Wilson Speakers & Reviewers

Yes, I was bitten, as a WP-6 owner. And as I remember (the 90s and 2000s), the back pages of Stereophile were LOADED with people selling their Wilson’s.

I reported what I heard -in line with others here, but you refuse to acknowledge that.

Yes, other opinions matter, just to make sure I’m not hearing things. With so many variables in our systems, it's the right thing to do.

@jonnie22 - I don't take any issue with you reporting what you heard, just with reporting what you *assume*, yet cannot possibly *know*, i.e. that "... people who like Wilson are simply not aware of other brands...".   Such statements simply demean people who have, indeed, heard many, many brands, and still prefer their Wilsons.  You don't like them, fine, no problem, many don't.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on the subject of making one's own sonic preferences contingent upon other's opinions.  I'm afraid the concept of "making sure i'm not hearing things" doesn't make sense to me in this context.  I hear what I hear, that's what is real to me.  I can't perceive what *you* or anyone else perceives, in the way you perceive it, but even should my preferred sound drive the audiophile masses screaming from my listening room in horror, it would have no affect on my perceptions, and certainly wouldn't make my perceptions *wrong*.  In the context of personal enjoyment, perceptions cannot be wrong, by definition.  To me, that's the right thing to do.

YMMV

I've auditioned virtually every high end speaker available in the US market over the past 20 years--and some have come close to the overall Wilson presentation for me for various reasons (Eggleston, Rockport, KEF, Revel, Vandersteen, YG, Lawrence Audio, Raidho) and others have proven superior to me (MBL) but require a much bigger investment in ancillary equipment to be driven properly.
However, I'm with other writers who utilize Wilson as their reference in addition to those mentioned above like Jacob Heilbrunn, Jason Victor Serinus, Edgar Kramer, Anthony Cordesman (one of 2 references) and manufacturers like Audio Research and Dan D'Agostino both of whom used Wilsons to voice their equipment (although ARC currently uses mainly Sonus Faber for obvious reasons ). Wilsons are by no means everyone's favorite and I understand the reasons why anyone could prefer any of the above brands and many more. BUT--they are a popular choice in the high end among audio reviewers and the buying public and like all popular choices, they will be subject to sometimes intense criticism by those who prefer other brands. That's life.  

Cordesman, for several years now, said that Legacy are the best speakers he’s heard. And never mentions his references, so we don’t know what he’s using.

Kramer is not U.S./Canadian based -the area (of reviewers) I was referring to. But we can add Serinus and Heilbrunn to the two I mentioned. So that’s 4 out of about 150.

But even here, were Wilson’s ever good ? Didn’t Fremer last year say the Alexx was "easily the best" they ever made ? That means all before were "easily the worse".

That means Heilbrunn, Serinus and Fremer suffered for years WITHOUT KNOWING until the Alexx !!

And that was my situation. As WP-6 owner, *I* didn’t know they were sub-par, in sound. Until I heard other systems (carefully) that opened my mind. Usually in high-end, if someone doesn’t own a brand you have, they say, "don’t own ’em. but they get good reports and (maybe) sounded good at a few shows", etc.

But Wilson is one of a few brands (in the history of high-end) to have detractors. Zu did early on too, with their deviances from tonal neutrality. But there aren’t many others.

Finally, things change. In the current ’buzz’, horns, waveguides and Tekton are hot right now. Any cone-speaker of the past -not just Wilson, are an endangered species, IMO.

     I had WP 8 for a couple years.  Set up was CRITICAL, when they say every 1/2" counts they mean it.  I also found that I needed "mellow" equipment and cables to counter the dynamic, forward presentation.  They could be considered bright with bad silver cables and edgy gear.  Once all of the appropriate ancillaries were in place I found that music was dynamic, detailed and fun to listen to.  They had great imaging and pretty good depth.  Music was nicely detached from the speakers.  I never tried them with tubes, but I think they would have been really nice.  I loved them for a couple years, but I came to the conclusion that they were too forward (un-natural) in the presentation.  I switched to a Magico S5M1 which resolves a little more detail, sounds more neutral (to me) and are much easier to set up, but they don't have the dynamic slam of the WP8s even with the 10" woofers vs the 8".