Home Entertainment Show in Los Angeles

Was at the show on Friday only and saw it all 3 or 4 times.Best of show ? Close but I'll give it to the Joseph & Moscode room with 2nd place to Channel Island and VSA. Most unusual ? The Zu room. These speakers do some things marvelously and other things not so well but for all that I sat there totally involved in the music (and they had big variety) for an hour. Another odd speaker Studio Electric was a must hear.

Macrojack makes some very good points IMHO. He probably forgets that Wilson caters to the buyer who makes $1 Million a year or more. So $30K is pretty much chump change to these guys. Not sure why they are only $30K for the 8's and $135K for the Alexandria's. Probably could charge $200K for the 8's and $500K for the Alexandria's. OOps that's for the 12's and the Alexandria version X next year.

I'm surprised no one has pointed out the big difference between the $1500 my hypothetical Honda dealer makes on the Accord versus the more than $10,000 the Wilson dealer brings down for selling W/P 8's. That is, of course the biggest difference between the comparative pricing structures and I think it argues strongly for the factory direct marketing model. If you were to buy those $30,000 Wilsons wholesale, they might cost you $18,000 and that's less than 4 times what they are worth.

Macrojack,......... it's volume. I'm sure Wilson could slash the price of their speakers if they sold more of them. They will never sell a huge volume of them....there aren't that many audiophiles. Every family has a car...some families have three or more cars. The same thing has happened with televisions and computers...sell a zillion of them and the price drops.

The speakers are worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for them. To you and me they are not worth it, but I'm sure Wilson has a list of clients that feel differently.

Inventory your own system, then tell any person that listens to music on a mass market Best Buy type system what you paid for it, if you have audiophile grade stuff, they'll surely tell you your rig isn't worth what you paid for it.

It's all a matter of personal opinion.

There simply is no way on earth that the cost of a pair of Watt Puppy 8's (might be 8A's before I finish this sentence) could possibly approach that of a loaded Accord.

When did Wilson declare itself the "Honda of the audio world"? Wilson is a high-end speaker manufacturer inside of a fringe hobby. Honda is an international manufacturer of mass-produced automobiles, dirt bikes, and generators. Wilson's value is not defined by price, which is the reason it will never speak to the Honda customer, whose every purchase is reasoned accordingly--yes, pun intended. These are two completely different markets, two completely different products, two completely different customers. There is no basis for comparison between the two, and there is certainly no bridge of common value perception that exists between them.