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In the Forum: Audio News
In the Thread: Wilson Audio and the Moore's law
Post Subject: Juts another Grand SlammPosted by Romy the Cat on: 2/9/2017
 Paul S wrote:
Yes, insane amounts of money are wasted on "exotic" cabinet materials and construction methods, for instance.  And the misguided idea of keeping it one narrow stack per channel does, literally, compromise the sound, as does the "technically correct" curved configuration.  However, all this is (pardon the pun) trumped by the self-important aura that attends a product like this, and they will certainly sell these to the beneficiaries of the 2008 Wall Street bail-out. Ironically, better screening of and applications for the drivers might well have made them sound better -  if, in fact, anyone concerned could actually tell the difference, or if anyone actually, ultimately, cares.

Like I said in my last show report, the big Alexx from Wilson sounded plain bad in their set-up, and not just the LF, but everything. It does seem like Wilson has settled into a house sound that is ultimately no better than other "high end" speakers.  And certainly their "innovations" are market speak. We'll see/hear.

I do not share many if the sentiments you expressed, Paul. I have no problem with Wilson "exotic" cabinet materials, not with the selection of their drivers, not with the way how they use them and now with the price they charge. The Wilson ended have settled for house sound that in fact IS better than other "high end" speakers, I am taking about larger Wilsons: Grand Slamms and up not the smaller models. They have many spectacular accomplishments with sound, only the way how they defeat macrodynamic compression make them way more interesting than anything else out there in my view. My criticism was not for what they do but rather the topological decisions they use projected to status of better acoustic system. As sane people understand it is not about criticism of a company but rather learning (or teaching) how to make better acoustic system using a given product as an example. 
 
There are plenty of idiots read this site and they got upset when I knock this or that product but they unfortunately recognize audio as a list of available products (or marketing moves) instead to recognize available products as opportunity to learn how to make better sound. 
 
Anyhow, like with many other expensive products if a loudspeaker demands a lot of money then the presumption is that it use expensive winning topology. WAMM very much has a lot of it but I above innumerate my specific concerns that would for me to disqualify WAMM as a candidate worthy to bet a lot of money. Grand Slamm were selling for 75K and any big Wilsons after Grand Slamms were basically the SAME Grand Slamm topology with only arguable incremental improvement. WAMMs in 90 were very different beast with separate LF sections. I did not hear them but they had to be in a different scale acoustic system then Grand Slamm then. Well, today Wilson demonstrated reportedly a better flagman but returning back to basic to Grand Slamm topology. This is very unfortunate in my view. 

It is important to note that the time alignment that new WAMM introduced is not new and the very same alignment options were available before, it juts was not sold as a big deal. So, the new WAMM is basically the same Grand Slamm only with price tag 10 time bigger. I am sure that there are some minor advancement in the new WAMM but Wilson had 5 or 5 versions of Grand Slamm as well and in my view the new WAMM  is juts a new version of Grand Slamm

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