Wilson Audio Haters

Call me on it if you will, and many have and I’m not alone. That dog won’t hunt; distort the time domain and you distort timbre, pure and simple. This is why live music sounds the way it does, because it does NOT distort in the time domain. To knowingly subtract from that while prettying up the product to create over expensive esoterica is inexcusable if one cares about preserving MUSIC!

And you know something, it’s those few milliseconds time difference between our ears that allowed us to hear from which direction the saber toothed tiger approached that saved our asses!

The only thing I have against Wilson Audio speakers is that 1) they use high order crossovers (not good for time alignment at the cross over points due to phase angle shift) and that 2) they invert the polarity of some drivers, by design or necessity, relative to others, to do the least amount of "damage" to timbre and phase. But to me the bandaid will never fix a fundamental design flaw. One can only hope to do the least damage to timbre in the time domain. Human ears are very sensitive to it, and I can hear it every time.

These two features combine to distort time and phase accuracy. If Wilson addressed these issues, perhaps I would give them another listen. Until they do, count me out as a fan of their products. The flashy paint jobs are excessive and unappealing to my eyes and ears.

And...$48,500 for Alexias that have the tweeter and midrange drivers out of phase in the several millisecond time domain? Cmon, really? I'll stick with my sub $10K Thiel CS6s thank you.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-sophia-series-3-loudspeaker-measurements#KQDcxc4eHJR...

Sasha: Fig.3 shows the Sophia's step response on its tweeter axis. The initial up/down spike is the tweeter output; the negative-going decay of the tweeter's step blends smoothly into the midrange unit's step response, the positive-going decay of which blends smoothly into the start of the woofer's step response. (The tweeter and woofer are connected in positive acoustic polarity, the midrange unit in inverted polarity.) But if you look very closely at this graph, there is a slight depression just before the tweeter's step. This is the start of the midrange unit's negative-going step, which suggests that the Sophia's optimal axis—ie, where the outputs of the three drive-units optimally sum in the frequency domain—is actually just above the tweeter axis.
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-sophia-series-3-loudspeaker-measurements#5XggM8TqXbY...

Alexia: This graph reveals that, as in the Alexandria XLF, the tweeter is connected in positive acoustic polarity, the midrange driver in negative polarity. However, with the tweeter module set up by Peter McGrath, the graph also shows that the negative-going decay of the tweeter's step smoothly blends with the negative-going start of the midrange unit's step, confirming the excellent frequency-domain integration of their outputs seen in fig.4. Moving slightly above or below the intended axis destroys that smooth blending of step responses.
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexia-loudspeaker-measurements#YE4CzkkR...

Frequency domain isn't TIME DOMAIN.