4315 vs XPL200 - Designer Comments
Quoting a complete post from Greg Timbers on 02/23/2006 (original here:
http://audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94921&postcount=12)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gtimbers
4315 vs XPL200
Giskard asked me to comment on this thread as I come from a position of knowing both speakers very well.
The 4315 is a very compact, high power 4 way studio monitor. It was designed around in-wall mounting although they are very rarely used that way. Its strong points are a very powerful and fast woofer (doesn't go real deep however) and a killer midbass unit. The LE5 is a little aggressive but quite lively. The good news here is that the VC alignment on the LE5 and the 2405 is nearly perfect so none of the combing that usually occurs with the 2405 used with horn drivers happens.
The 4315 requires that the HF and UHF L-Pads be turned down considerably below the "0" setting or the system is too bright. With that said, it is very dynamic, detailed and quite good tonally. It is still one of my favorite spaekers.
The XPL 200 has a killer midrange in the 091 or 093. The blend between the HF and UHF is really good as they are in the same plane and identical materials. The 2214H was chosen to give good bass extension and it does just that. Unfortunately compared to a 4" VC 2203, it doesn't have the kick or dynamics. The biggest weak link inthe XPL 200 is the mid bass unit. It uses a filled polypropylene cone with a vinyl surround. It is very smooth but it is too warm and "fluffy" sounding due to the poly collasping under drive. Another weak point is the LF/MF passive crossover topology. It was done to allow bi-amping with a simple toggle switch. The 4315 crossover uses a higher order crossover at that point and has a much more complicated switching circuit. That means money which I didn't have in the XPL.
I would only expect about 1 - 1.5 dB difference in 2.83v sensitivity in favor of the 4315. If both systems are adjusted to similar HF response (i.e. turn down the 4315 a little) and overall sensitivity I would expect the following:
The 4315 should be more dynamic and detailed below 800 Hz - 1000 Hz. The XPL200 should kick butt above that. The XPL will be considerably more 3-dimensional due to the narrower baffle and neoprene covering. It could be hard to choose between them as they are both quite nice but just different. Bi-amping the XPL really brings it to life by fixing the crossover problem and taking the LF inductor out of the path for the 2214, but a special drive slope is required to do the job correctly. The DX1 is ideal and was developed exactly for that purpose. The 4315 benefits substantially from bi-amping as well.
I'm pleased to see that both are still around and bringing pleasure to people.
