Wilson Sophia2s demand better than AYRE V5xe, so..

My local high end shop has an open house every year. In Oct. 2006 the system that blew me away was a a SME turntable driving a VTL signal chain with VTL reference monoblocks driving a pair of Wilson Alexandria V2s. The sound was phenomenal to the point of causing sane men to consider a second mortgage to put this system in their house. This past April I went again, and this time the Wilson MAXX's were being driven by a stack of the new Ayres that are carved out of solid billets of aluminum. Although they sounded excellent by most standards, the VTLs of the year before totally spoiled me. The Ayre chain sounded like electronically reproduced music. I could go home to my much cheaper system at home and not feel like I was missing a whole lot. The VTL chain from the year before made me forget all about the equipment; my jaw was too busy dropping because it sounded like the Duke Ellington big band was in the listening room.

I don't know how much of a house sound VTL has, and the top end monoblocks (such as the Siegfried) have a lot of solid state logic controlling and guiding the tube circuits to extend their linearity, speed, and consistency, but there are currently some high powered VTL monoblocks in the A-gon classifieds in the $5K range that should make your Sophias get up and sing, bark, and boogie. If you could find something from VTL's Reference line on the used market at your target price ($10K), I don't think you would regret it or want to move on to something else for a long time.

Johny,
please don't take this the wrong way, but how can you be sure that what you heard you can attirbute to the amps and not to the speakers. not defending Ayre in any way, but just curious. Because you did hear different speakers with different amps. let's not forget that the Alexandrias cost about 3 times as much as Maxx? is this even a valid comparison? You have heard 2 different systems 6 months apart.

Besides the fact that sonic memory is short, these were totally different system. Were they even in the same room?

Hmm...not a real fair comparison, to say the least.

Johnnyb53,

I agree with you. Hearing Wilson on very good tube gear will leave a lasting impression. VTL has a lot of synergy with Wilson. I can tell you that Ayre is not the greatest match with any wilson speaker. I tried my MXR with wilson and it was to much of a good thing.

Audphil1, to address your objections:

I have heard the entire Wilson line from the Sophias on up, and some of the models several times. They definitely have a common sonic signature and I find that the biggest difference from one model to the next concerns scalability and how big a room they can energize with their sonic signature. Secondly, I heard the Alexandria and Maxx in the same room. Third, I don't really squint and concentrate on how a given system *sounds* so much as monitor how it makes me *feel*, because it's that connection between the music played and how it affects me emotionally that reveals what a signal chain really has going on.

The Alexandria may be 3 times the price of the MAXX, but that's because of the principle of the law of diminishing returns. On a lot of music, and each optimized for its room, the two will sound very similar. Actually, since I heard them both in the same room, the advantage should have gone to the MAXX because the Alexandria was too much for that room size.

I have listened to too much gear and too many types of music over too many decades to have any doubts as to what I heard and what made the first demonstration so compelling and the second one so "ehhh." The VTLs rule and are a great match for the Wilsons. The Ayres by comparison are placeholders.

I'm not too concerned about the time that elapsed between the two demonstrations (which were actually more like 16 months apart) because I can recall vividly how I *felt* when I heard the two systems. The demo with the VTLs was two years ago and I can STILL recall how I felt emotionally when I heard it, which is to say, the most exhilarated I've EVER felt in 40 years of pursuing high end audio. The demonstration with the Ayre amplification, by contrast, was like watching a movie that's a good time-passer, but which you forget about as soon as you walk out of the theater. The Alexandria powered by the VTL Siegfried Reference Monoblocks was Sir Laurence Olivier doing Hamlet; the MAXX's powered by Ayre was Die Hard 2.

Johnnyb53,

What preamp were they using with the Siegfrieds?