Wilsons new flagship


Maybe I am getting old but Wilsons new flagship $780k  and they feel it is justified,

lit gets better if you want custom paint $110,000 they said it takes 2 days to paint both speakers, Jays audio lab commented and I think it was way too much and 

$110k for $300 in paint is nuts that is truly taking advantage of everyone with wealth, imo only an idiot would pay that. I guess nothing should surprise me any more !!

audioman58

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. 

I think spending that much money on a pair of speakers is stupid. Speakers like most audio equipment depreciates quickly, the example of the Bugatti is flawed. The Bugatti will if anything depreciate slowly, hold and eventually increase in value...and it comes with speakers. 

Why should I care about how others spend their money? People spend all kinds of money on all kinds of things.