Revel Salon 2 versus WP 8

Very typical response. All open for a discussion

I'm not above admitting I am wrong; I'm only human

but then again, not really

I'm sorry if you have bored me in the past

Make up your mind. In the mean time, go listen to any decent violin or soprano recording and see how much of it you can take on your Watt. Then try the same on the Salon or even better the V3.
And yes, I know that a violin high note is only around 3.5K but its harmonics easily excites the break-up modes of the Watt. What you should hear is clear audible “grain” riding the entire treble. It would get worst as you increase the volume. Anyway, I am probably boring you again by now…

while i am not a wilson fan, the w/p tweeter is not at all grainy or harsh. a violin's sound, however, WILL be sharply defined. to some people it sounds "etched", to others it is refreshingly free of distortion. as i said earlier, WITH the right room acoustics and high-caliber components properly matched, the W/P will blow alot of other speakers away. it is these very strict requirements, however, that make buying wilson's a daunting task- to acheive their maximum potential. for those looking for an easier and usually less-expensive path of putting a good system together, i can think of several other speaker designs that ALSO sound startlingly good without quite as much attention to the room and the rest of the audio system, although they will still need something well above NAD or ROTEL electronics. and as stated before, at that point, many people may not be that happy listening to recordings that USED to sound "pretty OK" and will strongly prefer better-sounding records and cd's.

to others it is refreshingly free of distortion

But it is not. If some prefer the sound of distortion, what exactly are we talking about? Subjective opinions with no merits behind them. And if you have to completely twist your system and room around a product with such deficiencies, why not start with something that actually work to begin with.

Considering the oft repeated "careful matching" when speaking of Wilson, I recently had to abolish my prejudices when I heard a demo at my local audio salon consisting of Krell evo electronics driving the new Wilson 8's. Reading the forums you would expect this combination to drill your ears from your head with laser like intensity. On the contrary. Though my experience and audio vocabulary is limited, my sensitivity to what is referred to as bright is pretty intense. What I heard was rich, smooth, dynamic and non fatiguing...now you guys quite fighting ;-)

In the mean time, go listen to any decent violin or soprano recording and see how much of it you can take on your Watt. Then try the same on the Salon or even better the V3.
And yes, I know that a violin high note is only around 3.5K but its harmonics easily excites the break-up modes of the Watt. What you should hear is clear audible “grain” riding the entire treble. It would get worst as you increase the volume. Anyway, I am probably boring you again by now…

I listen to Joshua Bell and Julia Fischer all the time among others (as well as classical music and opera occasionally with both soprano and violin!). I don't get these issues you are referring to. Both are clean sounding in my setup. I also listen to the same music on my studio monitors sometimes, which don't have the same resolution as the W/P8s (among other things).

Give some exact examples please, as previously requested. Your statements about the Wilson speakers appear to be purely theoretical. So far you have not shown any evidence that you are actually hearing this problem you are pontificating about. It is likely you are hearing something that can be explained off as other issues in the recording chain. I certainly don't hear the problems you are referring to in my setup...

To be sure, I just finished evaluating Joshua Bell playing the first 11 minutes of Tchaikovsky's Allegro moderato on both my Wilson setup and my studio monitor setup. The only issues I am finding are common to both setups and are likely related to echos of the timbre vibrato changes on the violin, likely from cavity resonance in the instrument of a high harmonic being picked up by the close miking, but that is a natural occurrence... The other thing it could be is the actual sound of his fingers or bow on the string muting certain harmonics. It is occurring on only the right side speakers where the violin output isn't as heavily weighted, and it is only during the heavier attacks. It occurs in both setups. Unfortunately, while I have been to many orchestral events, I am not an expert on violins and what exactly causes the sound I am hearing on this particular recording. So I can only offer those two ideas as possibilities.

Yes, these two sets of speakers I am using sound different because they are different speakers, but the audio content is not changing between the two setups in any way to insinuate that distortion is occurring. There is no "grain riding the entire treble" as you declared earlier. Though the studio monitors lack the same level of resolution, involving clarity, depth of soundstage and lifelike presentation (among other things), they are still decent for music editing. On the W/P8s the recording is as clear as a Bell (sorry, I couldn't resist...).

The next one I tried was a version of Mozart's Don Giovanni (Robert Norrington - EMI Classics). I used song 2 on side 3 for soprano testing. This test is the one that started to worry me, because I was hearing distortion like elements, but I believe they were due to the recording. To test the hypothesis that they were not due to tweeter break-up I tested the same area of the song over and over again at different volume levels. The issue did not get worse with increased volume (it actually seemed to dissipate with increased volume, likely because I could hear it better, though some of the volume levels I tried were obscenely loud and hurt my ears... So I only did very time limited trials at those volumes). My theory is, since these problems are happening at the loudest moments of her singing, not necessarily at the highest frequencies, that she overloaded the mikes they were using... The stability of the issue, despite changing volume levels by large amounts, would seem to support that. in any case, it isn't tweeter break-up modes, or the problem would get worse with increasing volume.

Another reason I decided to do the above experiment with changing the volumes, is in case the two speakers I am using share similar qualities between their tweeters. After all, if they exhibit similar behavior in the treble, it is possible that they have similar break-up modes. I feel confident that, even if that is true, the varying volume levels eliminates any issues I've heard as being break-up mode issues.

In short, I believe you are incorrect. IMO, your argument is the type that happens when someone applies theoretical ideals to a topic without making sure they are "sound" concepts of the audible world in practice. Perhaps you heard something, but it wasn't what you thought it was IMO. IMO, you should spend less time making assumptions from graphs and more time testing those assumptions in the real world.

I'll be waiting for you to offer up some albums, track numbers and specific times on those albums where I can hear the issues you claim to be hearing on the Watt Puppy 8s. Have you ever done any practical listening and testing with the W/P8 personally, or are you just basing your statements on graphs alone? So far you have avoided listing specific albums with which you have tested the W/P8 in order to find these issues you are claiming exist, despite my attempts to solicit that information from you...

Thanks.