Wilson Audio Sabrina . . . I'm smitten. Should I consider others?

@prof I wanted to love them. I purposely saved them for last. I am drawn to their look and finish. Partially my fault, it wasn’t a great audition. I didn’t bring any music. I had been relying on Tidal to stream and this showroom was located where service was spotty. Also, I felt like I sat in the near field (not sure I used that term correctly), so everything was off. Without getting a good read on the them, I can’t really say. It would have been a tall order to surpass what I heard from the Sabrinas, but I was so hoping.

kcpellethead,
FWIW:

I've auditioned the Devore speakers numerous times now, and have found that the right distance is pretty critical.  I have to be 8 feet back at least, at which point they snap in to focus both tonally, coherence, and soundstaging.  Sit closer and it seems the sound starts to compromise - the highs start to roll off a bit, they are a bit less open and snappy, less coherent, etc.

I also love the way the Devore's look over many other techno-speakers.

@prof 

This disappoints me. The 0/96 were a mere 5' apart and the hot seat was about 5' away from them.  I knew it as soon as I took a seat, but that was all this room would allow.  Your response makes me feel like I should find a way to give them another shake before making a final decision.  Have you listened to the Wilson Sabrina?

The DeVore are some of the most colored loudspeakers out there. Their top-end in-room response is dramatically shelved down, and their prominent midrange is riding everything else. (https://www.stereophile.com/content/devore-fidelity-orangutan-o96-loudspeaker-measurements). They will be more suitable as a guitar amp then a hi-fi speaker. To claim that they are more open or transparent than a Magico is a bridge too far (several bridges, actually).

However, obviously, they do appeal to some, and you may very well like them.

sciencecop,

Sure, the Devores don’t measure as linear as some other speakers. (Though not as bad as some either). But....

Note that even JA after measuring and then listening in his place, stated:

Even though I knew about the low-treble resonance and the lively enclosure, these problems were considerably less audible than I was expecting. Only with recordings of solo acoustic piano did they get in the way of the music by producing noticeable coloration, the piano’s midrange sounding uneven, with some notes obscured. But with well-recorded rock and classical vocal recordings, the measured problems seemed to step into the background, letting me appreciate the O/96’s full-range, evenly balanced sound and superb clarity.

And that’s what I hear from the Devores. They do an amazingly canny job of combining an old-school like richness and warmth, with an open and sparkly sounding top end. The result, to my ears, is that many instruments actually end up sounding more convincing through the Devores than on many other speakers,.   I usually find reproduced sound reductive - most acoustic sources sound thinned out and electronic.   The Devores seem to "give back" some of the heft and body in an instrument.   I played plenty of the same tracks, with instruments of many types, through speakers like Magico, Paradigm Persona, Focal, Revel, and many others, and it was through the Devores that I often got a "that’s a real acoustic guitar or piano...and especially drum set" impression. They also have a great "boogie" factor where the rhythm of whatever a drummer is doing just reaches out and grabs me. In contrast, a lot of rhythmic music I played on, for instance, the Magico A3 (sure to measure more linear), just sort of "sat there" in a less involving way.   On many speakers, acoustic guitars can have a "strings with no body" effect, like the guitar strings are just being plucked in thin air.  Whereas the same tracks on the Devores sound like they strings are actually resonating the body of the guitar, more like I hear in the presence of a real guitar.  That kind of thing. (How much this has to do with the big woofer/wide baffle design aiming more sound at the listener, I don't know).


One can certainly say "ok, so you like colored sound," but it’s not as simple as that. I don’t actually like obviously-colored sound, in terms of coloration being subjectively obvious. I’m looking for an organic "natural" and realistic sound to my ears. And there are aspects of the Devore speakers that seem to re-create some of the convincing aspects of real life acoustic sounds that I find missing in many other speaker systems.

(It’s sort of why some people like what some horn, or lowther-based speakers do. Yes they are "colored" in some ways, but in other ways they are reproducing some of the aspects of real sounds that can go missing in other types of speakers. So it’s not "I love coloration" so much as "I find THIS aspect of real sounds important and THIS speaker seems to reproduce that aspect more correctly, more convincingly, than others).