Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsCerwin-Vera has one of the best Sound, Build Quality & Price Value combinations in today’s market
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2017
The Unpacking:
The cabinet quality and speaker quality is unmatched at this price range compared to other brands. After receiving the XLS 6C yesterday, I first removed the high quality metal grills (No cheap fabric or plastic like other companies use) to inspect the tweeter and woofer quality. Both looked well made from the outside. I removed the Tweeter and was very impressed with the very large driver motor enclosure kept cool with Ferro Fluid. Many other speaker companies cut costs on the tweeter and install cheaply made tweeters in this price range. I then removed one of the woofers and again was very impressed with the large driver, magnet, housing and build quality of the speaker. The inside of the cabinet was well lined with insulation and the frequency crossover looked like it was high quality.
Sound Quality:
My Pioneer A/V receiver has MCACC which basically syncs all your 7.1 speakers to the same volume, equation frequency, distance, etc., from your main listening position. My Left and Right speakers are 17 year old Cerwin-Vega E310. Over the years I have listened to many speakers and have never had the urge to replace them. They still sound fantastic. However, I have tried several other company’s center cannels and never got the seamless sound from left to center to right speaker. As actor’s voices in a movie scene travel from left to right, their voice should sound exactly the same moving from left speaker to center speaker to right speaker. (The Revenant has several scenes like this). The Cerwin-Vega E310’s always sounded clearer had more detail than the other company’s more expensive center channels that I tried. What a difference it made when hooking up the XLS 6C. All three speakers (L, C, R) worked seamlessly together like it was one speaker. I ended up spending hours watching movie scenes and listening to 5.1 music. I could clearly make out what the actors were saying even with the very loud background noise in Suicide Squad and other movies that are normally difficult to hear the dialog while the world is being destroyed in the background.
In Summary:
The Cerwin-Vega XLS line has been out for many years now and you hardly see any buzz on the internet anymore about the Cerwin-Vegas home speaker lineup. Well, I can tell you that the Cerwin-Vega home line of speakers are still one of the best sounding and best values in today’s vast market of speaker companies. I attended the 2016 RMAF (Rocky Mountain Audio Fest) in Denver and listened to many rooms of speaker configurations with prices up to $100,000 a pair. While the build quality of these speakers may last several centuries, the sound is just not that much better to justify some of those crazy prices. To my ears, Cerwin-Vera has one of the best Sound, Build Quality & Price Value combinations in today’s market.
