WILSON AUDIO/ cost vs. value

Daves' problem is not price gouging per se. His problem is there are companies who can do it in a smaller box for less. He thumbed his nose at audiophiles not really caring about us. Now of course the chickens have come home to roost. The market is shrinking and the competiton is growing. My local dealer sold Wilson's strickly on reputation. He threw his best products at Wilson. Yet the room was always dark. No one was listening.
I resent any notion that we have to support the industry. Dave is running a business. It's his job to bring to market a product that people want and can afford. If he can't do that he will go out of business. What is amazing to me is how certain reviewer's seem to bend over backwards to promote Wilson. The real problem for Dave is most of us can put together a world class system for $60k.

Proof of YMMV: my Audience cables sound dynamic, uncompressed and completely wonderful throughout the spectrum.

I'll estimate that the Wilson demo I heard recently had about $200k worth of top everything (in a good room)... and I didn't feel my home system was really far behind. In fact, I wasn't envious.

Funny hobby, huh?

Bob Wood
http://www.GreatHomeTheater/stereo.html

The new Watt/Puppy 8, look very interesting.. I have seen they supposedly have corrected a lot with this speaker, whatever that means.

However, in my experience I heard a Pair of some Grand slamms in 2000' so not sure what version they were up to at that point. They were in a room I would say was about 20 ft X 25 ft, decent room treatments on display. I don't remember the front end equipment, however I do remember the the VTL Tube mono blocks hooked to them, which were 30,000 a pair or something, and I think the speakers were over 60,000.

The sound? Gotta be honest I walked behind the speaker to see if something was wired wrong(out of phase) or off all together. Well they were hooked up just fine, sound was very seperated, very boring. These were trade in's used I believe.

What was funny is then I went into the new area, and they had avantgarde Duo's hooked up to a 40 watt intergrated amp that cost about 700.00, the sound blew the doors off the wilsons? We mentioned this to the sale's guy, his response was " Yeah, we gotta get those out of here soon or we won't get rid of those wilsons on trade. "

So back to the original post from my limited experience, would I pay for the Value of the wilson at that point, probably not. But some will, and what would it come to if we did not have Wilson speakers in some of the Mansions around the world? But maybe the mistake was hooking VTL up to them, from my research, Audio Research gear is suppose to be the best with wilson.

Undertow,

Tell me about your research. I just don't get what you are saying. I wonder what speaker VTL use to voice their products. You should give them a call. Maxx IIs. What cable manufacturer uses Wilson (probably one of many), Transparent. Has A Wilson / VTL demo won best sound at any show? Wilson sounds great with many different systems. Audio Research has a different house sound to VTL. Both are great products. Now people are using Lamm w. Wilsons including some Wilson employees. Wilson speakers show everything upstream and offer the user the ability to get different types of sound depending on the kind of equipment that is being used.

Nutella,
maybe you didnt read the topic of the post, cost vs value, with a focus on profit margin. the topic of the utah business show delt completely with that. i am sorry you hate wilson and i am sorry you felt it was a waste of your time, i guess you shouldnt have watched the whole thing. but if you didnt watch the whole thing, then maybe it didnt waste your time and you were just looking for something negative to say. it wasnt a documentary, it was a local business show that could have featured farm equipment... the point is it focused on dave wilson and his company. regardless of what you think of the price of the speakers, you must respect him and get a feeling that he is truly doing this for the love of sound. if you dont, you are blinded by your own closed mind.