Wilson Audio Sabrina . . . I'm smitten. Should I consider others?

sciencecop,

Sure, the Devores don’t measure as linear as some other speakers. (Though not as bad as some either). But....

Note that even JA after measuring and then listening in his place, stated:

Even though I knew about the low-treble resonance and the lively enclosure, these problems were considerably less audible than I was expecting. Only with recordings of solo acoustic piano did they get in the way of the music by producing noticeable coloration, the piano’s midrange sounding uneven, with some notes obscured. But with well-recorded rock and classical vocal recordings, the measured problems seemed to step into the background, letting me appreciate the O/96’s full-range, evenly balanced sound and superb clarity.

And that’s what I hear from the Devores. They do an amazingly canny job of combining an old-school like richness and warmth, with an open and sparkly sounding top end. The result, to my ears, is that many instruments actually end up sounding more convincing through the Devores than on many other speakers,.   I usually find reproduced sound reductive - most acoustic sources sound thinned out and electronic.   The Devores seem to "give back" some of the heft and body in an instrument.   I played plenty of the same tracks, with instruments of many types, through speakers like Magico, Paradigm Persona, Focal, Revel, and many others, and it was through the Devores that I often got a "that’s a real acoustic guitar or piano...and especially drum set" impression. They also have a great "boogie" factor where the rhythm of whatever a drummer is doing just reaches out and grabs me. In contrast, a lot of rhythmic music I played on, for instance, the Magico A3 (sure to measure more linear), just sort of "sat there" in a less involving way.   On many speakers, acoustic guitars can have a "strings with no body" effect, like the guitar strings are just being plucked in thin air.  Whereas the same tracks on the Devores sound like they strings are actually resonating the body of the guitar, more like I hear in the presence of a real guitar.  That kind of thing. (How much this has to do with the big woofer/wide baffle design aiming more sound at the listener, I don't know).


One can certainly say "ok, so you like colored sound," but it’s not as simple as that. I don’t actually like obviously-colored sound, in terms of coloration being subjectively obvious. I’m looking for an organic "natural" and realistic sound to my ears. And there are aspects of the Devore speakers that seem to re-create some of the convincing aspects of real life acoustic sounds that I find missing in many other speaker systems.

(It’s sort of why some people like what some horn, or lowther-based speakers do. Yes they are "colored" in some ways, but in other ways they are reproducing some of the aspects of real sounds that can go missing in other types of speakers. So it’s not "I love coloration" so much as "I find THIS aspect of real sounds important and THIS speaker seems to reproduce that aspect more correctly, more convincingly, than others).

Listen, you can like what you like. We all love this hobby, and just like you I have spent the last 40 years listening, and buying, hi-fi gear. I also spent many years in school (and work), learning about the phenomenons that allow us to enjoy music in our home (Electrical and mechanical engineering). It makes it easy to understand what it is that I am hearing. It is actually quite simple, once you understand how things work, and my subjective assessments usually correlate to the objective one.
You can quote JA, saying that:

“…with recordings of solo acoustic piano they get in the way of the music by producing noticeable coloration, the piano’s midrange sounding uneven, with some notes obscured”

and then claim that: 

“With the Devores that (you) often got "that’s a real acoustic guitar or piano...”

I am sure you heard a piano before, so have I. My impressions are with JA, and the extremely poor measurements of these speakers (It is rare of JA to have such harsh criticism). Why we reach different conclusions is a whole nother matter, but I do know that mine exist in reality. In regards to the Devore, I think that JA is extremely polite, in my book, if you can’t do a piano, and the Devore certainly cannot, you can’t really do hi-fi. Yes, you may be able to do Rock and such, but so is a $2000 JBL, or the horrendous (sorry) Devialet phantom, they will “jump” at you like nothing else, and if that is what you like, go for it.

@sciencecop

Ha, love the screenname! If you’d read some of my input into other threads, e.g. my giving the skeptical case in the cables forum, you’d see people probably think I ought to have your screen name :-) If you think I’m arguing that measurements simply don’t matter, I’m not.

I am sure you heard a piano before, so have I.

Yup.

Grew up with, at one point, 4 pianos in our house. (Both parents music teachers/musicians, pianos accumulated from previous family etc). We all played.


I disagree that the Devore speakers "can’t do a piano." I got more of the sense of "real piano" from the Devore speakers from any number of other speakers I listened to, including ones I’m sure you would deem more accurate. (I especially got a more consistent sense of keys upon a resonating sounding board/body, vs the often "piano keys floating in space" effect on many systems).

Now, I’m not saying that "I am right" and that the Devore speakers are "simply better" in some way. Far from it. They certainly ARE compromised in ways, and even in some ways that make them *less accurate* with some piano recordings than another speaker. The problem is most speakers are compromised in some way, and worse, much of the whole reproduced sound chain is a series of compromises. So...we picks our compromises.

Of course some speakers will measure more accurate than others - depending on what you term "accurate."


But once we are talking about the life-like quality of reproduced sound, then it gets more subjective because people often focus on different things, have different criteria, and some speakers do X better, others may do Y. You may hear a system run with classic tube amps and hear it as "less real" because, maybe you focus on the softening of transients, less tight bass, etc. Whereas I may hear it as "more believable" because it sounds less mechanical, richer, softer, more organic, especially for voices.


Ideally, the most accurate-measuring speaker should produce the most accurately realistic sound. IF the recording chain has been controlled so you are starting with an accurate/natural recording.


But given we use our systems to listen to an utter mish-mash of source quality, and source type, THEN it may be the case that some cannily introduced deviations from measured accuracy could, for some listeners, make a greater number of recordings sound more "realistic" and believable. They may be "less accurate" in terms of a measurement goal, but "more accurate" to the listener’s perception in terms of life-like sound. (Or a speaker may emphasize doing something "better" in terms of life-like at the expense of something else - e.g. dynamics over flat frequency response, or some such trade off).


In terms of measurements, I’m sure the Magico A3 (once someone measures it) will look excellent, as most Magicos tend to measure.And yet when I played some well recorded drum tracks on the Magicos, and closed my eyes asking the "does it sound like real drums in front of me?"...they certainly sounded clean and detailed. But it didn’t give me a "real drums" impression. But those same tracks on the Devore speakers, eyes closed, and it just brought the opposite impression - "wow, does that ever capture something very real about what it’s like to sit in front of a drum set!" (Something I’ve had life-long experience listening to).

What I’m getting at is that you seem to be coming from a position where you want to say "What I like is accurate; what you like is colored. If you like colored sound, that’s fine. Just don’t pretend it’s accurate." Which if we are talking about measured accuracy that could be valid (though still with caveats).

And what I’m saying is that once we are talking about listener’s subjective impression of the believability of a system - the "accuracy" to aspects of real sound we are chasing - then the "what I like is accurate; what you like is inaccurate" doesn’t fly so much. Your own subjective impression of the realism of the system does not necessarily trump someone else’s as being "correct."


BTW, have you actually listened to the Devore speakers?

As John Atkinson has often opined in his measurements section, and as many speaker designers will tell you: measurements certainly CAN tell you quite a bit. But given lots of the complexity and variables involved,
you often can’t tell precisely how a speaker will sound and surprises still happen. As, for instance, JA mentions in his measurements section for the Devores - they did some things better in measurements than he would have expected (even given his decades and decades of measuring speakers he can’t simply predict what he’ll get just by knowing the speaker design), and while his measurements predicted *some* aspect of their sound, the Devores ultimately sounded more agreeable and less colored than he expected from his measurements.

Cheers.

In the end, buy what sounds best to YOUR ears.  We all hear differently and we all enjoy our systems differently.  One other thing to note...I find the final sound I enjoy is the synergy of the components, so it might be a good idea to experience the speakers driven by the same sort of amplifier you own, to get a better idea of how they will sound in your home.  I was fortunate enough to hear my speakers driven by my amp (before making the purchase), and have heard them driven by other (very high quality) amps, not as much to my liking.

@prof This is where it gets a bit complicated.

There is a reason you (and many audiophiles) are drawn to this (colored) type of sound; it has a lot to do with how we perceive loudness (see ’Fletcher–Munson’ curves). To compensate for the dynamic limitation of any hi-fi system, many loudspeakers are designed with a certain “boost” factor. It can be a port that makes the bass output more efficient than the rest of the frqs, or in case of the Devore or the Lowther type, the midrange. These can be very entertaining on some recording, but devastating on others. By essentially EQing the sound, you trick the mind to think it is real. The problem is that by doing so, you not only EQing and permanently change the nature of the recorded signal, you also decrease the dynamic range of the speakers (think “Loudness” button on an old Japanese receiver). There is a real price to pay for any of these artificial “excitements”. For instance; if you have a boosted bass, due to the way we perceive loudness (again, see Fletcher–Munson curve), as you increase the volume, the level of boost changes. I am sure you notice that on loud volume, ported systems linearity and resolution diminish (or maybe you didn’t ☹). Not to mention the increase of distortions, non-linearity, spectrum compression, group-delay and many other ill factors I don’t think you will want to be bothered with. Unlike real music, where a specific “boost” ONLY belong to certain instruments or sound "events" (kick drum, trumpet, etc.), in a loudspeaker, the contamination is across the board. It may work on a kick drum but will be a disaster on a human voice (and Piano and basically most acoustic instruments).

Of course, to some, this is what makes it fun, and finding the “right” ancillaries to work with these abnormalities is the essence of our hobby. But, whatever the results may be, ultimately, you are stuck with a very limited, and problematic, outcome. To many this is fine, and like I keep saying, IT IS FINE. BUT, to some, these deficiencies are detrimental to the joy of music listening.