Amir,
Your sonic comparison between the WP7s and WP8s is difficult to dispute. I recently listened to both, side-by-side, on the same system, with the same program material, in one of the great listening rooms in the country. I acknowledge all of the differences that you described. However, like Hikejohn, I feel that the WP8s are not the most emotionally engaging musical transducers. In fact, despite the undeniable superiority of the WP8s over the WP7s in smoothness, extension and resolution, I consistently found myself more involved with the music when listening to the WP7s. I found this to be particularly true with vocal material, and female vocals most consistently. The spine tingling rush elicited by listening to certain Anna Netrebkho, k. d. Lang and Sarah Vaughan recordings that seem so inevitable when listening to the WP7s did not happen with the WP8s. I find this very difficult to understand at an intellectual level but its as clear as can be for me at the emotional level.
Perhaps, I should mention that none of the other people that have listened with me during these sessions seemed to share my responses. Everybody else felt the better sound of the WP8s connected them at least as well with the music. So, what does this mean? Certainly it suggests that the enjoyment of recorded music is a pretty complicated process. It also suggests that better sound may not always yield more musical enjoyment. It most emphatically suggests that everyone has their own aesthetic sense and that this, in the end, is the most important factor governing our enjoyment of recorded music.
