, driver distress, creaks, rattles, buzzes, etc. Additionally, the test is conducted outdoors with only the subwoofer under test operating so there will be no nearby walls or objects to vibrate and no upper frequency content from other speakers in operation. These things would normally help to cover up or mask any objectionable noises from the subwoofer in a typical room or operational setting. This is pretty much the worst case scenario for any subwoofer, putting it under the proverbial microscope with test signals. Any sort of audible distress or issues with the subwoofer will be readily apparent in this environment. Much more so than in a typical room with accompanying speakers and electronics, while listening to music or movies.  

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: Output Compression Magnitude

The chart above is the measurement information from the previous graph titled: Long Term Output Compression, presented in a different manner which shows only the amount of compression occurring in the signal. In other words, how well is the speaker tracking the increases in output demanded by the signal input? In the case of the 3X12 subwoofer as presented here we can see that it tracks the signal quite well until asked for roughly 110dB over most of its upper range. At that point it exhibits just 1 to 1.5dB of compression right at the vent tuning down below 20Hz. The next 5dB increase causes more compression of the output in the deep bass from 14-22Hz where it is now compressing by up to 5dB. The bandwidth above 25Hz still exhibits less than 1dB of compression though. Increasing the output demand from the 3X12 another full 5dB to a level that would produce near 120dB over a large part of the bandwidth finally puts it into severe compression in the deep bass where the output is being compressed by 5-10dB near the vent tuning. The upper bass is also starting to see a bit of compression by this point. Again it is worth noting that the 3X12 did not act stressed or distorted at all while this was occurring, so its protection circuits are operating very well. 

 

XTZ Sound 3X12: CEA2010 2 Meter Ground-plane RMS Results

CEA2010 Results

The CEA2010 maximum-distortion-limited-short-term output results for the XTZ Sound 3X12 are excellent and further cement that this is a serious bass system. The 3X12 manages a passing output of 97dB way down in the depths at 12.5Hz which is significantly below its intended operational range. Moving up to the 16Hz band the port and driver stop fighting each other and the system cranks out a bit over 106dB which is impressive. At 20Hz the 3X12 produces over 110dB with a passing result of 111.5dB and the output only continues to grow from there. At the 40Hz bands and higher, the 3X12 starts producing in the range of 122-123dB, which is very loud. This performance further solidifies the 3X12 as one of the most powerful subwoofers that Audioholics has ever tested. Also interesting is the fact that the 3X12 just stopped getting louder in the majority of the frequency bands rather than approaching the distortion thresholds at all. Even down at the 12.5Hz and 16Hz bands the output stopped right near the point that the distortion thresholds were met. This is another indicator of how well-behaved and sonically clean the 3X12 is. It appears that someone on the engineering and development teams at XTZ Sound spent a lot of time dialing the 3X12 in.

XTZ Cinema Series 3X12 Subwoofer Conclusion

I enjoyed my time listening to the 3X12. Since this was my first experience with a product from XTZ Sound, I perhaps put a bit more scrutiny on the 3X12 than I might have if it had instead been a brand that I have more familiarity with. As soon as I had a chance to really get into the nuts and bolts of the 3X12 I could tell this was a serious product from a highly capable speaker company. The construction quality and finishing is very good and the components are high quality and very well matched to each other. Upon firing it up in my listening room it quickly became apparent that the 3X12 possesses the sort of dynamic range and deep bass headroom that smaller units can only dream of. Bass heavy electronic music was effortless. Action movies were thunderous and room quaking. The lowest registers of high quality 2-channel recordings were reproduced with honesty and neutrality, just as it should be. By the time I got around to capturing the 3X12’s performance metrics during the outdoor measurements session, I was confident it would produce an excellent set of data simply based upon what I’d been hearing at home. The 3X12 did just that producing a textbook set of vented sub measurements. About the only negative thing I have to say about the 3X12 is the same complaint that applies to all big subs…It is BIG! You will need a few friends to help move the 3X12.

I never really looked at the price of the 3X12 until I was putting this article together. For some reason I had a figure of $3,900 in my head and did not question it at all because that type of sticker seemed entirely in line with the product quality. Then I did a bit of fact checking and learned that the 3X12 is in fact $2,500! Sure that is still a significant sum of money for most, but it performs nearly on par with the RBH SX-1212/R I reviewed last year, which to date is the most powerful subwoofer ever reviewed by Audioholics. The XTZ 3X12 performed very similarly to the big RBH in both the measurements and listening sessions yet you can purchase a pair of the 3X12 for the price of one SX-1212/R. This makes the XTZ Sound 3X12 a killer deal as far as subwoofer systems go. If you are in the market for a big boy sub the 3X12 should definitely be on your short list. XTZ Sound says their design goals are “To provide the optimal relation between price, performance and quality on the market”. That is a lofty set of goals, which the 3X12 was clearly designed to meet and succeeded. Highly recommended.

XTZ’s 3X12 subwoofer flexed its considerable muscle and earned the Audioholics Bassaholic Extreme Room rating. It is one of the few single unit sub systems able to do so. The Extreme Room rating indicates that this sub is recommended for maintaining adequate headroom in rooms or spaces of 5,000 cubic feet or more and/or for users who tend towards higher volume playback of material. For further information in how we make these recommendations see the full article here.

See: Audioholics Subwoofer Room Size Rating Protocol

 

XTZ Sound 3X12 Review

XTZSound.com
MSRP: $2,500

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Build Quality
Ergonomics & Usability
Features
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value