The Absolute Sound magazine (USA) has published their annual “Buyer’s Guide” for the year 2017. In this issue you can find capsule reviews of the products that the editors most highly recommend. The Model XB and Model X Diamond proudly amongst them.

 

Estelon XB
The Estelon XB is all about style—both the aesthetic and musical variety. The speaker, like all Estelons, has one of the most sensuous silhouettes on the market. But the XB also features resolution so extraordinary, timbres so richly fleshed-out, and imaging so stellar that it can take the listener beyond engagement with the music to engagement with the hearts, minds, and style of the players behind the music. /…/Alan Taffel sums up the Estelon XB as a rare component that forges a rare listener connection. (reviewed in issue 255)
Read the full review by Alan Taffel here.

 

 

Estelon X Diamond
The result is a speaker that disappears—both in a seamless, top-to-bottom sense and in a physical one—the way certain omnis and line arrays do, creating a wholly different acoustic within the acoustic of your listening room with little-to-no sense that music and ambience are “coming from” a speaker. Highly transparent and detailed (ceramic drivers have never wanted for resolution), with exceptionally fast, tight, well-resolved, and deep-reaching bass and, as noted, the best treble this side of a ribbon (with a better disappearing act than most beryllium/titanium/etc. tweeters), the X Diamond contends manfully for JV’s large, fullrange, dynamic-loudspeaker Palme d’Or. (reviewed in issue 228)
Read the full review by Jonathan Valin here.