The XTZ A100-D3 - Avoid or not?

[Anonymous]

Interesting.

The tonewinner dot com site (chinese) has images of product which looks very similar to XTZ/AA. They also have specs which would match.

Min order 300

Bet we could get them for less than a ton each

Maybe the Dragons Den guys would be up for it

Mi info is: Both are built in the same fabric in china by a chinese company called Tonewinner. They use the same boxes, but not sure on the insides. This is what they say on lots of swedish forums. Don´t take it as gospel though.

 

[Anonymous]

Goes to show the amount of seriously gilded lillies that goes into (some) marketing and promotion.

Get a chinese product....make it out to be your own....stick what you like on the front... da de da de da

"You know it makes sense Rodney"!

 

[the record spot]

I think the XTZ guys have some assembly at their end in Sweden, they certainly come up with the designs and specifications, so differences with AA aren't unreasonable to assume.

I don't think it's quite so simple as to say it's taking the Tonewinner "product" and simply sticking a badge on the front, else quite a few western companies have rather a lot to answer for given the quantity using Chinese manufacturing services currently...!

 

[Anonymous]

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

 

[moonfly]

I'll have to make sure I keep an eye on this thread (not sure how youtrack threaqds on WHF, it doesnt seem possible). My only issue is that I don thave the luxury of 2 systems, and have to use my HT for music listening as well. This means that when I add a matching centre, I would have a difficult decision to make if I only had a 2 channel power amp. Shame XTZ dont do a 3 channel version.

 

[Anonymous]

Further rooting around reveals various sources which suggest the XTZ is an enhanced product based on a universal chassis (but sure as eggs are eggs I'm not qualified to say).

The general reviews also suggest that it is top notch and can only be bettered by spending shed loads more.

It would be good to see a review by our friends at WHF

I think the XTZ guys have some assembly at their end in Sweden, they certainly come up with the designs and specifications, so differences with AA aren't unreasonable to assume.

I don't think it's quite so simple as to say it's taking the Tonewinner "product" and simply sticking a badge on the front, else quite a few western companies have rather a lot to answer for given the quantity using Chinese manufacturing services currently...!

 

[the record spot]

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

I looked at the Tonewinner site at lunchtime and there is one amp with a similar shell, but fewer fascia buttons. It does have a similar spec, but not identical. I take your point though, but think of XTZ, perhaps like companies such as Trichord or Heart who in the late 90s and early 2000s took respective Pioneer and Marantz players, modded the internals and sold them on the market under their own (i.e. Trichord Research or Heart) logos.

Here you have - as XTZ say on their own site - some products they design inhouse, with some assembly (perhaps the internal circuitry?) done in Sweden and the remainder being carried out in China.

Perhaps it would be good if one of the Audio Sanctum team or (even) the XTZ people themselves might drop by (he says, in hope!) - it'd be interesting to have their comments. Love their approach and ethos though.

 

[Anonymous]

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

I looked at the Tonewinner site at lunchtime and there is one amp with a similar shell, but fewer fascia buttons. It does have a similar spec, but not identical. I take your point though, but think of XTZ, perhaps like companies such as Trichord or Heart who in the late 90s and early 2000s took respective Pioneer and Marantz players, modded the internals and sold them on the market under their own (i.e. Trichord Research or Heart) logos.

Here you have - as XTZ say on their own site - some products they design inhouse, with some assembly (perhaps the internal circuitry?) done in Sweden and the remainder being carried out in China.

Perhaps it would be good if one of the Audio Sanctum team or (even) the XTZ people themselves might drop by (he says, in hope!) - it'd be interesting to have their comments. Love their approach and ethos though.

i just may be able to help here, leave it with me

 

[moonfly]

I might be able to get Rikard from XTZ to chip in, he's generally pretty good and Ive spent a bit of time chatting with him about a centre speaker I want to build using their kit.

 

[Anonymous]

I might be able to get Rikard from XTZ to chip in, he's generally pretty good and Ive spent a bit of time chatting with him about a centre speaker I want to build using their kit.

i've just pm'd him

 

[Anonymous]

Yes it does look as if sharing a chassis and case is a way of keeping costs down. I guess this is similar to Ford and Seat having an almost identical people carrier.

As posted before the amp has received pretty glowing reviews from a basic google search and WHF gave the CD player a 4* review.

Advanced Acoustics are obviously using tonewinner too but WHF did not like their amp giving it a 2*

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

I looked at the Tonewinner site at lunchtime and there is one amp with a similar shell, but fewer fascia buttons. It does have a similar spec, but not identical. I take your point though, but think of XTZ, perhaps like companies such as Trichord or Heart who in the late 90s and early 2000s took respective Pioneer and Marantz players, modded the internals and sold them on the market under their own (i.e. Trichord Research or Heart) logos.

Here you have - as XTZ say on their own site - some products they design inhouse, with some assembly (perhaps the internal circuitry?) done in Sweden and the remainder being carried out in China.

Perhaps it would be good if one of the Audio Sanctum team or (even) the XTZ people themselves might drop by (he says, in hope!) - it'd be interesting to have their comments. Love their approach and ethos though.

 

[Anonymous]

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

I looked at the Tonewinner site at lunchtime and there is one amp with a similar shell, but fewer fascia buttons. It does have a similar spec, but not identical. I take your point though, but think of XTZ, perhaps like companies such as Trichord or Heart who in the late 90s and early 2000s took respective Pioneer and Marantz players, modded the internals and sold them on the market under their own (i.e. Trichord Research or Heart) logos.

Here you have - as XTZ say on their own site - some products they design inhouse, with some assembly (perhaps the internal circuitry?) done in Sweden and the remainder being carried out in China.

Perhaps it would be good if one of the Audio Sanctum team or (even) the XTZ people themselves might drop by (he says, in hope!) - it'd be interesting to have their comments. Love their approach and ethos though.

 

[Anonymous]

Ooops..the reply has gone awol

 

[Anonymous]

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

I looked at the Tonewinner site at lunchtime and there is one amp with a similar shell, but fewer fascia buttons. It does have a similar spec, but not identical. I take your point though, but think of XTZ, perhaps like companies such as Trichord or Heart who in the late 90s and early 2000s took respective Pioneer and Marantz players, modded the internals and sold them on the market under their own (i.e. Trichord Research or Heart) logos.

Here you have - as XTZ say on their own site - some products they design inhouse, with some assembly (perhaps the internal circuitry?) done in Sweden and the remainder being carried out in China.

Perhaps it would be good if one of the Audio Sanctum team or (even) the XTZ people themselves might drop by (he says, in hope!) - it'd be interesting to have their comments. Love their approach and ethos though.

Hi guys! Got a tip from a member and we would of course like to help clarify things. I will be happy to answer any questions you might have about our products. I haven´t yet had the time to read through all of this thread, but I could at least reply to the last question:

Yes, our amps are assembled by Tonewinner, and we have done much of the development work in Sweden, especially the onboard AD1955 DAC, re-designed the pre amp circuitry, power supply, and heavily modified the output stages themselves for higher bandwidth, improved slew rate and not the least increased phase margin to make sure they can handle any kind of tough load conditions without bursting into oscillation etc. All together I like to think there is no better amp around for the money. The direct sales approach helps keep consumer prices down a lot, which is certainly not liked by everybody in the business. To offer better ways for the customer to really put our products to the test we always include Buy & Try, where you can try the products in your home for three weeks. In case you wouldn´t want to keep them, simply send it back to us for a full refund, except the return shipping fee - basically a three week home demo for the cost of return shipping. We consider this way much more honest than listening for an hour or so in a noisy shop environment, where the only thing you can really be sure of is that it will never sound the same at home. Besides, it takes some time to truly evaluate hifi products.

Cheers!



/Rikard

 

[Anonymous]

Cheers for clearing that up, keep up the good work

The speakers are brilliant for the money

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input Rikard

 

[chris hollands]

I was mightily impressed with the looks of the speakers, looked great value .

 

[Anonymous]

I had my tongue firmly in cheek

however going to to the tonewinner site there is an amp which looks identical to the XTZ and has very similar spec except it sports the "winner" badge.

Maybe I'm too cynical

I looked at the Tonewinner site at lunchtime and there is one amp with a similar shell, but fewer fascia buttons. It does have a similar spec, but not identical. I take your point though, but think of XTZ, perhaps like companies such as Trichord or Heart who in the late 90s and early 2000s took respective Pioneer and Marantz players, modded the internals and sold them on the market under their own (i.e. Trichord Research or Heart) logos.

Here you have - as XTZ say on their own site - some products they design inhouse, with some assembly (perhaps the internal circuitry?) done in Sweden and the remainder being carried out in China.

Perhaps it would be good if one of the Audio Sanctum team or (even) the XTZ people themselves might drop by (he says, in hope!) - it'd be interesting to have their comments. Love their approach and ethos though.

Hi guys! Got a tip from a member and we would of course like to help clarify things. I will be happy to answer any questions you might have about our products. I haven´t yet had the time to read through all of this thread, but I could at least reply to the last question:

Yes, our amps are assembled by Tonewinner, and we have done much of the development work in Sweden, especially the onboard AD1955 DAC, re-designed the pre amp circuitry, power supply, and heavily modified the output stages themselves for higher bandwidth, improved slew rate and not the least increased phase margin to make sure they can handle any kind of tough load conditions without bursting into oscillation etc. All together I like to think there is no better amp around for the money. The direct sales approach helps keep consumer prices down a lot, which is certainly not liked by everybody in the business. To offer better ways for the customer to really put our products to the test we always include Buy & Try, where you can try the products in your home for three weeks. In case you wouldn´t want to keep them, simply send it back to us for a full refund, except the return shipping fee - basically a three week home demo for the cost of return shipping. We consider this way much more honest than listening for an hour or so in a noisy shop environment, where the only thing you can really be sure of is that it will never sound the same at home. Besides, it takes some time to truly evaluate hifi products.

Cheers!



/Rikard

cheers rikard, don't be a stranger here, i have a feeling there will be many people interested in XTZ's products

 

[the record spot]

For sure Max, thanks for posting Rikard - appreciate the time taken and the detail in the reply too.

 

[Anonymous]

Hello, just thought we should make ourselves present considering all the chatter on the forum regarding XTZ and Audio Sanctum. If anyone has any questions then we or Rikard will do our best to answer them. Just wanted to clarify a few things. We do indeed have a landline number and an address which can be visited, where our demo facilities are. As for the fact there have been comments of little reviews, there have been reviews in both magazines and on other forums, i'm not sure whether i can mention these so to keep the peace i won't but they are there if you wish to find them. All of these reviews have been extremely positive. If someone with experience on this forum would be interested in doing a review of the amp in question and posting their thoughts regarding it then we would be more than happy to send a demo unit out to them.

Just need to spend a litte time getting to know the forum rules so i don't upset anyone. We are active on other forums too but every forum has different rules on what manufacturers and dealers can and can not say so for the moment we will just answer direct questions

 

[the record spot]

Sadly, I'm no professional reviewer. Still, if you need somebody to give you a real world "in the home" perspective... *cough* *hint* *etc*

 

[DIB]

anyway i've changed my mind, my marantz is more than good enough for me, a fella has to watch that upgraditis

Non thread related but Max just to reitterate what a good deal you got from RS on your PM7001, I've just sold my PM7001 for just over double what you paid for yours.

So should the aforementioned upgraditis rear its ugly head again you'll be in a nice position for starters

.

 

[Anonymous]

Great to have better phone facilities and the new demo room looks

. Mansfield is about 3.5 hours for me though.

Hoping that WHF can sqeeze in a full review and/or a forum member able to do an assessment. Once the necessary is in place I would look forward to trialling the XTZ.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi there fellas.

Surfing around I found this thread. I'm in search of an integrated amp these days, and, among others, I have tried the XTZ A100D3 at home for a couple of days (I'm currently demoing a Vincent SV-236MK and a Naim Nait XS).

Don't be fooled guys, there is no way you can find this sound and these features unless you spend considerably bigger money. The build quality is out of this world (for the money) and the sound is amazing. Total control, really tight low end and highs that won't hiss no matter where the volume is. I also found the built-in dac really decent and the overall sound to be that of a really more expensive amp. It managed to drive my difficult speakers with ease.

Now, what I didn't find particularly effective is that Class A thing. The only thing that happens when you switch to class A is the amp running hot within minutes. I tried hard to hear a difference, but didn't manage to, at least not within the two days I had it home.

One thing I did miss was a second set of speaker inputs to enable biwire. But that's minor I suppose if you take a look at the price again.

I will most probably not buy it since I decided to go up in money for my amp, but if my limit was 1000 euros there would not be a second thought about which amp to buy.

Hope that helps

 

[Anonymous]

anyway i've changed my mind, my marantz is more than good enough for me, a fella has to watch that upgraditis

Non thread related but Max just to reitterate what a good deal you got from RS on your PM7001, I've just sold my PM7001 for just over double what you paid for yours.

So should the aforementioned upgraditis rear its ugly head again you'll be in a nice position for starters

.

hey DIB i just seen this, that's good to know, cheers