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XLO Reference Type 5, Part 15

In April 1992, as a junior at UC Santa Cruz, I went downtown, and picked up Johnny Hates Jazz's Tall Stories . This album was and is so obscure, I do not know anyone else who has it. It was more mellow and laidback than their debut, and my favorite track was "Your Mistake."



In those days, The Absolute Sound was having difficulties, meeting deadlines. I did not receive my April 1992 edition until the end of that month. So I went home to San Francisco, to fetch it, and did like it. This was the first time I had seen a review of XLO's Reference Type 5 speaker cable. It was $100 for termination, plus $55 per linear foot. Thus, if you needed an 8-foot pair, that would set you back $980. As college kids, we could not afford 1 foot, let alone 8. Nevertheless, this was the stuff of dreams, something to strive for.

By Memorial Day 1992, my girlfriend ACS had finished her freshman year at UC Berkeley. Back then, you were only guaranteed housing for your freshman year. So she and some friends found an apartment in North Berkeley. She did not take any classes that summer; instead, she worked a few hours a week at Victoria's Secret.



To me, that summer of 1992 was when audio became an adventure. From my home in San Francisco, I took BART across the Bay, and met up with ACS. We went to The Audio Chamber, which were an XLO dealer. Most audiophiles did not know what to make of the Reference Type 5's matte green and light purple (some say lavender) colors. OTOH, ACS, perhaps under the influence of VS, loved those colors. She said they were like the "Easter colors" of that April 1992 TAS. When the green and purple were mixed, they did fade into a gray.



ACS shrugged, "If they're going to go this far, maybe they should do pink and white. That'll make them look fast and pretty!" We have never cut an XLO Reference Type 5 open, so we do not know what its internal construction is. Under the clear Teflon tape, you can see the individually-wrapped solid core 6N copper conductors. Or would you rather have your cables in pink and white?



Although we had gone to TAC to see the Audio Alchemy DAC (also reviewed in the April 1992 TAS) and PAC IDOS, it was the XLO Reference series, which I could not mentally shake. ACS and I took BART to S.F. (our hometown), and got off at the Embarcadero station. Something about the XLO's criss-crossed conductors reminded me of the streets of San Francisco.



If you keep walking north, you will come across Levi's Plaza. In those days, ACS did wear jeans. But on that day, she was wearing (forest, not matte) green tights/yoga pants, which did make me think about XLO. We kept going, and went to the iconic Tower Records on Jones and Columbus. I do not recall them ever having Johnny Hates Jazz's Tall Stories .



When we stopped at Aquatic Park, damn, I just could not stop thinking about XLO. I could not stop cold turkey, so the first thing I did was set aside the unaffordable Type 5 speaker cable. I then hemmed and hawed about the Type 1 (starting at $275) line-level interconnect. Then I came down to the Type 4 digital cable, whose relative affordability ($150) made me feel better. And, since I did not yet have a DAC, there was no need for a digital cable. And that was how I finally was able to stop thinking, at least temporarily, about XLO.



In December 1992, Stereophile did their own review of the XLO Reference Type 5. That once again piqued my interest, and caused me to dream about the future. Note that the Type 5 is directonal, so follow the signal-flow arrows. This is the amp end.



This is the speaker end. XLO leave it to you , to determine/designate which color is positive, which is negative. Note that, from the heatshrink wrap split to the base of the spade is about 6". Speaking of the spades, these are some of the smallest you will find. XLO's Roger Skoff used to say that that was intentional, because adding more mass to the spade only made it sound worse (he did not go into detail). XLO's spade was known not to be wide enough, to fit some binding posts' shafts (sounds kinky, but isn't).



There was no ambiguity; everyone agreed that the XLO Reference Type 5 was (and still is) one of the stiffest cables ever. When we finally got to handle a Reference Type 5, ACS reached behind her back, unhooked her bra, and slid it through the opening in her t-shirt. ACS' underwire VS bra was blue, not green or purple. Nevertheless, she held up both the bra and the Reference Type 5, and remarked about the latter, "This thing is so stiff, it's like rebar; or like they took an underwire, and made it thick!"

In summer of 1992, ACS was still only 18 years-old. But even then, she knew that, for all of the XLO Reference Type 5's physical, aesthetic, and ergonomic characteristics, sound qualities also mattered.

-Lummy The Loch Monster



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Topic - XLO Reference Type 5, Part 15 - Luminator 22:26:20 11/18/20 (1)

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