WILSON AUDIO.....BIG NAME, BIG PRICE........ARE THEY THAT GOOD?

What you are going to get here is of course personal answers. But you set the bar fairly low. Good is not really good or excellent. But if you are asking are they good, yes, they are. Of course, we all have our own preferences.

Yes, I've never owned them, but I have many many hours of Wilson listening experience as I have a dealer that is five minutes away. Was going to purchase Sabrina's but got a deal on TAD E-1s that I could not pass up.

Wilson with the right amp and supporting cast can be very very good. In the end, you need to hear whatever model you decide to purchase and decide if you can give it a supporting cast that will make them sing. It is never about just component X, all need to work well together and the amp/speaker interface is very critical.

I’ve owned the Sophia 3 for a couple of years. Enjoyable yes, great no.  I’ve discovered afterwards far superior speakers such as the Lawrence audio double bass, cube audio Nenuphars and Soundkaos Vox3A. The sophia’s main weaknesses are a rather limited soundstage (they were installed by Wilson) and a tweeter that sounded metallic to my ears.  

Although speaker sound is of course a personal preference, I'll never forget the sound of a pair of WATTs (no puppies had been added yet) that were nearly randomly placed in a designer show house in NYC decades ago. I was astonished at how lifelike the "background music" piano sounded. I haven't owned any Wilson speakers, but if they're as good as their vollyballs I imagine they're worth it.

For the price, I prefer Rockports. Wilson’s sound a bit more clinical to my ear....

JeffV,
There is a pair of Tekton Encores on Audiogon for 5k right now.