Electro-Voice Xp200

The little black box at the heart of System 200 - a crossover with "a little electronic magic" that made a stack of lightweight EV boxes sound like something much bigger.

Overview

The Xp200 is not a speaker, not an amplifier, and not a mixer. It is the controller of Electro-Voice's System 200 Modular Pro Audio line, and to understand it you have to know the two boxes it was built to drive. The System 200 had three parts: the Sx200, a full-range portable loudspeaker; the Sb120a (or its non-powered sibling, the Sb120), a bass module; and the Xp200, the outboard processor that tied them together. According to Electro-Voice's own System 200 literature, the package was pitched as "the best lightweight, compact sound system that modern technology can produce." The company framed it as the successor to its S-200, which it claimed had "set the standard for portable, lightweight speaker systems" a decade earlier. That's marketing copy, but it shows where the Xp200 sat in the lineup. It was the glue for a deliberately modular rig.

What the Xp200 does is more interesting than what a plain crossover does. EQ Magazine (March 1994, p.76) described the System 200 as the Sx200 loudspeaker, the Xp200 controller, and the powered Sb120a or non-powered Sb120 bass module, with only a quality power amplifier and mixer needed to complete it. The controller shaped and divided the signal so those boxes could do their best work, and EV built in some real cleverness to get there.

The headline feature is a low-frequency profile circuit. A conventional tone control just boosts bass. The Xp200 instead takes low frequencies in a sidechain, delays them slightly in time, and sums them back with the original direct signal. Per EV's documentation, overall bass output can go up by up to 12 dB. Because the delayed and direct signals combine, the relative levels of a musical fundamental and its harmonics change dynamically with the input. The company argued the effect is far more subtle than a simple bass boost, modifying timbre in a way that shifts continuously with the music. A variable low-frequency control lets the user tune the enhancement to different tastes and room acoustics. Whether it fully delivers on the "hear and feel" promise of the ad copy is a matter of taste.

The rest of the controller handles protection and routing. The mono-summed subwoofer output uses 24 dB-per-octave filters rolling off above 100 Hz and below 37 Hz, again for placement flexibility and infrasonic protection for the bass modules. This is the unglamorous work that lets a lightweight system survive a loud gig. It keeps the woofers from bottoming out and gives the sub its own filtered feed.

The controller was tuned for the boxes it was paired with, so they're worth a look. The Sx200 was a 300-watt, 12-inch, two-way design in a trapezoidal, arrayable, mountable enclosure, with response extending up past 20 kHz and sensitivity quoted at 101.5 dB. Its low end came from an EVM12S Pro-Line woofer and extended below 80 Hz. The powered Sb120a added a 400-watt amplifier and a 12-inch woofer in the same cabinet family, bringing the module to 34 pounds. EV's advertising claimed the Sx200 could put out more than 126 dB continuous - "more than double that of any comparable speaker," in the company's words - and that the whole System 200 could be carried in one hand. Treat those numbers as manufacturer claims rather than independent measurements.

The Xp200 is the least glamorous piece of that trio and probably the hardest to find today on its own. Collectors chasing System 200 gear tend to want the speakers, and the controller gets separated from its rack and forgotten. There is no reliable current market data for the Xp200 specifically, and no documented common-failure history. Its value is tied to the rest of the system, since a controller without an Sx200 and an Sb120a is a processor looking for a job. Buyers should expect to hunt for the full set, and should verify that a used unit's low-frequency and filter sections work, since those are the features that justify the box. Documentation on this one is thin.