XLH 1812 horn loudspeaker system

"Be careful what you wish for" was never truer when I received a call from a freight company, advising me that I had a shipment of 4 palletized crates weighing 1500 pounds! With the help of friends and a truck with a lift-gate, we unloaded, uncrated and shlepped the 1812's inside the house. The picture I had seen many months previous had not prepared me for the idea that each horn and manifold required its own separate large crate.

Each speaker contains a large ported enclosure containing a JBLPro 2241 18-inch woofer crossed over to dual 6-inch cone drivers at 250 Hz in a separate sub-enclosure. A 31 x 31-inch bi-radial 2366A-like horn is perched (literally) on top, driven by a 2446 2-inch throat compression driver which handles the frequencies from 1250 Hz to its natural roll-off at about 15 kHz. A "slot" super tweeter, the JBL 2405 comes in at 13,000 Hz. Taken in sum, the measured anechoic frequency response is 30 to 27,000 Hz, down 10dB at each extreme.

Once inside the listening room these 11 cubic foot monsters had to have the horn bracket mounted on top and the horn and drivers attached. The 2446 compression drivers alone weigh 36 pounds each. Mr. Ping Gong of AAA-Audio, XLH's U.S. Importer, offered to fly in from Boston to help set them up. I gladly accepted.

He arrived with his own tools and the sure knowledge of having done this several times before. Two hours labor saw the job done. While we worked we got to know each other, which made the ensuing listening that much more pleasurable. This is, for the most part, a solitary hobby and the enjoyment, like most things in life, is increased when shared. I learned a good deal about the Chinese electronics industry and the people who work daily at it. For his part, Ping was eager to hear about the audio DIY community that exists apart from the C.E.S./Stereophile mainstream. Funny how what brought us together, the 1812 speakers, exist where the two sides meet: pro-sound JBL drivers that DIY'ers love with all their J.B. Lansing heritage but presented in beautifully crafted Twenty-First Century cabinets.

I've lived with the 1812s for more than four months now; but the listening that Ping and I enjoyed that day was certainly the most important in my review process. The wonderful KR Audio VA 340 amplifier was in residence then along with my Audio Note Kit One. Ping had always heard his speakers with higher- powered solid- state amplification and was amazed at what 20 and 8 tube watts, respectively, did for the sound. I had recently completed sound-conditioning for my listening room (detailed in a previous column) and that effort, combined with the 300BXLS tubes in the KR amp, led Ping to remark that "this was the best reproduced sound he had ever heard". We listened all afternoon and into the evening to Allison Krause and Union Station, Sonny Rollins, Count Basie, Taj Mahal, and the Vivaldi Flute Concerto In D.