|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
192.254.30.2
In Reply to: Wilson/AudioPerfectionist posted by scriabin on February 15, 2007 at 09:54:47:
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.
Follow Ups:
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.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: