2. speakers
  3. 192666-406

Stereophile review of the new Wilson Watt/Puppy

I received my copy of the latest Stereophile yesterday and was curious to see what Martin Collums had to say about them, even though I would take it with a grain of salt, knowing that he had owned them in the past. He's still one of the reviewers that I consider to be most technically informed and balanced in his reviews.

I'm starting this thread because I want to know if others found his conclusions as confusing as I did. He says that the speakers have deep powerful bass, great detail, wonderful dynamic range, and are able to play very loud without breakup. 

However, after all of that, he concludes that they are better for jazz and orchestral and perhaps a bit reticent for pop and rock. This made no sense to me, especially for a $40.000 speaker. I am curious about the opinions of anyone else who has read the review. 

128x128roxy54
ritter06
40 posts
 

I listened to the V’s and WWP back to back- both sounded great. I would be happy with either but on that day the WWP’s sounded “better” (different rooms- but both nothing special btw- glass, open sided with no treatment ). 

YMMV

aewarren
667 posts
 

Too refined for rock music.

daledeee1's avatar
daledeee1
586 posts
 

I can't afford them but remember what a stir they made when they came out, and maybe $10,000.  I thought Sasha Daw was the replacement for WP. Out of the loop.

toddalin's avatar
toddalin
296 posts
 

I understand what he's getting at and see where he's coming from.

If you look at the FR you see that they have fairly smooth extension into the bass frequencies with the peak ~70Hz declining below that and from there up to ~500 Hz.  The extension works well with the suggested genre of music.  But nowhere do the bass frequencies exceed/meet the rest of the response.

 

For rock you want a solid bass between ~70-300Hz and omitting floor bounce, this portion of the band is going to be louder, typically by several dB, than the remainder of the response.

mikhailark
341 posts
 

I listen to primarily rock and Wilsons never impressed me. No, I do not crank to 11 some JBL and rock is actually challenging for many speakers. Much easier to voice for high quality vocal with couple of instruments than to less than stellar recording of Zeppelin.

And they don’t seem to measure particularly well either. No matter what but $40K speaker MUST measure well.

More to discover