Stereophile - Sabrina 5

Wilson Audio has always been a polarizing brand due to cost, off the shelf drivers, company arrogance and even aesthetics. My first lengthy demo was with the Cub 2. It was a ruthlessly revealing loudspeaker that belonged in a studio not a living room. About 25 years have passed and heard various models that have added musicality but still retain an aggressive revealing pro studio characteristic. This past summer heard the Wilson Sabrina V and was left with an unresolved opinion. The Burmester 232 felt underpowered maybe due to the speakers having very low hours on them, The new tweeter which was excellent sounded detached(break in?) from the other drivers. The propulsive mid bass and dynamics were impressive for a small speaker which many Wilson admirers value. In conclusion Wilson Audio offers a very specific sound signature/presentation. Have excellent build quality, customer service, resale value and pride of ownership. 

In a 3 way speaker, having the polarity of the midrange reversed is a well known speaker design technique. JBL pioneered that in the 1970s. 

Regarding references to Wilson's speaker drive units. There is a difference between "off the shelf" and outsourced. But that aside, there is no intrinsic reason why vertical integration in manufacturing is automatically better. For example would we assume that BMW or Toyota should not buy from Bosch or Denso and make all their electronics in house instead? Wilson have a very pragmatic approach to make / buy decisions  - for example - acquiring Reliable Capacitors in 2018, but continuing to outsource the manufacture of their drive units.

@goodlistening64 

I said: "there are local people who have listened to my system over the years and made suggestions which improved it" and you want to know how that’s happened.

Well, for starters, the Colorado audio community is fairly large. At least 4 have come to my house and helped with comments. Their systems are equal to or better than mine. At least three people on this forum have been to my house, too.

I have several friends who are not audiophiles but are careful listeners. They notice things and can communicate what they hear.

Others are email correspondents from this forum. I described what I heard was going on in my system and they said, "Do you hear this?" or "Try that and then get back to me about what you hear." That process of dialogue lead to insight and discovery.

If you find it "fairly fantastical that one has access to that kind of expertise" all I can say is that you might need new ways of describing what you’re hearing to new people who are, respectfully, more perspicuous and articulate than the people you typically interact with. 

When you play around with different filters on a 3 way, 4 way, whatever electronically ( Butterworth, Linkwitz 12db, 18db, 24, 48 whatever) ..its not always have flipping the midrange driver, it could also be that maybe you needed to flip phase on the tweeter instead, delay the woofer, etc. Its always a good idea to determine some optimal design electronically (not just fiddle with some sim tool) before you see how close you can get to it passively.

That's not the issue... the silly response,  awful load, etc was not design intent bull, its a design deficiency. I would wager that they were too lazy to even slightly re-design the cabinet, to begin with (more rinse repeat of archaic stuff). A passive ladder delay or similar that the driver needed wouldn’t  be there,  when you depot the cheese hiding that Wilson crossover (to look at it), i bet...

Buy a Magico or YG Acoustics or TAD or whatever...they are better at this stuff, expensive for sure, but, no propped up lazy deficient fluff..And guess what? They also make their own drivers!

My understanding is that Wilson uses second order (12 dB/octave) crossovers. If that's true the midrange must be wired electricallt out of phase so that it is acoustically in phase. This is common for all second order crossover 3 way speakers, not a Wilson thing.