Fluance XLBP Wide Dispersion Bipolar Surround Sound Speakers Arrive for Review

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Hot on the heels of our review of the Fluance’s excellent XL7F floor standing loudspeakers, I received a pair of the company’s XLBP surround sound speakers.  The XLBPs are a two-way, four driver, ported, bipolar surround speaker with dual 1 inch neodymium balanced done tweeters.  The woofer is a 5″ polymer treated with butyl rubber surrounds.  There are dual bass reflex ports on each face of the surround speaker.  Together, the system’s frequency response is rated from 60Hz – 20kHz.

My review set arrived in the same beautiful mahogany veneer as the XL7F tower speakers.  All of the things I noted in my unboxing article on the XL7Fs held true with the XLBP surround speakers.  The shipment arrived in typical condition with a few dings.  The XLBPs are double-boxed, which helps protect the speakers from any punctures that may happen to the outside layer.

The XLBPs arrived in typical shipping condition. The outer box was distressed with some small tears.
To protect the shipment, Fluance double-boxes the XLBPs.
An inner-styrofoam padding further guarantees that any punctures won’t penetrate to the  speakers themselves.

 

The veneer finish is excellent.  There are no manufacturing gaps or evidence of sloppiness.  The surrounds have good weight and heft.
As with the XL7Fs, the veneer finish was beautiful and impeccably assembled

The rear of the speakers have supplied brackets for wall mounting.  No other hardware was included. You will simply choose your mounting technique if choice if you decide to wall-mount these speakers.  As with anything heavy being hung on a wall, you should try and stud-mount these or use mounting hardware that is rated to support the weight of the speakers.

The rear of the XLBPs feature pre-installed hooks for hanging the speakers flush to a wall.

The front grilles are attached by a reverse peg system.  Instead of the grilles sporting cheap plastic pegs that can snap off, the front face of the XLBPs features metal pegs that then slide into female receptacles on the grille covers.  If you aren’t going to use magnetic grilles then this is my preferred method for designing the grille face.

At first glance, the XLBPs appear to have the same attention to build quality and detail as the XL7Fs. I’m looking forward to connecting these up soon.