A brutal review of the Wilson Maxx

Well, finally, an honest review of a Wilson product. I have listened to several versions of the Watt/Puppy, the Grand Slams, the MAXX and the Sophia and I have never been able to understand what the excitement is all about. It must be the cost because it certainly is not the performance.

hi,

Seems like a honest review to me. There are a lot of products out there that are overpriced and don't deliver the goods.

The trick is to find the ones with outstanding price/performace ratio as defined by you.

good listening,

Larry

I beleve he owns Vandersteen 5A's.

I respect, but I don't particularly like Wilson speakers. That said, the "review" was unusually biased. Hardesty clearly has preconceived notions of what constitutes a good speaker and he slams Wilson for not following his lead. His main points are that the MAXX is not tonally/phase accurate and that they represent a poor dollar value. I agree with his first point, but I don't see it as a fatal flaw since there are many truly great speakers out there that are not phase coherent and have a tailored frequency response (BBC monitors, Sonus Faber, Proac, Monitor Audio Studio Series, etc.) As far as value goes, unless you can afford them, you're really not in any position to judge whether the MAXX is a good value or not. His comments about Wilson catering to the carriage trade misses the mark. Personally I can't think of any speaker or electronic component over $10,000 that isn't aimed at that market.

I don't find it clearly stated in the "review", but how many people think Hardesty actually listened to the speakers as opposed to simply reading the other publications' reviews?

I don't mind if people don't like Wilson speakers, but I wonder how many of the people who bash them have heard them in their own room??? People who make claims about, or denegrate a product based on how they sounded in a SHOWroom or at RMAF or CES really don't have enough information about a product to make intelligent comments.

I have only heard Wilson products in those environments, so I have no opinion about them. I will reserve judgement until I can get a proper level of experience.