The Worst Speaker you have ever heard.

Shahinian Obelisk.

Driven by Musical Fidelity preamp and Class A monoblocks with Levinson CD gear. The most unengaging, squashed image, pseudo high end system I have ever heard.

What's with the fuss and cult following. I dont get it.

I thought the wilsons were setup wrong myself, but the dealer told me dave wilson came and personnaly set them up himself--and if the designer can't setup his own speakers right then he probably can't design them right either. Regardless it makes no sense to me why a dealer would display and drive thier $70k speakers with inferior gear (incidentally they were running off an SS audio research amp/MIT cables/and Theta gear upstream)--but I thought the whole point of selling the product in an audition was to set it up properly so people can actually hear what its capable of. I think the dealers are more to blame than some of us posting (assuming these products are better than we heard). All in all, I don't think its tough to ouperform a Wilson though. After the x-1 was "product of the year" in '95 with stereophile, in next months issue the reviewer auditioned the JMlabs Grande Utopia against the wilson and stated he liked the Utopia more--one month and the $70k speaker is obseleted by a better looking and sounding speaker at $5k less in thier own pages--all from the golden eared reviewers. The TAD model 1 at $40k would outperform the x-1 and the Maxx. http://www.tadaudio.com/home/model-1.html

It always amazes me at how good Wilson speakers sound to me but how harsh they are to other audiogoners. The few times I have heard them they were set up in a relatively small room(16x20) with the richest bass and midrange. The treble was rolled off but still sounded very good. The models were the Witts,6's and Sophia's. It must be the room and component matching.

Kharma Reference Monitor 3.2 Ouch! Bloody ear!

Ah come on kevinwann are you deaf or a flamer which is it?