|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
67.172.255.89
I have read comments on the audioperfectionist.com website concerning Wilson speakers. AP is very negative towards Wilson speakers. The reading was interesting. But are AP's comments valid?
Follow Ups:
They do wire the midrange drivers out of phase with one another. In a speaker costing as much as Wilson's retail for, the drivers should not invert polarity. So, yes mr Hardesty is correct there. Some of the other statements about the cabinetry, etc.....who knows? Wilson is pretty secretive about what "X" material is.
I am just not getting enough attention paid to me and my opinions. :-)I was talking to my wife about the issue of high fidelity, and where people come from when they think about what that is, just this morning. Yes, she actually listens to me talk about this stuff sometimes. I told her that there is this guy Richard Hardesty on the net that wants to bring back "fidelity" into "hi-fi" (after reading about him yesterday right here). There are so many ways to think about what that means, though. I go down a laundry list of items that I think of when I want to achieve this goal for myself, and I want to achieve it. But I weight the various parts of the sound differently than the next guy. I value some aspects of sound reproduction more than others. That's my preferences, but yet I want it to sound like live overall. It tends to make it the most long term satisfying setup when I do that.
But I know there is a contingent that is not happy with high fidelity. I think that they are looking for more than is there. They want some "wow" factor to their music, something "impressive" that is not there in the recording or even in live unamplified musical sounds. That is fine, but I think a case can be made that this is what is going on, not for good or bad. Hardesty is making a good point about that, although he is totally ridiculously restrictive in saying "you can't do that!" And then proceeds to make a case only for his version of high fidelity with only his set of preferences - like 1st order crossovers and such. Huh? Isn't this about perceiving high fidelity, not limiting how to engineer such a system? Now that's surely going too far.
Let's look at the limitations he sets for himself that is NOT high fidelity. He uses high powered amps and low efficiency speakers. A recipe for limited dynamics, unless you go into a lot of drivers in very big speakers in multi-way systems (hey, you know, like those big Wilsons!). Typical low efficiency direct radiators like Vandersteen 3A's compress typical high crescendos by about 5 dB while raising distortion levels way up! That's high fidelity? Try a horn speaker - much lower compression on crescendos and much lower distortion in doing it. But those have worse frequency responses so those are discounted! Why must frequency response trump compression artifacts for high fidelity for all our ears? An unreasonable assumption, if you ask me. Thorsten Loesch used to have the strongest opposite opinion that a low efficiency direct radiator like a Vandersteen is even high fidelity at all, that it must be high efficiency or forget it.
I seek high fidelity in my system. I am past boom-sizzle mid-fi sound and those kinds of "wow" factor artifacts. I like live unamplified as the main reference, and try to make it sound like that. But it will not be perfect, and so I strive for balance, and lacking that much, I take my preferred set of weighted best attributes of the reproduction as I can get. That's about all I can hope for.
Somewhere in this game, you gotta find truth in the middle ground. High fidelity is the original goal, but preferences, even some perverse ones, are in play for all the list of people listening. Yes, there are speakers of high cost that are voiced beyond reasonable high fidelity "accuracy". I try not to go there, but that's not for me to tell everyone else to stay away from.
Hifi is about faithfulness. In this aspect Wilson speakers are mediocre and hence overpriced. But since the same is the case for many high-end speakers, they are in good company.
(nt)
Over the years, it's been suggested many occasions by many of my friends to ditch my *awful* WATTs.Well, they might be right but the pair still works great in my room.
No speakers will be perfect and I think what's good is determined by a listener's sonic preference, room and electronics.
They will have to pull my WATTs from my cold, dead hands!
An odd thing is that longer I lived with them, I realised they aren't a bad speakers as ppl. claim them to be.The closest competition to the WATTs, I thought was the ATC monitors but they only come alive at a *realistic* level in that lost dynamics at a whisper level. Different voicing from Wilsons, but another excellent studio monitor.
Well I'm unhappy to say I actually wasted my time reading the tripe on the Audioperfectionist website.I think I may have burnt my retinas. Not to mension a few brain cells.
I can't remember reading this level of arrogant audiophile ignorance.
I used to subscribe to APJ. The writing is good and the products it recommends are generally beyond reproach. (Vandersteen, Ayre, VTL, Wadia, Linn, SME, etc.)Hardesty generates a lot of controversy on speakers. He argues that 1st order crossover/time and phase coherent speakers are the only valid designs. He "proves" this with some technical data (mostly frequency response curves) and with the claim that other designs that may seduce listeners initially (with exaggerated highs or mids or whatever) eventually show themselves to be colored and unlistenable. He attacks Wilson on this ground.
Whatever you think of Wilson or any other non-1st order design, to me this is a dubious argument. If true, everyone would end up with a 1st order speaker, which just doesn't happen. Vandersteens are among the best speakers made, but like all speakers they are imperfect. They offer great tonal balance, coherence, and imaging but (to my ears, at least) give up dynamics, quickness and transparency to some other designs. I believe anyone could live with Vandersteens and be very, very happy. There may not be a "better" speaker (especially for the money) but there are certainly equally fine speakers that strike a different balance. To me, Hardesty's refusal to recognize this compromises his credibility.
All that said, his criticisms of Wilson have some merit even if they are a bit over the top. Wilsons have their strong points, but generally sound unnatural to me and are overpriced for what they offer.
Just my 2 cents . . .
I think his comments about Wilsons selection of drivers and the 'hole' they create in the midrange is valid from looking at driver specifications and listening perspective. The recent versions have improved somewhat, but this remains the achilles heel of the design IMHO.I also concur with his advocacy of time and phase accuracy, but not necessarily his choice of products.
I don't know anything about this magazine, but the Wilson Sophia has been one of the most consistantly excellent sounding speakers I have heard. I like the larger one's a lot, but I think they tend to have a small sweet spot.
Sorry, I am just catching up with this. I meant the larger Wilsons tend to have a small sweet spot, IMHO. As always in these cases there are 400 other parameters which may or may not improve the situation. But the four or five times I have heard Wilsons, the Sophia always impressed me the most. The Maxx the least. I heard the Maxx at RMAF but that was in terrible conditions. Before that it was HE2006 in LA, they were excellent as long as you were in the small sweet spot. Same with a private listen in Berkeley CA a couple of years ago. Excellent in a small area. Also in Berk, the Sophias were awesome. I don't like the sound to change when I look down to read or move 2". So shoot me.As many know, I don't do so well with the science and math side of speaker building, I depend on computers, ears and persistance. But one of my theories is that listening to woofers a little off axis presents a larger sweet spot. I think it has to do with the shape of the output, dead on you are limited to a small round area, off axis you are in a larger area that looks like a smile. So off axis using toe in on a flat front speaker presents a vertical smile sweet spot, a speaker tilted back presents a horizontal smile sweet spot.
This is another reason I don't really care for MTM. I know there are some good ones out there, but they tend toward small sweet spot, IMHO. This has played out in my speaker building, a recent MTM in test is moving to an MMT because I could not get the sweet spot large enough. My HT set is sloped front and have a wide sweet spot. This did not play out with my wood cone speakers from last year. Those were simply towers yet had one of the largest sweet spots ever.
Back to work!
P
and you are a speaker builder guy, even. How are yours, do they have a small spot?
Hi Pjay.Hey Docw.
I have DIY speakers with a small sweet spot. Their baffle geometry does lend itself to a forgiving/wide sweet spot.
Know what? I have my listening chair measured and my body position and head position is very close every time. (within 1/2" probably).
I don't walk around my listening room when I listen. If my and my g/f listen at the same time, I sit in a computer chair BEHIND the sweet spot chair. It's not romantic, but we both want to be in the centerline of the gear. She gets this! (Gotta love her...) And if I want music to be mobile I would use headphones.
So... my opinion? I would rather have a speaker with a small sweet spot than one with a large sweet spot IF the smaller sweet spot is indeed SWEETER!
Most audiophiles I know really only do critical listening in the center chair, where a small sweet spot is *usually* a non issue.
If your head is tilting from side to side (which some people do when listening - people do this when analysing things. It's funny to watch), and moving 1/2" or so back and forth and you are hearing blatent changes in how the image is presenting or experiencing phase-iness, then that is more likely a case of something being plain WRONG with the crossover design or driver connections! Extreme room correction algorithms can also make your sweet spot shrink to the size of a decimal point - that is why even digital room correction has subjective variables involved. Too "intensive" of an algorithm may offer greated improvement in transfer function, but only in an increasingly smaller sweet spot location. Go outside that spot (where the mic was situated for generating the correction impulses), and things are actually WORSE instead of better!!
Your take Doc?
If the sound changes greatly when just moving your head around side-to-side, then you could ALSO be hearing the effects of diffraction. You probably already know that but others may not. I am continually surprised by how much diffraction issues can affect the sound.
a good head brace would, could and should solve that. THEN you can do some critical listening!
"I always play jazz records backwards, they sound better that way"
-Thomas Edison
but it would seem that a wider sweet spot is better and more people can enjoy the system?I don't really know but I don't like the Wilsons, the 46K ones. But people swear up and down by them. I just don't know. Maybe I am not an audiophile but a musicophile.
in a REAL home listening environment which is where we HAVENT heard them. agree?
...regards...tr
46K US. or more. Hmmm. Rather listen to music. Hope you liked my gift to you.
Well, I have......at party hosted by one of my wife's co-workers. Her husband is independently wealthy, and an audiophile to boot. He doesn't tell his wife just how much he spends on his gear, and with good reason, she would neuter him in his sleep (she's a vet).
He bought his Maxx2s not long after they moved into their new house, because when they were moving his Martin-Logan Monoliths, the surround on one of the woofers got separated from the cone just a little bit. I'll skip the part about having to decide whether or not to answer Megan's rapid-fire, and well-aimed questions at me as to were the ML's "really unfixable?" or not.
She was a bit miffed that he went out and bought new ones, and she was also trying to get me to tell her how much he spent, because he wouldn't tell her (he didn't get rich by being a complete fool). The problem was, she couldn't remember exactly what the speakers were, and she told me "the name starts with "W", and they're pyramid-shaped on top". I assumed she was talking about WATT-Puppys, since we figured out they were Wilsons. She said he got them used, which he did, so I told her a ballpark figure on what the going rate for used WATT-puppies were. She wasn't quite as upset after that, because she thought it would be worse.
Anyway, back to the party. The husband invites me up to listen to his system, and when we get to the top of the stairs, there stands a pair of MAXX2s! Unfortunately, Megan was close enough to hear the gasp escape my mouth, but somehow I managed to evade telling her just how far off the mark I was price-wise.
Ok, sorry for rambling. The sound:
First, they were driven by a BIG pair of vintage Threshold class A monoblocks, can't remember the model #, and a matching Threshold preamp. No problem w/electronics, in other words.
The bass was impressive. Clear, tight, punchy, decent timbre. The tweeter was equally clear, but WAY too bright. Kind of piercing to be truthful, definitely not pleasant. The midrange was horrible, to the point of not being able to recognize instrument timbres, and losing so much definition on vocals that words were almost not understandable. Sorry, but Ella Fitzgerald's diction is not in the least bit indistinct! The effect was very much like the midrange drivers were wired deliberately out-of-phase for some sadistic reason.
No, the room was far from ideal. Big, but too long and too narrow, and not quite big enough for the MAXX2s. It would take a LONG time, and a lot of adjustment and treatment to correct the audible problems. I'm not entirely sure based on the 3 listening sessons (3 different days even) that all the issues were able to be overcome.
My wife and I both agreed that our much more modest system at home actually sounded much better than the MAXX2s, at least under those conditions. There's a lot to be said for speaker placement, and taking time to find not just distance and toe-in, but exactly which orientation in the room (long wall or short wall, etc.), and stands or no stands, and how high, when a pair of Clements 206di floorstanders driven by (well tweaked) vintage NAD electronics can not only sound better, but walk all over something that costs many, many times more.
That said, even though the 206di speakers are under $1000 for a pair, I'm convinced Mr. Clements is a true genius, because little money or lotta money, those speakers are amazing!
You made me laugh. I have a friend just like yours. But he wants
to own a pair of X-1 Grand Slam's.
I agree with Mr. Hardesty that Wilson's are overpriced for their performance, but I also think that he is over-the-top with his Wilson criticisms. After reading him, you'd expect Wilsons to sound broken. I've had a good listen to the WP7 and I thought it sounded great. There may have been a bit of fatness in the bass, but that made for a pleasing effect on live recordings.So, I thinks it's worthwhile to read AP to get a different perspective, but make sure you listen for yourself.
persuasive arguments for the validity of some of Mr. Hardesty's writings. I also have seen few if any critical reviews of equipment in the major audio magazines nor do I remember reading equipment comparisons. I think I'm going to keep an open mind regarding APJ until I've read more of Mr. Hardesty's journals.
Len
...you can decide.Listen to them for yourself.
The comments about their design and measurements may be valid, but if the speakers still sound great - who cares?
IIRC, Hardesty didn't evaluate their musical performance, only their design.
Hardesty, along with Aczel and Salvatore have to bash Stereophile, TAS and the big audio manufacturers to get anyone to notice them.
IMO, they all have about as much credibility as the supermarket tabloids you see at the checkout counter with their sensational headlines. Same kind of journalism.
That's sad because I used to know Hardesty.
He was part owner of a high end shop in Huntington Beach called Haven and Hardesty in the mid-1970s. He was the guy who first introduced me to TAS and high end audio.
hardest IS tending to follow in the wrong footseps.
...regards...tr
with the exact same thread and posts and HiFiTommy defending the Wilsons. That's OK, people either like something or don't.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: