Stereophile - Sabrina 5

With respect to the tweeter and woofer, the midrange is wired in reverse polarity, but, it blends smoothly with the other drivers and it must sound better this way.  That is a common thing with speakers.  Of course purists who demand phase coherent impulse responses should not look at this test image.

@faustuss 

not sure. The measurements section of the review for Sabrina X concluded with the following statement 

As with the original Sabrina, the SabrinaX's measured performance suggests that the design has been carefully optimized.—John Atkinson

funny how building a pair of speakers in the basement can inflate some DIYer’s ego. Holy 💩 batman! I’m now a speaker manufacturer! Let me read this review of these new Wilsons here and see where Daryl and the team messed up. Got ya - red herring right in the measurements section! Now let me do some gaslighting on the forums.

This place is turning into some sad circus. 

I'm fortunate enough to live less than a half hour from the hotel Axpona settles every year. The Wilson room['s] generally sound amazing. Big as life soundstage with solid image placement that completely satisfies. I think my speakers, kef blades invert the mids and measure quite differently. Here's the thing tho', when i place speakers in my listening room just by moving them around the room say 2' in any direction I can make speakers with very different response curves sound quite similar. Keep your thought provoking poste coming Eric it's fun when we're chewin' on the same bone.

It seems to me that @erik_squires was not saying that inverting polarity was bad, only that you shouldn’t have a 5 db dip in the 2k-4k region after you do it.  If you do, something’s wrong.  I also looked at the Sabrina X measurements by Atkinson, and initially thought the dip was not as severe.  But he used a 50 db y-axis scale vs Miller’s 30 db, so the exact same 5 db dip is there.  I then decided to take a look at an expensive competitor to see if such a large dip is avoidable (not that I ever doubted eri, lol!).  Here’s the Magico S5:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/magico-s5-2024-loudspeaker-measurements

Much, much flatter.  Now, these are only measurements, but it is very interesting.  I had a conversation with a dealer a few years ago and mentioned a friend who was about to buy Wilsons.  The dealer asked if the friend was older than me.  I said yes, and asked him why he asked.  He indicated his view that Wilsons tip up the upper frequencies, which can sound very appealing to those of us (most of us,lol!) with some hearing loss.  Those frequency response curves do give some credence to that view.  

I had one of the old OG Wamms long time ago, bought used, sold used, made some cash in the process, nothing about it had any great appeal to me (even when i wasn't a very nitpicky guy back in the days), but, that's old news.

I had the OG TAD Reference for 16 or 17 years...so my standards, demands and nitpickiness get proportionally higher, if the price is high.. In hind sight, i shouldn't have sold it and have had Andrew cook me a upgrade kit as the years went by..., but, i've rather have eggs in different baskets..

Having said that, I investigated the Alexx V a bit deeper in recent times.  A guy i know has a pair. Usually, they are tricked out (carried by/confounded by) with certain types of creme de la creme front end electronics. I took one of my amps and front end combo  that has no real flavor of its own to discern what the Alexx V on its own is capable of....hefty amp however to deal with the lousy load that a Wilson is...

- Fatigue, can't get over the fatigue after a bit....

- Anyone calling magicos sterile and a Alexx V a juicy orange (relatively speaking)? you're so full of it again...

- Best put your head in a vise, also the case with some others, excusable

- No real depthwise spatial nuance like a TAD Ref....The Wilson's more of a flat wall smashing you in...I would also compare it to the last rev b&w 801 d4, which is less than half of that Wilson's price. The B&W is a bit of a trip...almost feels like you turned atmos on or something with a stereo pair....the expensive borresens also come to mind,..... but nada none of that from Alexx V

Let's move on from the audiophile mumbo jumbo and examine if it has anything special, any subtle appeal for a instrument specialist type of guy....For example, i have a speaker that got done up by ted jensen, another one tuned by yamaha's musical instruments guys, etc.....Nothing nada from Alexx V....Anyways, i suppose it has some appeal for the under-initiated. For the high end rung and in consideration of some competition, it's just a plain Mary actually, IME, can't be a reference anything.

Pay a magazine something and he'll sing some prose about everything...(to be fair, the magazine guy has to pay his bills and eat dinner too, a chicken dinner would be good). A few are clever enough to let you read between the lines somedays though.

Not sure what all the fuss is about. No one said they were the holy grail. I don’t own Wilson’s but have seriously considered the Sabrina X in the past and have heard them with different electronics and thought they sounded great (amazing full/tight bass response for the size) and I did not think they were over priced. They have the same tweeter as the WAMM, so nice trickle down.