A brutal review of the Wilson Maxx

Not to beat a dead horse, but I too wish that he would have given more review of the speakers and less review of the reviews.

I heard the Maxx last year hooked up to a $20k Meridian cdp, and the top of the line Halcro pre/power, and with very expensive Transparent cables everywhere. Total system price was well over $150k, and it sounded cold and unbalanced - terrible regardless of the money.

I've only heard one person whose opinion I trust tell me of a Wilson speaker sound good, and that was the same person who heard the aforementioned abomination of a system with me. A few months later he was at the Heathrow hi-fi show and heard them with Audio Research gear, and was very impressed. I'm not going to go out of my way to try and hear that combo.

Funny how no one has mentioned how fugly they are... that would end it for me before they were ever plugged in.

"unless you can afford them, you're really not in any position to judge whether the MAXX is a good value or not"

I can afford them. I have heard them. They're not good value. If I couldn't afford them, it still wouldn't make my relative value judgement less valid when there are several competitive products that provide higher quality on several attributes for less money.

Components over $10,000 that aren't aimed squarely at the Carriage Trade:

- Audio Research Reference series
- VPI HRX
- Totem Shaman
- Lamm
- Higher-end Avalon speakers
- The list goes on...