Mixn4him,
"New" is a relative term. New to me. Newer than the last time I demoed Wilson's. New to Art Dudley and even "new" as in the tuning process the company applies as described by Dave Wilson in his interview with Mr. Dudley.
Maybe the "newer" Wilson's are not really that different than the "older" models, but if set-up is so sensitive, why do showrooms I have visited around the country have such a hard time making one of their signature products sound good enough that I could enjoy them or even consider purchase? And I am not the only one. In one, I will call it a medium-sized squarish showroom, I was standing with three other shoppers and we demoed a variety of musical cuts and styles comparing a pair of B&W speakers (802D I think) with Classe electronics to Wilson WATT/Puppy 8's driven by large VTL amps, and there was no question which set everyone preferred, The B&W and Classe, mostly based on the B&W's engaging midrange. The Wilson's were lively and accurate, but just not very musical. I have heard VTL gear sound very good with Avalon and Harbeth speakers, so had to "blame" the Wilson's in that instance, or perhaps it was just a matching issue or the set up was 1/2" off.
So lets just say that enjoying Wilson speakers is a new thing for me, and apparently for Art Dudley and some other posters here too. Interestingly, at the recent show I attended, a very similar B&W/Classe system to the one described above was on hand in one of the rooms. The Sophia/Audio Research set up in another room was better. The Sasha/AR set up in a third room completely blew my mind.
Maybe as you suggest "set up" is the operative term. I still think there is something fundamentally different going on with the speakers themselves.
