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anyone care to comment re: WP-8?

the recent review in stereophile seems (to me) to be "fair and balanced". while it gives high praise to the "reference" level of quality the speaker represents, it also raises some recurrent problems with the design and the sound. looking for the best tweeter, or the most rigid cabinet, or even the best material for the puppy-port on the back, dave wilson forgets, IMHO, that the sum of the parts has to exceed the values of the individual components. the dynaudio speaker the reviewer uses as a comparison seems to integrate everything together although it doesn't have the degree of transparency that the wilson has- virtually nothing i've seen or heard out there does. this reminds me of the issue of approaching a goal line by coming 1/2 of the way closer on each move forward. you would have to take infinite steps to arrive there; the WP8 discloses its own shortcomings like an almost flawless lens with one tiny chip in it- unfortunately not towards the edge but distractingly always in view. so what you have here is a speaker that gets closer and closer to an "ideal transducer" but the design, the "painting", is never quite finished. still, i have to envy anyone who owns one of these speakers. a rolex is a rolex, and a watt-puppy is small but uniquely elegant (unless of course you own a pair of kharma exquisites...)
french_fries

Showing 1 response by siliab

siliab
362 posts
 
Just like every iteration of WP, or any speaker for that matter, you'll either like them or you won't. That being said, there are few designs of ANYTHING that have received more careful consideration than these loudspeakers. Should it be surprising, then that specific characteristics/inherent limitations of the design become more apparent as other imperfections are planed away? Even DAW acknowledges this when discussing the transitions from 6 to 7 to 8.

But, how good are the 8s? I think they are great. Most notably, they are somewhat smoother on top than the 7s, which, I believe is all good. The other changes are harder for me to hear, but I do think it is a less noisy system, if only a little. Overall, very nice evolutionary move forward. Worth another $6k? Not for me, but I would guess that that would depend on how important the tweeter improvements are to you.
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