Fully agree as i still have both. The ATC, thanks to an exceptional midrange driver and a paper coned bass are much easier to listen to and overall more musical. When dynamics and soundstaging is concerned though, the Wilsons, when properly driven are head and shoulders ahead. Perhaps it's the much better enclosure.
However, my hobby is about building amps and sources, not speakers. The Wilsons present a really challenging load to the amps, very few SS amps are capable enough to reveal any of the positive qualities they have. In this sense it's fun having them at hand. If an amp can demonstrate a solid bass and dynamics into the Wilsons without sounding glassy and piercing in the midrange, it is likely to sound great with any other speakers 🙂
WATT/Puppy 5.1 amazing sounding speakers even at low levels. Top build quality, top sounding drivers. Too bad that these drivers are not in production anymore.
New to the forum - I read through a lot of the comments about Wilson. I’m curious if these are experiences from the earlier years when Dave Wilson ran the show, and the sound was typically different and not to everyones liking.
However Darryl has put his stamp on the line and I have seen many many Wilson detractors perform an about-face when listening to the Alexia, Sasha DAW/V, Sabrina X. Often getting praise for excellent and very musical sound.
I have had a pair of Sabrina X’s for over a year and they are amazing. I’m upgrading within their line.
There are also situations in which the Wilsons just are not set up properly, which for them, can have a dramatic effect on sound. Many audio shows suffer from this.
So - my question is do the Wilson detractors experience fall into one of those scenarios, or do people hear the new Wilsons, properly set up (usually in someones home or a major dealer) and really think they dont sound good?
I realize these things are subjective but the Sabrina X, The Watt Puppy, and the Sasha V (bottom 3 in the line up) sound incredible to me and anyone else thats heard them with me. So I’m confused about the overwhelming general skepticism of this thread.
However Darryl has put his stamp on the line and I have seen many many Wilson detractors perform an about-face when listening to the Alexia, Sasha DAW/V, Sabrina X. Often getting praise for excellent and very musical sound.
I have had a pair of Sabrina X’s for over a year and they are amazing. I’m upgrading within their line.
There are also situations in which the Wilsons just are not set up properly, which for them, can have a dramatic effect on sound. Many audio shows suffer from this.
So - my question is do the Wilson detractors experience fall into one of those scenarios, or do people hear the new Wilsons, properly set up (usually in someones home or a major dealer) and really think they dont sound good?
I realize these things are subjective but the Sabrina X, The Watt Puppy, and the Sasha V (bottom 3 in the line up) sound incredible to me and anyone else thats heard them with me. So I’m confused about the overwhelming general skepticism of this thread.
You have to forget any notion that great sound quality has anything to do with Audiophile wants.
These people want something that looks impressive or expensive and performs just good enough to pull it off.
Stuff like 20k 8ft power cable to plug into the wall served by 100 feet of 30 cent a foot 20A wire.
Scams and salesmen galore
These people want something that looks impressive or expensive and performs just good enough to pull it off.
Stuff like 20k 8ft power cable to plug into the wall served by 100 feet of 30 cent a foot 20A wire.
Scams and salesmen galore
so after 25 years my wilson maxx series 1 blew a tweeter. wilson audio dealer wanted $1400 + shipping and tax for a pair of tweeters.
i really wanted new speakers anyway, so i bought 801d4signature. and a pair of mcintosh mc611 monoblocks to replace the 25 year old krell.
tried to GIVE THE WILSONS away. as in you show up and pick them up, with the shipping crates. No takers. FREE. No takers.
so i found compatible tweeters from china that mount directly to the focal mounting plate. similar impedance frequency response etc. $80 each.
but when i took the covers off, the acoustic foam turned into piles of nasty petrochemical garbage. so i'm scraping it off with a plastic
automotive tool. they should work fine as the rear speakers in a 5.1 system. after taking the things apart. its obvious that the enginering
put into these things is just plain stupid. like threading the magic material, and then expecting the screws to actually hold the drivers tight.
like needing the wilson designed sissor jack to get the speakers back on the wheels after sitting for 25 years on spikes.
i really wanted new speakers anyway, so i bought 801d4signature. and a pair of mcintosh mc611 monoblocks to replace the 25 year old krell.
tried to GIVE THE WILSONS away. as in you show up and pick them up, with the shipping crates. No takers. FREE. No takers.
so i found compatible tweeters from china that mount directly to the focal mounting plate. similar impedance frequency response etc. $80 each.
but when i took the covers off, the acoustic foam turned into piles of nasty petrochemical garbage. so i'm scraping it off with a plastic
automotive tool. they should work fine as the rear speakers in a 5.1 system. after taking the things apart. its obvious that the enginering
put into these things is just plain stupid. like threading the magic material, and then expecting the screws to actually hold the drivers tight.
like needing the wilson designed sissor jack to get the speakers back on the wheels after sitting for 25 years on spikes.
Lloyd Walker once told me about a speaker device he made, probably an impedance correction or filter. It bridged across the speaker terminals. It was simple, but his client did not want it because it looked cheap. He dressed it up in heavy copper and large spades and sold a bunch of them. Someone here opened up one of Walker's motor controllers. It was almost empty. Just a small circuit in a nice box. The circuit wasn't anything new either. Think it used a LM317. No disrespect to the LM317, but I'm not paying couple grand for a 50 cent part.
Also, as DIYer, we have the burden of knowing. You have knowledge of what goes into making some of this stuff. Kind of puts you off when you hear mega-buck gear that doesn't impress.
Also, as DIYer, we have the burden of knowing. You have knowledge of what goes into making some of this stuff. Kind of puts you off when you hear mega-buck gear that doesn't impress.
Since I am one of the detractors I shall clarify:
I only heard various Wilsons at the Munich high end show in 2022. Multiple rooms had either the Alexx v or the Sasha daw. Nagra had brought along one of the chronosonic models.
I cannot comment on setup, in fact I disliked the Wilsons in some of the non Wilson rooms least. But all of them were edgy and fatiguing, some very much, others only after longer listening. None had any magic, like eg a good horn system. Neither did they have the fluidity of the Magico M6 (I also heard the A5 but I don’t think it was set up well).
If something is sold for exeptional money, people have outstanding expectations. In the past it was quite simple to build "better" speakers than average. Whole industries, like in Germany, only produced the same kind of standard speaker range of questionable quality. Think of the Heco, Canton, Telefunken, Grundig, Braun, Isophon, Magnat, Quadral, Dual, Schneider etc. constuctions. They all used compareable, more or less cheap components. Any country had it's "consumer brand" portfolio. Something I call electricity to noise converters. Profits where huge, innovation scarce. Today there is a global competition.
To keep an audible distance to other competitors has become hardly impossible over the years.
In the last decades the components/ drivers have somehow democratized, in a way that the price range for high quality parts has narrowed in. This is not the consumers guilt, but the loudspeaker manufacturers own, which constandly demanded better driver for less money. So when a top of the line speaker manufacturer like Wilson wants to pay less for expensive material from Scan speak, Seas, Vifa, Peerless or the like, these producer have to do high numbers to pay for the evolution. Which then is offered to anyone who is able to pay for a reasonable number of OEM units. There are no "exclusive" drivers any more and even then, the construction is not different from others, except for some minor cosmetics. You can not build the killer driver, better than all the rest, any more. Because of this trend in the industry, always better, cheaper and more precise, with any new product generation, there are no small driver manufacturers that can build a better tweeter or woofer at any cost. The tooling and know how is to specific today, only a few large OEM's are left. Which have the urge to sell high numbers. The few exceptions are not building by them selves in own factoties, but have them made by the large players to their own specifications. Cheap in China is no option for high end, if you do not have control over any step of production, you get screwed there.
Today any developer in the world has access to any chassis he could need. With a product so simple like a loudspeaker, there is no way to get far ahead of the crowd. Take away all the hype and fairy tales, then you can build a world class speaker from two drivers and a small handfull of caps, coils and resistors. The construction of a case is no black art, there is no best material or magic about a speaker cabinet. Except from marketing tales, of course. All manufacturers use industry products to build them. May it be paricle board, MDF, ply, panzerholz (tank wood), aluminum, Corean, honeycomb, carbon or the glue to build compounds from it, none of these material is produced or was developed with speakers in mind. They just use what they can find and think is useable, like the unfortunate in a favela building a house.
The only way you can build a commercial, sellable speaker today is different, but not really, objectively better. If you sound tune your speaker different, there is always the danger to be too different. Which some will dislike. If you read speaker reviews with a grain of salt, you will realize that often the writer tries to conceal objective faults as special characteristics.
So, no, Wilson Audio is nothing special, just an expensive brand with a well working marketing in a very wide and subjective market. I would never even pay even a fraction of the retail price for any of their products, just as I never would buy a new Mercedes Benz car. Maybe something different with a Ferrari, just to add my subjective opinion.
To keep an audible distance to other competitors has become hardly impossible over the years.
In the last decades the components/ drivers have somehow democratized, in a way that the price range for high quality parts has narrowed in. This is not the consumers guilt, but the loudspeaker manufacturers own, which constandly demanded better driver for less money. So when a top of the line speaker manufacturer like Wilson wants to pay less for expensive material from Scan speak, Seas, Vifa, Peerless or the like, these producer have to do high numbers to pay for the evolution. Which then is offered to anyone who is able to pay for a reasonable number of OEM units. There are no "exclusive" drivers any more and even then, the construction is not different from others, except for some minor cosmetics. You can not build the killer driver, better than all the rest, any more. Because of this trend in the industry, always better, cheaper and more precise, with any new product generation, there are no small driver manufacturers that can build a better tweeter or woofer at any cost. The tooling and know how is to specific today, only a few large OEM's are left. Which have the urge to sell high numbers. The few exceptions are not building by them selves in own factoties, but have them made by the large players to their own specifications. Cheap in China is no option for high end, if you do not have control over any step of production, you get screwed there.
Today any developer in the world has access to any chassis he could need. With a product so simple like a loudspeaker, there is no way to get far ahead of the crowd. Take away all the hype and fairy tales, then you can build a world class speaker from two drivers and a small handfull of caps, coils and resistors. The construction of a case is no black art, there is no best material or magic about a speaker cabinet. Except from marketing tales, of course. All manufacturers use industry products to build them. May it be paricle board, MDF, ply, panzerholz (tank wood), aluminum, Corean, honeycomb, carbon or the glue to build compounds from it, none of these material is produced or was developed with speakers in mind. They just use what they can find and think is useable, like the unfortunate in a favela building a house.
The only way you can build a commercial, sellable speaker today is different, but not really, objectively better. If you sound tune your speaker different, there is always the danger to be too different. Which some will dislike. If you read speaker reviews with a grain of salt, you will realize that often the writer tries to conceal objective faults as special characteristics.
So, no, Wilson Audio is nothing special, just an expensive brand with a well working marketing in a very wide and subjective market. I would never even pay even a fraction of the retail price for any of their products, just as I never would buy a new Mercedes Benz car. Maybe something different with a Ferrari, just to add my subjective opinion.
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For a rather brief time, I worked in the service dept. for an all European sale/trader called Klapp Electronics.
I was given a project of improving the sound of a 'floor stock' Grundig speaker system that all thought sounded dreadful.
Upon my investigation of the crossover, I found a myriad of 'stupid & incorrect' aspects regarding design.
It didn't take much re-design to get things working correctly > and a much better sounding speaker 🙂
[ I'd love to know if some listener is still enjoying them ]
Scan-Speak is owned by Chinese people, who have 1400 odd employes.
All Scan-Speak does, with less than 20 employees, is assemble Chinese parts in Denmark.
That includes marketing, HR, and accounts.
It may be less than 2000 square feet in actual shopfloor area, apart from storage.
A tiny operation, with a big reputation.
The minimum quantity asked by a good quality Chinese driver maker will be of the order of 50, 000 units, I do not think most fancy brands, including Wilson, have the ability to purchase that quantity at a time.
So they buy parts from traders, and assemble the speakers on a fairly small scale, if you wish you can find financial details on line from web sites specializing in business details.
To put that in perspective, I have a building approximately 2350 square feet, and a business making injection molded parts, I am definitely not world famous.
The speaker builder's reputation simply a marketing thing, with a large chunk of sales being spent on advertising and stalls at exhibitions.
No ties to any names above.
All Scan-Speak does, with less than 20 employees, is assemble Chinese parts in Denmark.
That includes marketing, HR, and accounts.
It may be less than 2000 square feet in actual shopfloor area, apart from storage.
A tiny operation, with a big reputation.
The minimum quantity asked by a good quality Chinese driver maker will be of the order of 50, 000 units, I do not think most fancy brands, including Wilson, have the ability to purchase that quantity at a time.
So they buy parts from traders, and assemble the speakers on a fairly small scale, if you wish you can find financial details on line from web sites specializing in business details.
To put that in perspective, I have a building approximately 2350 square feet, and a business making injection molded parts, I am definitely not world famous.
The speaker builder's reputation simply a marketing thing, with a large chunk of sales being spent on advertising and stalls at exhibitions.
No ties to any names above.
Wilson Audio has 60 employees, annual sales $9.2 million.
Or about $153,333 per employee.
The median wage in the USA is about $65,000, so each employee is contributing $88,000 to the gross sales of the business.
After deducting salary.
Sourced from the net.
My factory is 2650 square feet, sorry about the mistake earlier, not able to edit the post, slow net for this site..
Or about $153,333 per employee.
The median wage in the USA is about $65,000, so each employee is contributing $88,000 to the gross sales of the business.
After deducting salary.
Sourced from the net.
My factory is 2650 square feet, sorry about the mistake earlier, not able to edit the post, slow net for this site..
Wilson has got you all by the fact this thread was created. Mind games,you bet. Audio philes are there own worst enemies.
Ultra-expensive luxury goods that by definition are going to offer very poor value for money in terms of technical function need to raise the value of the product by other means. Inevitably this can only be done in ways that work for some people but not for others and almost certainly not for people with a highish level of technical understanding. If we consider ultra expensive designer handbags for example most of us here can see a well constructed bag "worth" perhaps £100 or so given the price of well constructed bags. What we can't see/feel is a bag worth many thousands of pounds because the non-technical value that some can see/feel doesn't apply to us.
If Wilson speakers were 5-10% of the price so that they weren't extremely poor value for money in terms of technical function and compared with a speaker that is likely to be highly valued by many here like, say, a Neumann kH 420 they may have a few more takers but likely not many. They have strong visuals designed to appeal to consumers in the ultra-fi market sector which isn't going to necessarily work for other consumer sectors. Personally, I dislike the garish visuals to the extent I wouldn't have something looking like that in my living space but that is not the case for all given the existence of DIY speakers with Wilson-like visuals. Like most expensive home speakers they don't seek to have a neutral sound which may work for a few but is unlikely to have wide appeal among the more technically inclined speaker hobbyists. Another significant factor is likely to be that luxury goods designed to have a strong positive appeal to a particular tribe such as "subjective audiophiles" are likely to have a significantly negative appeal with competing tribes such as "objective audiophiles". What would the peers of an "objective audiophile" think if they saw him using expensive cables, valve amplifiers, cable lifters,... or Wilson speakers?
Interesting context from @NareshBrd but other than that, it hardly helps @Inthesticks understand what we heard when we heard Wilsons.
That was a fair offer, only the cabinets together with crates weigh 1100 lbs and the risk of injury is not to underestimated.
In theory I would salvage drive units, crossover, wires and speaker terminal. Stereophile review 1999 mentions price of $39k.
A Stereophile review is my starting point in considering any speaker, (if one assumes that input to output accuracy is the goal of any audio device that is, as their reviews contain output measurements). If one looks at historical Wilson Audio speaker review measurements this is very far from what is achieved, so much so, it’s almost comical. (How it can take six or seven versions of a speaker design (over nearly four decades!) and still be so inaccurate is beyond me). It's also interesting to view their other reviews of Wilson speakers.
In recent reviews it’s valuable to compare a $5000 MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 888 with the $40,000 Wilson Audio Specialties "The WATT/Puppy". This to my mind blows the saying “You get what you pay for” not out of the water, but into outer space.
https://www.stereophile.com/category/floor-loudspeaker-reviews
My only concern about the reviews is the knots they tie themselves into trying to recomend Wilson's products.
In recent reviews it’s valuable to compare a $5000 MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 888 with the $40,000 Wilson Audio Specialties "The WATT/Puppy". This to my mind blows the saying “You get what you pay for” not out of the water, but into outer space.
https://www.stereophile.com/category/floor-loudspeaker-reviews
My only concern about the reviews is the knots they tie themselves into trying to recomend Wilson's products.
Very well, congratulations then!
Still, that Impedance drop in the 100 Hz range could have been avoided, even though woofer appears to be 4 ohm nominally.
I would think an $18k product should not be like that.
Good luck with your future loudspeakers!
Keep us posted, if you find the time.
I didn't remember, i went to look up the story on Wiki.
But i should have guessed, everything has changed now.
I always get a kick out of ANY threads that start with "how do you like XXX". Especially if the product costs above say $5000. Never seen any thread like this that has any POSITIVE consensus.
OK, so what is the Website. It's DIY fer Ch*******. And any DIYer has by nature "cheapskate tendencies". Along with that is the opinion that "I can do this "better than they can". Another thing is that these guys "don't get out much" - probably don't have to or want to. By that I mean, do you sit around listening with any buddies (including non-buddies) and realize how many musical tastes / genres there are out there (besides their own); how loud do they normally listen: what do people actually hear (wonder about that ALL the time); are they MARRIED. How does the product LOOK
So what is your own curriculum vitae? What have YOU done for yourself or the hobby. And have you considered going into business with any of your creations? Some of you have and I say GOOD WORK. Has anything sold? and the bigger question is did you make any money on it? Are you ready with the NEXT / follow-on product?? What quantity / cost / marketing / pricing issues did you run into? How did you settle on the final price? How did people react to the product - Before and after you mentioned its price? Or do you just enjoy grousing?
I'll be the first to say that product prices have gone absolutely nuts over the past10 years. Let's make up all our R&D costs over the sales of our first two pairs of XX. Every issue of the Audio mags has some new product - from Europe or the pacific rim - with a name you've never heard of - and may not next year.
BUT there are lots of folks with the $$$ to buy them. And sound is second or third on their buying criteria list. A few listen with their ears; a number listen with their eyes. Many listen with their wallets. O yeah, a lot of DIYers listen with their instruments.
Carry on
OK, so what is the Website. It's DIY fer Ch*******. And any DIYer has by nature "cheapskate tendencies". Along with that is the opinion that "I can do this "better than they can". Another thing is that these guys "don't get out much" - probably don't have to or want to. By that I mean, do you sit around listening with any buddies (including non-buddies) and realize how many musical tastes / genres there are out there (besides their own); how loud do they normally listen: what do people actually hear (wonder about that ALL the time); are they MARRIED. How does the product LOOK
So what is your own curriculum vitae? What have YOU done for yourself or the hobby. And have you considered going into business with any of your creations? Some of you have and I say GOOD WORK. Has anything sold? and the bigger question is did you make any money on it? Are you ready with the NEXT / follow-on product?? What quantity / cost / marketing / pricing issues did you run into? How did you settle on the final price? How did people react to the product - Before and after you mentioned its price? Or do you just enjoy grousing?
I'll be the first to say that product prices have gone absolutely nuts over the past10 years. Let's make up all our R&D costs over the sales of our first two pairs of XX. Every issue of the Audio mags has some new product - from Europe or the pacific rim - with a name you've never heard of - and may not next year.
BUT there are lots of folks with the $$$ to buy them. And sound is second or third on their buying criteria list. A few listen with their ears; a number listen with their eyes. Many listen with their wallets. O yeah, a lot of DIYers listen with their instruments.
Carry on
They made the tunetot and asked people to give them $10k for it. Thing measures like something is broken inside. That's all I needed to know to write them off entirely. Their separate enclosure speakers are mostly likely diffraction factories. Big money and all passive speakers? Good bit of performance left on the table there. No published performance data. I don't see how anyone could have much respect for the products the company puts out.
I see better speakers with actual performance data being made here all day long. Kind of embarrassing to be a commercial speaker company and get beaten out by DIY'ers on a regular basis.
I see better speakers with actual performance data being made here all day long. Kind of embarrassing to be a commercial speaker company and get beaten out by DIY'ers on a regular basis.