I am an ignorant when it comes to speaker design, but look at the cumulative spectral decay plot on the TAD and then compare it with the sig800: see which one is cleaner.
Yes, frequency response, hands down TAD is spectacular but then again the way the energy decays is no nearly as good as it is in the 800 design.
Also, the lateral dispersion, to me it looks like 800 has a more homogenous dispersion which will account for dispersion and disappear of the speaker from the sound-stage and very stable imaging.
I mean from this, what I grasp is that there is not only frequency response to look at when designing a speaker and I feel there are very many trade offs when designing a speaker and one should personally listen rather than only measure although of course measurements are important and necessary, but so is listening just as much.
In fact, I have shown a comment from the designer of TAD but nobody paid too much attention to it....but I thought it was something good to share that was very applicable to this conversation.
I did not say you can interchange them and not realize one is playing over the other, what I said in other comments was that provided the speakers are installed in the right system and room, they will provide equally good performance, accurate speakers presenting you with all information that are in the recording, with high level imaging, soundstage frequency extension and both will work on the neutral side, which means they will not impart a nice extra warmth presentation like for example sonus faber might do nor try to impress you with tizz and booms like wilson or other speaker do. That's all I am saying. Then every speaker will present the material in a slightly different way and that is what will drive one user to get one rather than the other.
TAD is an extremely nice speaker IMO I could replace my B&W and live with that speaker and sleep tight at night I am not attached to B&W, all I care is about good sound.
I have heard wilson alexia many times in a proper setup, and its not a tiss and boom speakers 🙂
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You want to tell me that $120K full DCS stack with $32k momentum preamplifier and $55k momentum power amp is not proper setup? (Which btw I think this was even the model up from Alexis)...or the model below this one which I think was Alexia (apologize I might not get proper names for the Wilson speakers they all look alike to me except for Alexandria ) was powered up by fill Doshi electronics which were total of over $100k with $30k brinkman turntable and 8k koetsu...wasn't this s proper setup either? They both had the same sonic presentation with some good degree of tizz and boom! Bass wasn't tight and agile as expected and treble were in nice evidence. It is a pleasant sonic signature that I am sure can capture many people's attention.
If you are hearing boom, then it is either by 2 of these factor,
1. The room was too small, and no real attention was given to treat the bass performance
2. The amps unable to deliver enough current for it to perform the bass.
If you are familiar with measurements, the Alexia tuned quite low with early roll offs from 50hz, in hoping that the room boundary will fill up the 20-50hz region and so it wont overloaded. Another thing to consider that the slight dip around 100-200hz where the xover region is was useful if the speakers placed near boundary (as the tuning suggested), which i think its an attempt from Wilson to have a better bass performance in typical not so big living room and less flexible on positioning.
Another thing to consider is that the Alexia has a multiple point of adjustments (although im still questioning the real purpose for it) so that you can make the multiple drivers summed up correctly on even shorter listening distance, which for a speakers as tall as Alexia, will sound better and coherent around 4-5m.
So overall, i thought they are a very low distortion speakers with kinda funny bass, where it has the ability to go very low, undeniably punchy and dynamic but it is still too lean for my taste, although some amps can compensate that.
I cant tell you what you hear, but my conclusion is based on stereophile's measurements and multiple listening session. And i dont doubt that people hears things differently.
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1. The room was too small, and no real attention was given to treat the bass performance
2. The amps unable to deliver enough current for it to perform the bass.
If you are familiar with measurements, the Alexia tuned quite low with early roll offs from 50hz, in hoping that the room boundary will fill up the 20-50hz region and so it wont overloaded. Another thing to consider that the slight dip around 100-200hz where the xover region is was useful if the speakers placed near boundary (as the tuning suggested), which i think its an attempt from Wilson to have a better bass performance in typical not so big living room and less flexible on positioning.
Another thing to consider is that the Alexia has a multiple point of adjustments (although im still questioning the real purpose for it) so that you can make the multiple drivers summed up correctly on even shorter listening distance, which for a speakers as tall as Alexia, will sound better and coherent around 4-5m.
So overall, i thought they are a very low distortion speakers with kinda funny bass, where it has the ability to go very low, undeniably punchy and dynamic but it is still too lean for my taste, although some amps can compensate that.
I cant tell you what you hear, but my conclusion is based on stereophile's measurements and multiple listening session. And i dont doubt that people hears things differently.
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ok I have listened to Wilson audio alexia in other circumstances and always found them to have same presentation, this time with analog and krell amplifiers, acoustically treated room.
I am not saying the sound is revolting whatsoever, they are actually interesting to listen to, I am just saying that if we talk about tizz and boom Wilson definitely follows in that category.
Obviously the tizz and boom is a slight characterization I don't mean it sounds like these cheap pieces of crap that you can find anywhere!
Measurement for this speaker is impeccable, but characterization is clearly audible which definitely suggests that frequency response doesn't tell the whole story.
A person whose ears I trust very much has listened to the Alexandria many times and clearly says that it his a huge tizz and boom and considers it a scam of a speaker at that pricepoint.
This guy is an audiophile with big gear at his behalf and wide listening experience, tried many audio gear and owned a lot of them too and also is a professional classic pianist that travels around the world..this just to give a little background as to why I trust his judgment.
This matches with my, although more limited, experience with Wilson Audio.
Like you said everybody ears differently, but I am not surprise that I Wilson audio is not the speaker of choice for important recording studios: is this just marketing strategy? After having listened to those: I don't think so!
For the kicks some picture of the setup at the audio show (wilson alexia and Sabrina)...room was overall nice and acoustic treatment was put in place by professionals, electronics chosen were very nice too and overall sound wasn't terrible but far from the realism you would expect from a such highly praised and very $$ system.
I am not saying the sound is revolting whatsoever, they are actually interesting to listen to, I am just saying that if we talk about tizz and boom Wilson definitely follows in that category.
Obviously the tizz and boom is a slight characterization I don't mean it sounds like these cheap pieces of crap that you can find anywhere!
Measurement for this speaker is impeccable, but characterization is clearly audible which definitely suggests that frequency response doesn't tell the whole story.
A person whose ears I trust very much has listened to the Alexandria many times and clearly says that it his a huge tizz and boom and considers it a scam of a speaker at that pricepoint.
This guy is an audiophile with big gear at his behalf and wide listening experience, tried many audio gear and owned a lot of them too and also is a professional classic pianist that travels around the world..this just to give a little background as to why I trust his judgment.
This matches with my, although more limited, experience with Wilson Audio.
Like you said everybody ears differently, but I am not surprise that I Wilson audio is not the speaker of choice for important recording studios: is this just marketing strategy? After having listened to those: I don't think so!
For the kicks some picture of the setup at the audio show (wilson alexia and Sabrina)...room was overall nice and acoustic treatment was put in place by professionals, electronics chosen were very nice too and overall sound wasn't terrible but far from the realism you would expect from a such highly praised and very $$ system.
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It's measurements are not impeccable, but not too bad either [emoji4], but of course for that kind of money we should expect near to perfection i supposed..
Alexia's are 2 ohms between 70 and 100Hz, which is a very punishing load for many power amps because it's the frequency band of maximum energy for rock, pop, and Jazz. A high current, high DF amp would definitely be recommended.
Interesting thought and very true!
Good thing they were paired with very powerful and efficient Dan D'agostino Momentum (the power needle wasn't even moving a little bit....I was impressed about that)
Also, I have listened very extensively to Alexia's with Krell Evolution 402e which didn't seem to have any issue driving them.
In both cases however, the sound was practically very similar and I could detect a predominance of the bass and treble which conforms or AKA tizz and boom
Interesting thought and very true!
Good thing they were paired with very powerful and efficient Dan D'agostino Momentum (the power needle wasn't even moving a little bit....I was impressed about that)
Also, I have listened very extensively to Alexia's with Krell Evolution 402e which didn't seem to have any issue driving them.
In both cases however, the sound was practically very similar and I could detect a predominance of the bass and treble which conforms or AKA tizz and boom
Most decent solid state power amps should have no problems, but it's something to keep in mind.
Dan's amps seem to work well with Wilson's, and Dan himself is a fan of the Sasha's as I discovered when I chatted to him in Melbourne a couple of years ago. Alexia's are obviously better again and I'm glad that Wilson designers have finally decided to use a new tweeter that doesn't exhibit a significant resonance just above the audible range.
I don't know how I feel about Dan's gear to be honest.
I think they look stunning, but I personally prefer the feel and sound of a pure Class A design like Pass or big Boulder monoblocks.
Also, it is hard to disassemble the sound of an amp and speakers without being 100% familiar with neither of those.
All I can say is that I was pretty disappointed at the overall sound the system exhibited, which didn't offer much involvement at all.
Considering that goal of every high-end system should be to reproduce music as close to live performance as possible, I feel that this particular system failed in many respects.
Assuming that big DCSs and big Dan's gear produce a sound that doesn't have too much added color to it, then I have to conclude that the Wilson imparts some fairly spicy personality to the sound or what we would call "family sound".
I think they look stunning, but I personally prefer the feel and sound of a pure Class A design like Pass or big Boulder monoblocks.
Also, it is hard to disassemble the sound of an amp and speakers without being 100% familiar with neither of those.
All I can say is that I was pretty disappointed at the overall sound the system exhibited, which didn't offer much involvement at all.
Considering that goal of every high-end system should be to reproduce music as close to live performance as possible, I feel that this particular system failed in many respects.
Assuming that big DCSs and big Dan's gear produce a sound that doesn't have too much added color to it, then I have to conclude that the Wilson imparts some fairly spicy personality to the sound or what we would call "family sound".
When I heard the Momentum's they were being driven directly from a dac / server and Dan was playing back flac files of various res types. Dan has an affinity for chamber ensembles so it was difficult for me to judge the full suite of sonic virtues but I remember thinking that it wasn't quite the last word in transparency or accuracy. Dan also made the admission that the Momentum's were designed to impart a slight warmth, and I did definitely hear that, but I also heard a slight veiling of detail in the HF, which at the time I put down to the limitations of the dac and / or source material.
Very interesting, I found that bit extra warm feeling too! I think the little veil gets compensated/lifted a bit with when paired with Wilson's tendency to emphasize high frequencies.
In my case the person was showcasing HR files samples from the very best recordings he had (doing 40-50 seconds of each file).
High frequency's transparency no the absolute best in show, but like I said, the sound was not terrible either, rather the opposite if price is no object, but to me it doesn't have the realm and involvement/excitement that I am looking for in a system at that level of things.
I wonder how high are sales for Magico and people who end up buying them if they are happy or not! I don't seem to recall there are so many on the used market, which makes me wonder whether people buy their speakers or people that buy them are deaf 😱
Magico speakers sell like a hot cake and it's the fastest growing and most successful high-end speaker company in recent years IMHO. People buy it for the same reason they buy B&W -extremely efficient marketing skill and budget to boot. I'm not sure about deafness of Magico's customer base but I'm quite sure the B&W is a darling brand of gay designers guild thanks to a sleek, modern design features and a lot of costumers just follow interior designer suggestion for what will fit in the room. WAF is often a deciding factor in speaker's purchase. In my opinion , it's absolutely impossible to make a statement product vastly superior to what is available on average High-End market using the same technology, topology and cheap drivers.
After all, interior of Momentum or PASS amplifiers cost probably as much as any decent mid-priced amp in term of passive parts (I would like to be mistaken on this ).
At Axpona show ,in the Lobby there was system sporting all Lamm amplification chain , top of the line Lampizator dac and speakers with ceramic drivers and RALL tweeter. The resulting sound was hard and brittle with a traces of that "sizzling bacon on the pan " sound which often characterizes cheap metal domes of the sort B&W is using to get perception of detail. It was hardly listenable in spite of top shelf components yet after the show I read how it "enabled" the audience to hear more and more into recordings and rediscover their known performances in the words of show goers (not paid reviewers) I know RALL tweeter . I had at home his expensive 70-20XAM model and crossed over 8kHz with 3/rd order it didn't have a sound of it's own unlike any other tweeter I heard ,it was kind of tasteless to a fault.
I guess I dislike most midrange driver's with cones made from anything else than paper. The reason why I'm hardly interested in high -end this days is just the dominance of that hard , glossy , detailed, boring sound. It's a musical analogy to Photoshopped pictures in glossy magazines. And B&W 800 discussed in this thread has it too-in spades.
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Limono....
first off no inside Pass's amp doesn't cost as much as a mid side power amp, I don't think you understand the money that are involved in buy all that much HW to create a high power Class A power amp.
Can't comment the inside of momentum.
Regarding the room you are referring too, I was there too and sure enough it was one of my favorite!
I seriously don't know what you heard there, sound was everything but cheap metal dome sound. They use nice ceramic components that the guy here on this forum used to revamp his N801.
sound was basically amazing with no glare or haze whatsoever, very pure and little coloring! Lot's of details but very musical balance.
Can you give me an example of a system you like?
Also, NO magico and B&W have NOTHING to spare! If you say they sound alike then you have not understood really how B&W sounds.
Having high resolution and details is not bad !!!! I don't know in what world you live in!!! This is called hi-end and it is supposed to extract the last information on your recording and not the other way around!
first off no inside Pass's amp doesn't cost as much as a mid side power amp, I don't think you understand the money that are involved in buy all that much HW to create a high power Class A power amp.
Can't comment the inside of momentum.
Regarding the room you are referring too, I was there too and sure enough it was one of my favorite!
I seriously don't know what you heard there, sound was everything but cheap metal dome sound. They use nice ceramic components that the guy here on this forum used to revamp his N801.
sound was basically amazing with no glare or haze whatsoever, very pure and little coloring! Lot's of details but very musical balance.
Can you give me an example of a system you like?
Also, NO magico and B&W have NOTHING to spare! If you say they sound alike then you have not understood really how B&W sounds.
Having high resolution and details is not bad !!!! I don't know in what world you live in!!! This is called hi-end and it is supposed to extract the last information on your recording and not the other way around!
yes , I'm aware that PASS PSU cost more than average but typical industrial parts in quantity are not expensive these days and the price on solid state products is not related to the cost of components if one exclude chassis from the equation. It is well known fact and do not require discussion. It is not a condescending remark. Small scale production, elaborate chassis and sales structure is what really drives the cost, not a circuit.
I only said that Magico and B&W seem cater to the same customer group .
You're right , I'm not qualified to discuss the virtues of that kind of installations since I hardly see any. I was sorry to see the tortured face of lampizator's maker but he has to play that game to sell. At some point every industry participant is sentenced to whoredom .
I only said that Magico and B&W seem cater to the same customer group .
You're right , I'm not qualified to discuss the virtues of that kind of installations since I hardly see any. I was sorry to see the tortured face of lampizator's maker but he has to play that game to sell. At some point every industry participant is sentenced to whoredom .
Dan's Momentum amps are very costly to build, mostly due to the amount of copper and machining required to efficiently conduct and convect heat from the output and driver stages, but the components are not exactly inexpensive either. The output transistors are custom manufactured by On-Semi to achieve tolerances of 0.01% for hFe and vbe and a very high fT within a metal can TO-3 package. Without the benefits of scale the transistors would be incredibly expensive.
The output transistors are custom manufactured by On-Semi to achieve tolerances of 0.01% for hFe and vbe and a very high fT within a metal can TO-3 package. Without the benefits of scale the transistors would be incredibly expensive.[/QUOTE]
Yes , every product is incredibly expensive without the benefit of scale . Your remark suggest that they DO somewhat benefit the benefit of scale and may even cost incredible $20 each??
Anyway I quite liked the Momentum amplifiers on last year show (and was pleasantly surprised by maligned Wilson speakers) and there is no reason Dan should charge less than the price he can get for his product. The steampuk's sort of aesthetics alone is worth half of it for the targeted customer base . This year presentation was not so successful for whatever reasons . I own $5k MC cartridge. It sits new in the box since I'm too lazy to clean the records lately. How much the material cost and the labor differ from the lower end $2K offering from the same maker? The prices are almost irrelevant respectively to the cost of manufacturing in High-End sector.
Art , your avatar picture is kind of disturbing and in questionable taste , whats the story behind it if I may ask?
Yes , every product is incredibly expensive without the benefit of scale . Your remark suggest that they DO somewhat benefit the benefit of scale and may even cost incredible $20 each??
Anyway I quite liked the Momentum amplifiers on last year show (and was pleasantly surprised by maligned Wilson speakers) and there is no reason Dan should charge less than the price he can get for his product. The steampuk's sort of aesthetics alone is worth half of it for the targeted customer base . This year presentation was not so successful for whatever reasons . I own $5k MC cartridge. It sits new in the box since I'm too lazy to clean the records lately. How much the material cost and the labor differ from the lower end $2K offering from the same maker? The prices are almost irrelevant respectively to the cost of manufacturing in High-End sector.
Art , your avatar picture is kind of disturbing and in questionable taste , whats the story behind it if I may ask?
I agree and promise to ignore myself as well. Ozdressed babe is not fun to me but I lost my passion somewhere and can't find it anymore so it seems
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