Why You Can Trust CNET JVC EX-A10 review: JVC EX-A10
In a market crowded with look-alike, silver plastic home-theater-in-a-box systems (HTIBs), the sheer elegance of JVC's EX-A10 desktop stereo system will be an attractive option for many a bedroom, den, or office. Instead of the usual plastic or metal drivers, the JVC's woofers and tweeters are crafted from birch wood that's been soaked in sake. Does that make for the sonic equivalent of fine wine?
In a market crowded with look-alike, silver plastic home-theater-in-a-box systems (HTIBs), the sheer elegance of JVC's EX-A10 desktop stereo system will be an attractive option for some buyers' bedrooms, dens, or offices. The EX-A10 comprises two minicomponents--the matching 9.5-inch-wide A/V receiver and DVD player come decked out in real satin aluminum--and the speakers' beautifully finished solid cherry cabinets exude class. Pop off their black grilles and you'll see what makes the EX-A10 truly unique: instead of the usual plastic or metal drivers, the JVC's woofers and tweeters are crafted from birch wood that's been treated with sake, the Japanese rice wine. At 10.1 inches tall, the speakers are a tad larger than the average HTIB models, but the entire system could easily fit on a bookshelf or a desktop. The JVC EX-A10 sells for $1,000.
The EX-A10 is a fairly radical update of the first model to employ JVC's sake-soaked speaker design, 2004's EX-A1. First and foremost, the EX-A10's speakers employ larger two-way (woofer and tweeter) designs, and the system now boasts a more powerful A/V receiver and a separate DVD player. By contrast, the old model employed one-way (woofer-only) speakers and a less powerful combo receiver/player. Those are two key reasons that the new model almost doubles its predecessor's $550 list price.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The JVC EX-A10's single-disc mechanism plays a wide variety of optical media, including DVD video and DVD-Audio, as well as audio CDs and discs encoded with MP3 and WMA files. VCD, SVCD, JPEG picture discs, and DivX video discs are also supported, as are most common home-burned DVD and CD formats. The system provides two-channel decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS audio, and it includes a faux surround "3D-phonic" mode. Setup chores are minimal compared to those of surround-sound HTIBs; you'll probably have everything squared away in just a few minutes. Speaker hookup is a little unusual--each speaker gets two sets of wires, one for the tweeter and one for the woofer.
Operationally, the EX-A10 conforms to a "keep it simple" design strategy. The receiver and DVD player faceplates have just a few buttons, and they won't challenge the dexterity of even fumble-fingered users. We mostly liked the remote, which keeps nearly all of the most used buttons in a logical array near the top. It's just that you have to slide a three-position switch between DVD, Receiver, and TV settings to control those components--a minor kink in the EX-A10's ergonomic design.
As mentioned above, the 4.25-inch wood woofer and 0.75-inch tweeter are easily the most unique design features of the JVC EX-A10 system. The birch drivers not only look really cool, the designer claims the wood provides "an ideal combination of high sound propagation speed and high internal loss." JVC engineers experimented with many types of wood over a 20-year period, but birch wood had the best acoustic properties. Thus, thin sheets of birch are soaked in sake to allow them to be molded into woofers and tweeters.
While the EX-A10 is a stereo system, it has four Hybrid Digital Feedback Amplifiers: a pair of 30-watt amps and two 20-watt amps. The 30-watt amps drive the speakers' woofers, while the 20-watt amps drive the tweeters. This biamp approach is said to offer significant performance advantages over conventional single-amp operation.
The receiver's connectivity options are limited to a pair of analog and optical inputs (one of which is dedicated to the DVD player), as well as an RCA output for use with a powered subwoofer. There's a built-in AM/FM tuner, but unlike the $400 Onkyo CS-V720, the JVC is not XM ready. The DVD player has standard video output jacks (composite, S-Video, and progressive/component), but we were disappointed to find the DVD player lacked a HDMI output, which is quickly becoming standard issue on even bargain players.
The system's refined sound was well suited to straight dramatic films such as Good Night and Good Luck and Crash. The JVC EX-A10's home-theater skills are exceptional for a subwooferless compact system. We even subjected the minisystem to a bout with the Flight of the Phoenix DVD and were satisfied with the sound; it was detailed, dynamic, and remarkably spacious. The speakers' ample bass has enough oomph to fill even moderately large rooms of up to 300 to 400 square feet. Dialog was articulate and full bodied. The most obvious limitation was volume on highly dynamic scenes. During the last DVD's harrowing crash sequence, we could sense the little speakers' inadequacies--it works best at moderate levels. While you can add a powered subwoofer to the system, it won't significantly improve the EX-A10's overall volume capability.
CDs, especially of acoustic jazz and pop music, sounded rich and full. Standup bass had the sort of "woody" acoustic naturalness we associate with pricey high-end speakers. Rock music was somewhat less satisfying, but it you really want to rock out, a desktop system, even one as accomplished as the JVC EX-A10 won't be the best way to go. That said, the EX-A10's home-theater chops are more or less on a par with those of many small 5.1-speaker HTIBs we've tested. All in all, it turns in spectacular home-theater performance for such a compact system, and it will appeal to buyers who would like to avoid the hassles of placing a subwoofer in their rooms.