Wilsons new flagship

Wilson are far from the only company with a speaker in this price range. Magico, YG, Sonus Faber immediately come to mind, but there are others - particularly smaller companies without the engineering or fabrication chops of Wilson - areas where they are probably as good as anyone. 

Most of us participating in these forums spend more on our hobby than non audionuts think prudent or reasonable. It’s all relative so I don’t begrudge someone with the means spending as they wish.

It also strikes me that someone purchasing these speakers will likely place them in a dedicated room separate from the living area. The looks are interesting but certainly polarizing. Even if I could afford them, WAF would be a hard no. But that’s also true of the entire Wilson lineup. When they were using the Focal tweeter, they hurt my ears - they were just too bright and fatiguing. However, when they went to the soft dome tweeter, I came to quite like their sound (though I generally prefer Sonus Faber’s and Rockport’s sound), but could never quite warm up to the aesthetics. Their new TOTL takes that aesthetic to an extreme. I’m sure it sounds fabulous and i look forward to hearing it some day for fun.

Personally, as a Wilson owner of their older speakers (Watt Puppy 8), I am delighted that they push their engineering and manufacturing capabilities to create unobtainable top of the line speakers.  These types of experiences, knowledge, & technologies will eventually trickle down to the affordable speakers and make their speakers even more competitive and desirable.  I am drawn to Wilson speakers because of their big sound at any volume level, and how well they synergize within my overall system, but, others may have different preferences. 

I don’t see how anyone can defend an 800k speaker with a straight face! Overhead, development blah blah blah. It’s a speaker and it’s 800k. 

Now if I had the means to buy them and they were the best damn thing I ever heard maybe I would buy them. Likely not, but maybe? I would still admit that the price was F-in nuts. 
 

How bought defend the 110k paint job? 2 days to paint. Say an exorbitant price to pay a painter…… 1000 bucks an hour. That is ridiculous in itself and would only be 16 grand. You could buy a new corvette and a daily driver for just the cost of the custom paint. 

This "ultra" stuff is always a target for pot shots, but isn't terribly relevant unless you are in the luxe marketing dogma loop--stuff that people read in legacy press that reinforces this as state of the art. Do you believe in trickle down technology? That's what's being sold at best.

I remember hearing the OG Wamms, with a fleet of Jadis tube amps, back in the day. Not really inspiring in the actuality. I find the tendency toward forensic sound, inert materials, to be the goal these days, not necessarily what makes music reproduction sing. 

Let's be productive, not just carping about so-called "aspirational" hi-fi for the masses- the same dreck as thinking a modern Bugatti is in any way connected with the original Molsheim company-- PE marketing of the bespoke heritage. 

For modern gear, I'm pretty much tapped out. My interest is in the history of the thing and what it can do in actuality. (Oh, and the Airtight 300R that is here now--Takatsuki tubes-wouldn't light this thing up). 

$780k USD for a pair of speakers is every bit as irrational as a $3 Million USD (and up) Bugatti, but they will sell for exactly the same reasons. If Wilson Audio wants to fulfill a luxury speaker engineer’s wish list without financial constraints and has enough market support to justify the creation, so be it. They almost certainly make enough profit on these such that only a handful needs to be sold, with the indirect benefit of this exercise being it hedges their market perception to an exclusive audience eager to hand over large amounts of cash for speakers.