Wilson Audio Sabrina X Reviewed ! WOW

I have to say that I tend to read audio equipment reviews, especially those of expensive equipment, with a grain of salt.

I had a chance to hear the new SabrinaX speakers recently while I was auditioning DACs. The SabrinaXs were powered by a Simaudio Moon 700i integrated amp. I brought along my Pro-ject streamer and Qutest DAC for comparing to other DACs. The SabrinaXs certainly sounded good and probably were very good on ’audiophile’ attributes such as bass extension, imaging, placement of instruments and voices, etc. BUT, I continued listening to the same music after I got home through my Monitor Audio Silver 300 speakers and consciously had the surprising thought that I didn’t feel like I was missing anything listening at home versus listening via the SabrinaXs at the store. The MA Silver 300s are 1/9 of the price of the SabrinaXs. In fact, if you blindfolded me, I’m not entirely sure which of the two speakers I would prefer even if cost were not a consideration.

Don’t get me wrong. I have heard high priced speakers that I would LOVE to own if I had the money and the space in my home (i.e., a separate music listening wing of my house. Haha). The Martin-Logan CLSs (now the CLX) comes to mind as one memorable example.

I’ve been lucky enough to live in 4 major US cities on both East and West Coasts and have been able to hear a good amount of high priced audio equipment. Perhaps I’m a bit more jaded than others about how good high priced equipment is "supposed" to sound.

The drivers in the Monitor Audio Silver 300 will not have the resolutions of the ones on the Wilson.  Not only that, the Monitors drivers are aluminum and the Wilson are paper.  That alone should make a huge difference in sound. 

andy21,379 posts06-30-2021 5:35pm

If you can't afford the Wilson Alexx V or XVX's... this is your lucky day !
 
https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-sabrinax-loudspeaker

That's basically a set of ScanSpeak drivers that you can buy from Madisound for about $1K.

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Did not think you were allowed to make such posts...?
Considering what  folks have been through and all, this past year, 
DIY might  gain interest. 
Budgets for audio hobby  may have taken 2nd place in  folks priorities. 
(for me its always #1,,,,)

Calvinsndhobbes,

those monitor audios measure pretty good but I have never heard them. Anyway the differences I hear between good affordable speakers and good expensive speakers can be subtle if both are well engineered (this is the key). 
The monitor audio has a pretty noisy box compared to the Sabrina X. But at moderate listening volumes honestly you might not notice. My guess is if you really cranked both these speakers the wilsons would start to pull away. Assuming the room and gear were up to the task. 

@james633 I appreciate hearing your thoughts on the sound quality of good affordable speakers and good expensive speakers. As with any product, the marginal improvements with audio must also get smaller and smaller as you go up in price. My comments are really only based on my own listening preferences which are at pretty moderate listening volumes. Another possible factor is that my current room (300 sq. ft in a hexagonal shape) seems to sound pretty good with only minimal acoustic tuning and perhaps better than some listening rooms at audio stores.

I did listen to 11 pairs of speakers including a set of last-gen Monitor Audio Gold 200 speakers that I missed out on before getting the Silver 300s so I do know that they must fit my listening preferences pretty well. I was just personally a bit surprised that the SabrinaXs were not clearly better sounding given the large price difference. I will say that I heard Wilson Watt/Puppies a long time ago and those sounded somewhat sterile to me in sound. Perhaps the Wilson sound is just not my cup of tea.