2. speakers
  3. 1085694372

wilson vs competitor battle demo

Hi folks, I have red something unbelivable in the latest TAS. During the January CES in Vegas David Wilson from Wilson Audio did a "battle demo" with Sophia speakers and another (anonymous) speakers from a competitor as the contestants. The competitor's speakers were a bit more expensive than the Sophia's. He drove his Sophia's with a $1000 Parasound amplifier and used an Apple iPod as source. The competitor's speakers were driven by a $7k Krell amplifier and the source was a Krell KPS-25 CD-player/preamp. The Wilsons won the battle demo by a margin! How is this possible folks? Should we all buy Wilson speakers and make no more expensive investments into amplifiers and CD/record players? Have Wilson speakers becoming a sort of panachea? This is scary!
dazzdax
s7horton
1,077 posts
 
Wilson has done this more than once. In fact, I think he does it at almost every show. It's very important to point out that just because the competition with driven with 7k worth of electronics doesn't mean it was good synergy. It is quite possible to make a 300k system sound like crap if the wrong electroincs are used. Having said that, there is no doubt in my mind that Wilson produces some very nice speakers.
lrsky
1,118 posts
 
What is a panachea?
Are you saying panacea...A remedy for all diseases, evils, or difficulties; a cure-all.
Dave Wilson makes great speakers, but buying great sound with only speakers is iron pyrite,(fool's gold).
Balance, with the most money (generally) spent on speakers has been the answer for decades, but that is about to change.
Stay tuned...
lrsky
thom_y
195 posts
 
Yes, this has been described repeatedly in the press/internet ...

The first question I have is whether anyone was there to witness this silly exercise and can they tell us their take on the challenge.

Second, if in fact the Sophia won the challenge, what does that really tell us about the speaker/sources etc.

Third, can the iPod playing wav files really outperform a reference level CD player ????

Fourth, how much about the Sophia hype should we believe. Has Stereophile, Wes Phillips etc. all been bought by Dave Wilson ??? Is the Sophia truly a musical speaker, or is it an overly detailed, overly analytic, cold speaker that suffers from listener fatique.

My bias is that the speaker has an initial sucking in phenomenon that may be soon lost on extended listening. Sure it is detailed, focused, dynamic, paced etc. ... but could you live with it for hours on end ???? I think this initial impression works wonders in brief auditions and audio shows. Perfect, for Dave's shenanigans.
More to discover