In my youth I considered to market speakers, as I build lots of them for other people. The more I understood the market and its dirty rules and tricks, I realized that objective quality had nothing to do with a succesfull HIFI brand. People wanted shiny objects and to be fooled and lied at. That was the great time of LINN emerging. A brand that lived on the credo "digital sounds bad and always will". Just until they started to sell cheap CD players transplanted into cases with their logo on it, of course, for tripled prices.
There where a lot of honest and talented people who tried, but all of them closed down some day.
For an example, the only surviving DIYS speaker selling shop in my hometown is run by a guy that can spend a whole work day and not speak one sentence of truth or value. A complete audio ignorat that designs you a crosssover in 15 seconds, not knowing what you are going to build. He does that for free if you buy two speaker drivers, while standing at the cash register, on the back of your invoice. A genius? No, if you listen to the results, but his shop is near the university and every semester there is a few thousand of new potential customers enlisting. I'm quite sure the guy hates music. So that is how success looks like in HIFI.
Lies, snake oil, useless expense of material and marketing.
If you look at a brand like JBL that once new how to build speakers and what they sell today or BOSE with their lowfi plastic junk, that is what the masses want. The more wealthy customers want to brag about the price of their sound objects, not high fidelity.
You can build the best speakers in the world, without some phantastic story about your unique way you decided to build this product, you will not sell anything.
I often would like to point people to some good commercial product, as I don't do private orders any more, but this gets more diffilcult every year. Once a brand is established, prices rise astonomically, product value is reduced and words replace innovation and sound quality. Any bad sounding speaker sold enhances the chance of selling another one later.
In small you can see this live with our Chinese friends. If, by mistake, the build a copy with good quality or simply don't mess up the blueprint in a data sheet, the second it has a positive review, the annonced price increases. Reviewers get the first production samples. Then any follow up product gets more expensive without any added value.
There where a lot of honest and talented people who tried, but all of them closed down some day.
For an example, the only surviving DIYS speaker selling shop in my hometown is run by a guy that can spend a whole work day and not speak one sentence of truth or value. A complete audio ignorat that designs you a crosssover in 15 seconds, not knowing what you are going to build. He does that for free if you buy two speaker drivers, while standing at the cash register, on the back of your invoice. A genius? No, if you listen to the results, but his shop is near the university and every semester there is a few thousand of new potential customers enlisting. I'm quite sure the guy hates music. So that is how success looks like in HIFI.
Lies, snake oil, useless expense of material and marketing.
If you look at a brand like JBL that once new how to build speakers and what they sell today or BOSE with their lowfi plastic junk, that is what the masses want. The more wealthy customers want to brag about the price of their sound objects, not high fidelity.
You can build the best speakers in the world, without some phantastic story about your unique way you decided to build this product, you will not sell anything.
I often would like to point people to some good commercial product, as I don't do private orders any more, but this gets more diffilcult every year. Once a brand is established, prices rise astonomically, product value is reduced and words replace innovation and sound quality. Any bad sounding speaker sold enhances the chance of selling another one later.
In small you can see this live with our Chinese friends. If, by mistake, the build a copy with good quality or simply don't mess up the blueprint in a data sheet, the second it has a positive review, the annonced price increases. Reviewers get the first production samples. Then any follow up product gets more expensive without any added value.
DIY speakers clearly aren't better than Wilson speakers to people that value Wilson speakers highly and buy them. We have several posting in this thread. Are they wrong to value Wilson speakers highly? Are DIYers wrong to value things differently?
Wilson speakers do not have a high technical performance but they do have a high perceived performance to people that value them highly. This is fine and not a problem unless a high technical performance is important for some reason. Perhaps using Wilson speakers as studio monitors might cause some issues but, then again, B&W seem to have a significant presence in studios.
Generally the reason is because it sounds good.
Yes. They got fooled. Hobby needs to grow up and stop acting like hyper expensive speakers are a normal or acceptable thing. All these companies making stuff like Wilson are just wasting resources, adding more pollution. We know how to make good sound with a speaker, it's not hard or expensive.
Wow what praise lol.
I recently saw an ad for a Wilson subwoofer comprising a single woofer in a very ugly box. Price is £32k. Tells you everything you need to know.
I've never actually heard a Wilson speaker, but judging by the looks alone, they might just be the ugliest monsters ever unleashed upon the hi-fi world. Most of the design seems to have no real purpose, other than to scream, "Look at me, I'm expensive!" The funny thing is, a lot of beginner DIY builders fall into the same trap, thinking that if something looks like a sci-fi battleship, it must sound incredible. Honestly, Wilson speakers remind me of an adolescent fever dream, loud, flashy, and completely over the top.
A minimal resonance enclosure will unmask both good details and flaws in the speaker. If it begins to sound "boring" or "analytical" as they say, it's still a step in the right direction but much work is needed to reveal the sound underneath.
In any case, one minimal resonance enclosure will sound more similar to another than a resonant one.
Allen, thanks for sharing your expertise about speaker housings.
Stuey:
The American market had stiff emission regulations, so Rolls had to use better than 1950s design engines.
If you look at the machining tolerances on engines, specifically bore to piston clearance, squareness of bore to block, accuracy in line boring of crank bearings, flatness of block top, and overall head machining, the Japanese win hands down.
Then the Germans, and later Americans.
Russian engines are durable fuel guzzlers, they hardly ever break down.
British engines of that era, I had service manuals for the Hindustan made Morris engines...junk by today's standards.
I repeat, check the specs for 1999 Rolls Royce engine, the 454 cu. in. was a GM made engine, maybe tweaked a bit by R-R.
Transmission was Allison automatic.
Please remember that homologation for engines is an expensive affair, now the production of Euro-6 engines is being done at specialist engine builders for the customers who cannot afford to develop their own engines.
Ford, Mercedes, and some others are all clients of Force Motors here, they had a special set of machines to build Mercedes OM 616 engines under license, about 40 years back...they evolved from there.
Now they have built a business for building engines for clients...Mitsubishi was also a client IIRC.
Force Motors is a licensee for ZF transmissions, they are a reputed German company as well.
If Rolls Royce had to develop their own engines, with annual sales of 5,000 odd units, they could not afford it, type approval costs tens of millions of US Dollars, part of the reason the company got taken over by BMW, now uses BMW engines.
No ties, as usual.
Stuey:
The American market had stiff emission regulations, so Rolls had to use better than 1950s design engines.
If you look at the machining tolerances on engines, specifically bore to piston clearance, squareness of bore to block, accuracy in line boring of crank bearings, flatness of block top, and overall head machining, the Japanese win hands down.
Then the Germans, and later Americans.
Russian engines are durable fuel guzzlers, they hardly ever break down.
British engines of that era, I had service manuals for the Hindustan made Morris engines...junk by today's standards.
I repeat, check the specs for 1999 Rolls Royce engine, the 454 cu. in. was a GM made engine, maybe tweaked a bit by R-R.
Transmission was Allison automatic.
Please remember that homologation for engines is an expensive affair, now the production of Euro-6 engines is being done at specialist engine builders for the customers who cannot afford to develop their own engines.
Ford, Mercedes, and some others are all clients of Force Motors here, they had a special set of machines to build Mercedes OM 616 engines under license, about 40 years back...they evolved from there.
Now they have built a business for building engines for clients...Mitsubishi was also a client IIRC.
Force Motors is a licensee for ZF transmissions, they are a reputed German company as well.
If Rolls Royce had to develop their own engines, with annual sales of 5,000 odd units, they could not afford it, type approval costs tens of millions of US Dollars, part of the reason the company got taken over by BMW, now uses BMW engines.
No ties, as usual.
There are many makers of high end audio that not only look good but perform impeccably. Just look at products from TAD, Aerial Acoustics, Magico Gobel, and KEF to name but five. This thread though is to garner opinions on W.A. I would say that in the aforementioned company (and others), they are seriously lacking from a performance standpoint. (Looks being subjective).
They have speaker products called Tune Tot and Watt Puppy.
Rather comical , do people take this stuff seriously?
GR research can be rather annoying Youtube channel with his quality snake oil.
But at least he does show some merit with his reworks of sent in speakers.
It was interesting having showed measurements of a few Wilson products.
And get insight and view the insides far as crossover.
Measurements and accuracy really sucked for the price.
And some woofer combinations take a heavy dip to 1.5 ohms.
So rather high distortion for a amplifier, and a powerful one needed as well.
For impedance nonsense.
Wilson and even here seem to emphasize mystical magical enclosure materials.
Then in the end the actual driver mounting locations, baffle size and crossovers.
Pretty poor choices in the end. So mystical magical boxes dont do much, it is funny.
Wilson is mainly MTM with horrible center to center spacing.
Pretty much garbage. But the driver choices are actually pretty good if implemented better.
I think the designs are creative and appealing to many, and found it unique many many years ago.
Think the prices are ridiculous, and any cost that is part of the magic box materials is wasteful in the end.
As a person I couldn't sell something so high, and have no interest in " telling" people what they hear for a buy.
Art I appreciate, but dont need junk MTM sound sculptures with impedance roller coasters and center to center garbage
Rather comical , do people take this stuff seriously?
GR research can be rather annoying Youtube channel with his quality snake oil.
But at least he does show some merit with his reworks of sent in speakers.
It was interesting having showed measurements of a few Wilson products.
And get insight and view the insides far as crossover.
Measurements and accuracy really sucked for the price.
And some woofer combinations take a heavy dip to 1.5 ohms.
So rather high distortion for a amplifier, and a powerful one needed as well.
For impedance nonsense.
Wilson and even here seem to emphasize mystical magical enclosure materials.
Then in the end the actual driver mounting locations, baffle size and crossovers.
Pretty poor choices in the end. So mystical magical boxes dont do much, it is funny.
Wilson is mainly MTM with horrible center to center spacing.
Pretty much garbage. But the driver choices are actually pretty good if implemented better.
I think the designs are creative and appealing to many, and found it unique many many years ago.
Think the prices are ridiculous, and any cost that is part of the magic box materials is wasteful in the end.
As a person I couldn't sell something so high, and have no interest in " telling" people what they hear for a buy.
Art I appreciate, but dont need junk MTM sound sculptures with impedance roller coasters and center to center garbage
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Agree, Very true been out all day. Being Winter is clearing up.
But the Mountains are still stunning covered in Snow.
Wont change my opinion of Wilson Audio.
Im sure they sound better than the portable unit I used today.
But not portable regardless. Jazz with the Sunset unbeatable.
But the Mountains are still stunning covered in Snow.
Wont change my opinion of Wilson Audio.
Im sure they sound better than the portable unit I used today.
But not portable regardless. Jazz with the Sunset unbeatable.
B&W enjoys the same opinion among opinionated ( which I happen to share ). They sell loads of them to rich and to poor.
What to make out of it?
What to make out of it?
Wilson Audio is just one of so many companies trying to sell its expensive products to a targeted group of users.
Luxury costs a lot of money and there is still enough of the wealthy people not worried about spending their money.
Were it not so, they'd be closed already. I won't lose sleep over any of its aspects.
Luxury costs a lot of money and there is still enough of the wealthy people not worried about spending their money.
Were it not so, they'd be closed already. I won't lose sleep over any of its aspects.
If that's too much for you, you can grab their single driver sub with a $300 dayton DSP amp, for the low price of $13,000.
I feel at a point you can barely even call these places speaker companies. More like money siphoning machines that happen to make speakers on the side. If they didn't get lucky in the speaker market, they'd just be doing something else with the same end goal; extract as much money from the customer as possible.
'Modern' Wharfedales aren't hand crafted by Yorkshire virgins from solid BS & Unobtainium so can't be any good. 😊
In the 90s, Bose weren't really 'HiFi' in the UK. But they had the 'Installed Sound' market (pubs & clubs) to themselves. They also made the Best Selling Speaker in the World. (We made the Best Selling Speaker in Europe) We wanted to muscle in on this nearly virgin territory so we had a close look at their stuff. Our conclusion was that they had two things which gave them their appeal to IS, but also to the man in the street.
- they had good bass
- they were practically indestructible
- Good sound
Gotta remember, Bose stuff didn't really sound bad though it was easy to find cheaper, better sounding stuff. This goes back to their original 900 too.
Today, their reputation is for Supa Dupa Tech, some of it easy to rate, like their noise cancelling stuff., others more dubious but excellent for marketing BS.
I've only listened to two Wilsons; the original Watt, & IIRC, the Puppy. We used to borrow/buy loadsa competitors in dem days to see if they could teach us anything. The Wilsons were in the category of those we unpacked, listened to and sent back the same day.
Our R&D tended to look at speakers and rate them based on their performance in DBLTs given the physical limitations rather than the price. At one time, IOnotsoHO, the 3 best small speakers you could buy cost 80 GBP/pair, 130 GBP and 1,000 GBP. The physical limitation in each case was small size. The cheapest was my most successful design, being the second best selling speaker in Europe for at least 7 yrs. The Wilsons were not in the same league.
I've not heard any of the new Wilsons. Are they overpriced? Almost certainly. But so what?
These days, it is practically impossible to listen to a speaker before buying. So we rely on 'reviewers' who are, on average,, less perceptive on DBLTs than the 'man-in-the-street' and certainly less perceptive than the 'woman-in-the-street'.
So the best, "our stuff is hand carved from solid BS & Unobtainium by virgins" story gets to charge the most $$$ 😊
YES ...
I think it really is the selling price that turns people off Wilson speakers. I don't think ANYONE has actually described Wilson's as 'poor quality speakers'.
I think it is yet again > A status symbol of the 'haves' & 'have not's' in terms of financial - disposable - income 😕
PS.
I need a pair for my Learjet.