"Hello beautiful" is what I found myself thinking, as I unpacked the Xavian Ambra Esclusiva speakers from their carton. I am a fan of immaculately crafted furniture, and if any loudspeaker can claim to have cabinets that qualify as finely crafted furniture, the Ambra Esclusivas surely can. After having reviewed hundreds of speakers with cabinets made out of MDF, HDF, aluminum, stainless steel, and even plastic composites, it was refreshing to see a pair of speakers superbly crafted out of durable solid oak and stained in a hue that Xavian calls Cognac Oak, which truly brings out the beautiful wood grain. This is craftsmanship that, sadly, is a reflection of an age gone by.
The attention to detail extends to the softly rounded edges and corners, which is not only aesthetic candy for the eyes, but also serves to minimize diffraction at the baffle edges. These speakers measures 38.6 cm height by 23 cm width and 27.6cm depth. Despite these relatively compact dimensions, each speaker weights in at a hefty 12 kilograms, a reflection of solid build quality.
The review pair I received was accompanied by matching stands that are also made out of solid oak, and which are finished with the same finesse as the speakers themselves. These stands are bolted to the speakers using included hardware and an Allen Key that is also provided. This enhances the stability and safety aspect of these speakers. The grills are attached magnetically. The audition for this review was conducted without the grills. I thought to myself; if these speaker sound even close to as good as they look, this is going to be one very interesting review.
Unlike most speaker manufacturers whose business model is based on outsourcing, most of the speaker components and parts Xavian prefers to manufacture in house, most of what goes into their speakers. This allows them to maintain an iron grip on quality control and permits them to design speakers exactly as they would like, rather than having to compromise by tweaking designs to accommodate parts that are sourced from elsewhere. The driver units are made by AudioBarletta, a sister company based in Italy.
I did a bit of exploration and found that the story of Roberto Barletta, the man behind these speakers, is as fascinating as the speakers themselves. Born in Torino, Italy, to a family of musicians, Roberto started dabbling in audio by building his own sound system at the age of 14. Then in the mid 1990s at the age of 23, he decided to move to Prague to set up a facility to build his own speakers, despite the fact that he did not speak Czech at all. After a frustrating period of trying to get fourteen different companies to produce wooden baffle-boards to his specifications, he decided to set up his own cabinet making facility so that he could control the whole process and get exactly what he wanted. His ethos has always been to create loudspeakers that had enduring value and beauty to the extent that they could even be considered heirloom quality.
Over the next 24 years, this no-compromise, reach for the stars attitude, helped Roberto to build up a loyal cliental base of thousands of audiophiles across many continents. In fact he has experienced a surprising degree of success in South Korea, where the love of classical music is ubiquitous.
Eschewing traditional speaker cabinet materials like MDF and plywood, Xavian's solid wood cabinets are more akin to fine musical instruments, like a piano or a violin where the quality of the wood plays a big part in determining the quality of the sound. Think about it; when was the last time you encountered a piano or a violin from a world-renowned manufacturer that was made from MDF or plywood?
The attention to detail extends to the crossovers inside every Xavian speaker, which feature all "Phase Zero" designs, and equipped with very high quality Mundorf and Jantzen components to help the various driver units not only perform at their optimum levels, but also ensure that they work together coherently and cohesively.
The Ambra Esclusiva represents an evolution from the original Ambra. The size has not changed all that much, but a lot of other things have evolved. The baffle of the Ambra Esclusiva is made out of solid oak, which is more durable than the mosaic walnut wood used by the original Ambra. The 2.9 cm soft dome tweeter, which sports a ceramic magnet, is the same as the original Ambra and is mounted on a sound pipe. The 17.5 cm woofer is aided by a slotted bass reflex tuned port with rounded edges to minimize chuffing.
The interior surface of the speaker cabinet is damped with a combination of bituminous sheets, textile, and foam. The woofer of the Ambra Esclusiva has a larger coil than its predecessor, and is wound with flat aluminum wire with a copper ring to help achieve greater precision. The cone material is an impregnated paper membrane.
Specification-wise, the Ambra Esclusiva has a nominal impedance of 8 ohms, and claims to deliver a frequency response of 42Hz to 20kHz plus or minus 3 dB. Sensitivity is 88 dB and crossover frequency is 2500Hz. Xavian recommends driving the Ambra Esclusiva with 30- to 150-watts of amplifier power.
I began the audition after around 50 hours of burn-in, using the Roon Nucleus+ as a source, and setting the Roon's excellent upscaling engine to upsample all Redbook signals to 24-bits/192kHz before converting it to analog through the splendid Calyx Femto DAC. Most of the music used for the audition was from Blue Coast Music, and Chesky Records. I used the Pass Labs XA100.8 monoblocks to drive the Ambra Esclusiva through Cardas Clear Beyond speaker cables.
Right out of the gate, the Ambra Esclusiva sonically disappeared from the room, and left me with a big and bold sound stage that I would have expected to hear from a much large speaker. I was particularly surprised by its prodigious bass capabilities, given its relatively modest sized woofers. However what really caught my attention was the way the Ambra Esclusiva got its woofer and tweeter to dance together in such near perfect harmony. In my 36 years of reviewing audiophile gear, the 2-way bookshelf speaker that truly took my breath away in this regard was the Merlin Music TSM, Black Magic version. Since the passing of Bobby Palkovich, I had not heard any two-way bookshelf speaker match his TSM Black Magic with regard to seamless integration of woofer and tweeter. To my ears, the Ambra Esclusiva is the closest that any two-way speaker that I have heard, has come to the TSM Black Magic, and that is saying a lot!
I began the audition with the track "Across the Borderline" featuring Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, James Luther Dickinson, and City folk. This track has been incredibly well recorded by the inimitable Cookie Marenco in her own studio, and released on her Blue Coast Music label in high resolution WAV, FLAC, DSD, and MQA. The name of the album is Borderline City Folk Live in the Studio. Through the Ambra Esclusiva Speakers, the superb synergistic vocal harmonies came through with an incredible amount of presence and emotion. The guitar strums are very delicate and silky smooth with great definition.
Next up was the album Blue Coast Collection 4 and the track "Close to the Soul" by Keith Greeninger. The Ambra Esclusiva truly brings out the distinctive gravelly texture of Keith's voice, and showcases his guitar prowess incredibly well. The dynamic contrast is top notch, and the three dimensional imaging is eerily real. From the same album I then listened to Jenna Mammina and John Burr's version of Joni Mitchell's evergreen hit, "For Free". Jenna has a very sweet and expressive voice, and through the Ambra Esclusiva, the emotion-laden lyrics came through crystal clear.
The next track on this audition was "Stomping at the Savoy" by Johnny Frigo and John & Bucky Pizzarelli on the Chesky Label album Live from Studio 'A' in New York City. This is a very lively track with a lot of instruments and a very elaborate arrangement. In many speakers, this track is reproduced in a very confusing way. Not so with the Ambra Esclusiva, where every instrument was reproduced with excellent clarity and sound stage was deep and wide. Percussions in particular were reproduced in a crisp and well defined manner with very accurate attack and decay.
I finished off the audition with "Willow Weep for Me" on FIM's Happy Coat album by the Shota Osabe Piano Trio featuring Shota on the piano, Ray Brown on bass, and Harold Jones on the drums. This is a very challenging track for most compact two-way bookshelf speakers because of the deep and very powerful bass it contains. Here the Ambra Esclusiva performed better than most of its ilk in this price category, with bass that is quite tuneful if not as deep as I would like. On this track, the addition of my two JL Audio F112 sub woofers made a very noticeable difference on the frequencies below 50Hz.
What I like about the Ambra Esclusiva is that it is designed to deliver sound that is well within its capabilities without overreaching. In this regard, a good analogy would be to compare it to Olympic diving, which is one of my favorite Olympic sports. At every Olympics, you have divers that are totally cognizant of their capabilities and who choose routines that match those capabilities. Then you have overly ambitious divers who go for a degree of difficulty that is obviously beyond their capabilities and, in their quest to garner higher marks process, they commit clearly perceptible errors in their routine.
Given the reaction of the audience at the Olympics, divers who choose programs and routines that are more modest and well within their abilities, and execute them to perfection, are a lot better appreciated and score higher marks than divers who shoot for the moon and commit errors in the process. The Ambra Esclusiva is designed to perform well within its capabilities given its size, price point and design limitations. The result is sound that is relaxed, effortless and with minimum listener fatigue.
There are speakers in this price range that will deliver more detail in the upper frequencies, and deeper more powerful bass, but you will be hard pressed to find another bookshelf speaker that delivers the midrange that is so musical, organic, rich and full as the Ambra Esclusiva. As a wise audiophile once said, "If you don't get the midrange right, then nothing else matters." I could not agree more with this truism. I am even tempted to say that the midrange of the Ambra Esclusiva has many of the qualities of the legendary midrange that you hear from Quad Speakers.
The Ambra Esclusiva tends to soften transients a wee bit, lending a mellow and pleasing hue to the sound. This is a speaker that lends more color and texture to the sound than most speakers in this price range. They may not be the ultimate in nuance retrieval, but then, they more than make up for it by their sheer musicality.
The bass that the Ambra Esclusiva delivers is tuneful and taut, which will satisfy the vast majority of audiophiles, but if your listening repertoire consists mainly of music dominated by pipe organ, cello, and double bass renditions, you might consider adding one or preferably two subwoofers, so that you can not only hear the sub-50Hz notes, but feel them in your bones. I did try out the Ambra Esclusiva with a pair of JL Audio Fathom F112 subs and the bottom end did sound a lot more meaty and solid with music that contained a lot of sub 50Hz information. However with most other music, I was quite satisfied listening with the Ambra Esclusiva without any subwoofers.
If you are in the market for a pair of bookshelf speakers that are a treat for your eyes as much as it is for your ears, which are exquisitely crafted and solidly built to last a lifetime, and which, with proper care, can be left to your children to enjoy, after you have left for that great audition room in the sky, you owe it to yourself to give the Xavian Ambra Esclusiva a careful audition.
The dealer for Xavian is Noam Bronstein of Stereo Untypical, based in Waterford, Ontario, Canada. Noam markets, demonstrates, and sells Xavian product to Canadian consumers. Xavian is in the process of appointing new dealers in the US, to serve the American Market.
Ambra Esclusiva Loudspeakers
Retail: $4595 (speakers), $1295 (stands) Canadian MSRP
Retail: $3695 (speakers), $1045 (stands) US MSRP
XAVIAN ELECTRONICS s.r.o.
Za Mlýnem 114
253 01 Hostivice – Prague
Czech republic
+420.734.528.189
Dealer for the US and Canada
Stereo Untypical
Box 912
Waterford, ON N0E 1Y0
Canada
416.726.7350
