A Bright Pair of Watt Puppys

Wow. What a response. I love this forum!

First off, I was referring to the baby sleeping. That was a joke.

Yes, these speakers do tend torward the bright side. But that's ok. They reveal everything and sometimes this is because they are brighter. Maybe I'm wrong but my guess is the human ear is far more sensitive to higher pitches than low (remember, I have a baby) and that may well be the reason why these speaks sound more detailed and crystal clear. Perhaps the tweeter is dialed up a bit relative to the other drivers to achieve this "analytical" detail and just perhaps a warmer pair of speakers lacks this detail in the tradeoff. It's subjective.

The upshot is simply that your Vivaldi Lute Concerto sounds like it's happening in your living room. The downside seems to be that when friends come over and crank up Sneaker Pimps (ie. dance music), the speakers sound louder than does their bass and many may actually run from the dance floor.

Per the kind instructions above I have been playing a bit today. The speakers now sit within a foot of the back wall and about 2' from the sides. Bass response seems to have improved. To be be sure, they're toed in to the sitting position. Man these things image great. Gota love that. However, to feed my bass addiction I am seriously considering adding a REL B1 sub in the corner. From what I've read these speakers could really use it and Rel seems to be the company that make fast, tight and integrated bass. If this doesn't help me, then perhaps I'll invest in some old JBL's from Audiogon, you know the one's with the 10" white low freq driver. Just kidding. But I think I'm making progress.

Back to the baby. Thanks for all your help evryone.
/Lee

Ok a couple of things.. Try keeping you Bat amp on for 3 days straight...ideally 7 days and see if that smooths things out. 7 days on made my Audio Research D400 MkII sound like butter! Becareful if you have aftermarket power cables on.. you might consider changing them all back to stock and slowly introducing them to make sure they aren't added that extra edge... (been there done that...)

Next, Read your Wilson manual about the spikes length between the WATT and Puppy and change the spikes (1 size) so the tweater shoots a little higher (aka over your head).

Treating 1st order reflection points will help a little, don't forget to either treat the floor or ceiling at the 1st order reflection points. This won't get rid of any brightness but it will clean it up even more (In case you were lacking any detail..... haha).

You could put some really warm tubes in your CDP, or switch to Audience or Cardas cables to warm it up.

Keep your Grills on the WP6 that will help as they were designed to be run with grills. The WP7's reduced that brightness and the WP8's reduced it one more time with the Maxx II tweaters.

Stick with the Wilson positioning method! They were designed to avoid room interactions by projecting at you! and as a result the cleanness and detail causes you to crank it up..

I've never met a Wilson owner that listens softly to their rig! Your addiction to volumn will continue... if you use a dB meter you will find that you can't tolerate other brand systems at that volumn level.. you really are listening a lot louder to your WP setup.. (Maxx's can damage your hearing they play so cleanly to extreme dB's!)

I had to get rid of my Lamm amps to get some more current for bass control! They will take anything you can throw at them like Magnepans.

Mcrheist said it best.. crap (overcompressed poor mastering) in, sounds even worse out on a Wilson system.

The room is not two small I have WP7 and a Watch Dog in a 12x16 room, I use extreme bass absorbtion methods because I like to crank it... WP's work great nearfield since they were designed as recording monitors originally.

Nice setup! and later as you upgrade preamps you will get even more detail out of you Wilsons!
Chris

Leemincy: The Rel's are tight but might not provide enough output compared to your WP 6's. Check out JL Audio Subs or James Subwoofer for some tight bass... I have a DD15 and even at it's tightest setting it's not fast enough.

My new JL Audio Fathom F113 is pretty impressive but not quiet the output of my Wilson Watch dog.

Or a little 280lb Watch Dog sub for a perfect match.....

Thanks Cytocycle. That's pretty much my synopsis of Wilson as well. Especially the changes from 6 to 7 to 8. And garbage in garbage out adage. So true. All good advice.

Daryl at Wilson has me switching out a few resistors that drive the tweeter and mid, ultimately to increase resistance to these two drivers, lowering hi-bandoutput a bit. The Caddock film resistors are pretty easy to get on the internet. Will try this as well as several room treatments. And My Bat amp is almost always on. (Stock tip for ya: PG&E). Takes at least 1.5 hours to reach crit temp. But this makes a huge difference.

Funny thing about the Wilsons. They soud louder and I think this is because of a 4ohm load. Compared to my Hales speakers (at 8ohm) these things crank at relatively low volume, which is ofcourse what drains the amp. I find myself listening louder (and my wife bitching louder as well.)

Ironically, I met the owner of Genesis at CES a few days ago and he told me my amp is in fact too small to control the bass in these speakers. I was amazed.

I was really impressed with Verity Audio Parsifal Ovations and wish I had known about the Sarastros over at the Mirage (someone said).

By the by, do you employ digital xover for the watchdog? Rel allows this and also has a high current cable that comes directly from your power amp, same as to the Wilson's. It recommends this format in fact.

/Lee