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.
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.