Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (high-end bookshelf speaker)

[Mnyb]

Your comment was reported multiple times by other members as Racist. I tried to defend your post but the reports keep coming. My point is it was not the Moderation but other members who did not like your post and it was seen by them as Racist. The Moderators rarely engage unless prompted by Members Reports. You misread the audience and continue to place blame on others. You had a post removed, good grief get over it.

Keep it up , this is the most loosely moderated forum I’ve ever been on

For example “drive by posters” could be removed completely from the forum and thier post and all the replies and quotes on it , we had one in this tread recently.

The idea of joining a forum to grief over a negative review over some product in one tread is so insane that such person could not possibly be a positive contributor to this forum ( or any forum , or society ... ).
They also join to specifically tell everyone on ASR how wrong everyone here is ?

Long review treads like this one is hard to read anyway.

 

[Digby]

I don't know the post in question, so won't speak to that, but given what you've said, perhaps there is some risk of moderating by mob rule?

 

[Sal1950]

Your comment was reported multiple times by other members as Racist. I tried to defend your post but the reports keep coming. My point is it was not the Moderation but other members who did not like your post and it was seen by them as Racist. The Moderators rarely engage unless prompted by Members Reports. You misread the audience and continue to place blame on others. You had a post removed, good grief get over it.

Beware Adam,
It's very PC today to try to silence any and all opposing viewpoints by calling that person "racist".
It's also happened to me here as you know.
I will not be afraid of voicing my opinions with unfounded accusations of racism.
The first admendment stands in defense of us all.

 

[Somafunk]

Rules of life to abide by (I think so anyway)

#1 : Don’t be a dick
#2 : See rule #1
#3 : If you need a #3 then you’re a dick

It should be noted that not everyone on this site lives under the protection of your first amendment in the USA, so the first amendment is irrelevant when conversing on a forum with a worldwide membership

 

[AdamG]

OK, that’s enough off topic banter. Let’s get back on topic please. Thank you for your assistance.

 

[restorer-john]

Beware Adam,
It's very PC today to try to silence any and all opposing viewpoints by calling that person "racist".
It's also happened to me here as you know.
I will not be afraid of voicing my opinions with unfounded accusations of racism.
The first admendment stands in defense of us all.

Well said Sal.

Expressing, proposing or articulating a considered position, along with rebuttals, facts and evidence is the best defense against unfounded and ambit claims of 'racism', 'discrimination' or 'bullying'*.

*God Goodness me, I hate that word 'bullying'. For me, I left it at school, sometime in the 7th grade? Adults using the word? Come-on.

The moderators do their best treading a fine line, and I thank them. They have to deal with the old codgers, the 'get off my lawn guys', young idealists, equal opportunity LG Big TVs and other ultra high definition opportunists attempting to prosecute their sometimes obscure and confronting agendas.

It's a jungle out there.

 

[kokakolia]

No 5 inch speaker will ever justify a $10K price tag
i don't even care who's the manufacturer

Amen! Why the heck do these speakers get any coverage!? I am beyond annoyed. They're priced too high. The competition is so fierce below 3k€.

Here in France you can go to many boutique manufacturers and get a bespoke pair of bookshelf speakers (built in France with special drivers from France) around 2000€:

- Apertura Swing
- Atohm Eurus 1.0
- JMR Bliss Jubilé

The Apertura Swing looks extremely promising, but I haven't had a chance to experience them.

I would also like to mention dozens of boutique German/Swiss/Polish brands as well. They're all within the 1000~3000€ range.

My point is that these boutique brands are way more accessible than people might think. But it's hard to know that because:

- Prices are communicated upon request.
- The media only cover the really expensive flagship stuff for clicks. Some brands which almost exlusively sell 8k€+++ tower speakers may sell a 2k€ bookshelf pair.

 

[Sal1950]

Amen! Why the heck do these speakers get any coverage!? I am beyond annoyed. They're priced too high. The competition is so fierce below 3k€.

As we all know, the audiophile market is dominated by the ideal that "if it cost more it must sound better".
The little boy's club of print and web media hang together to promote this line of thinking and insure a prosperous market of very high margin products.
Sadly so little that is written/reviewed today can be trusted to honestly inform the consumer of the truth.
Fact is that its a very corrupt reviewing chain at most places.

 

[Goodman]

Millionnaires and Billionaires need things to to spend their money on. I think they should have encrusted some diamond around the drivers, at the very least around the tweeter.
I am sure that these are as good as the hundreds of two way stand mount speaker on the market, I wish Amir had pointed out that you can get the same quality sound for a few hundred quids and way better for for less then two thousand IE any bbc approuved ls3.5a.

 

[Vacceo]

If you have a ton of money burning in your pocket to get the ultimate, best and so on; it sound more interesting to invest that money in research and tests for any big manufacturer of speakers so they can develop technology and designs even further.

 

[voodooless]

If you have a ton of money burning in your pocket to get the ultimate, best and so on; it sound more interesting to invest that money in research and tests for any big manufacturer of speakers so they can develop technology and designs even further.

But that not something to show to the guests at the next fancy dinner party. You better come with a tiny crappy sounding box that cost a bunch.

Then again, if you have the money, you can do both: pretent to be a pretentious snob at the party, and afterwards enter your hidden super duper scientifically designed audio room to enjoy a few proper tunes. Meanwhile feed the imprisoned scientists some peanuts. Man.., being an evil genius must be so fantastic

 

[Vacceo]

But that not something to show to the guests at the next fancy dinner party. You better come with a tiny crappy sounding box that cost a bunch.

Then again, if you have the money, you can do both: pretent to be a pretentious snob at the party, and afterwards enter your hidden super duper scientifically designed audio room to enjoy a few proper tunes. Meanwhile feed the imprisoned scientists some peanuts. Man.., being an evil genius must be so fantastic

You can show them the prototypes: that is bragging rights at its best.

 

[fineMen]

I can't recall my reaction to this marvel, and didn't find a post of mine. So, the issue with this speaker is the neglect of well established best practices. As if it was made for provocation.

The bass is tuned to a port resonance of about 100Hz, where the dip is:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/wilson-audio-tunetot-measurement-near-field-frequency-response-stand-mount-bookshelf-speaker-png.173770/

Consequence: as a matter of fact the bass driver is not loaded below that reflex tuning, hence exhibits loads of excursion, which again generates doppler and amplitude intermodulation besides hefty harmonic distortion. You see that in the HD graphs--below 100Hz it erects like a brick wall.

The cross over is most likely done with the wrong phase between woofer and tweeter. It seems to not be an production error, since all measurements from other reviewers show the same. An idication for this is the light blue spot in this graph just above the "0"-axis:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/wilson-audio-tunetot-measurement-vertical-directivity-response-stand-mount-bookshelf-speaker-png.173767/

WIth a spacing of the driver as here such an antiphase dip would only occur way further off the central axis.

Consequence: the suck-out from 1k to 3k is filled up by the room's reverberation. It will give the listener headaches within a few days because of the inconsistency between direct and indirect sound.

Summarized: in comparison to established, well understood engineering standards the speaker is in all its design aspects done as bad as possible! These two, namely bass tuning and x/over are the very core of loudspeaker design. Here the designer not only broke the rules, but he deliberately did the reverse. Honor where honor is due: on target, cannot get worse by any technical means that humanity knows about today.

Maybe it is meant to be a sarcastic freak show or some other revelation. Or the designer actually and deeply hates his audience or his employer.

 

[amirm]

It's obvious really. Why so many n's?
View attachment 210070

That equation has nothing to do with removal of reflections. That is done using dual scans. The physical distance between the scans, and hence phase differential, is known if the wave is coming from the source. Any wave reflected from another source will have different phase response and can be computed and subtracted to get the reflection-free response of the speaker.

As to N, there is a point of diminishing return. The recommended level of error is defined as -20 dB or 1%. My measurements are below 1% for most or all of the measurement area. Where it exceeds 1% is usually narrow and still within 2%. I can get it down to 1% or even lower, but that requires far more time on the machine. It simply is not material if at some frequency we measure 86 dB or 86.7 dB. For expensive speakers, or where I expect the radiation to be complex, I do raise the measurement points.

 

[Billy Budapest]

More absolute Garbage from this site.
Lots of pretty graphs showing nonsense. Tons of issues, but let’s start with:
1. the ”robotic” NFS measurement device - you cannot accurately subtract room reflections from the direct sound measurement, which is why no real pros do this. The math quite frankly has not been invented yet to do this properly. So right off the bat, this “test” is a complete joke.
2. room temp was 14C? What? You don’t listen to a loudspeaker in 14C/57F rooms, they are designed for at least 18C. Normal room temp is 20C/68F
3. Aligned “by eye” to the speaker center, which the tester guessed -wrongly - is the tweeter. Wilson states the center is not the tweeter. Read the manual, for starters.

Most of this site is a DISASTER. It’s where those who can’t afford, or don’t want to, pay for high-end audio come to lament the fact that these products suck. So wrong. It’s actually laughable.

You guys have no idea what you’re missing out on!

Which site?

 

[Billy Budapest]

More absolute Garbage from this site.
Lots of pretty graphs showing nonsense. Tons of issues, but let’s start with:
1. the ”robotic” NFS measurement device - you cannot accurately subtract room reflections from the direct sound measurement, which is why no real pros do this. The math quite frankly has not been invented yet to do this properly. So right off the bat, this “test” is a complete joke.
2. room temp was 14C? What? You don’t listen to a loudspeaker in 14C/57F rooms, they are designed for at least 18C. Normal room temp is 20C/68F
3. Aligned “by eye” to the speaker center, which the tester guessed -wrongly - is the tweeter. Wilson states the center is not the tweeter. Read the manual, for starters.

Most of this site is a DISASTER. It’s where those who can’t afford, or don’t want to, pay for high-end audio come to lament the fact that these products suck. So wrong. It’s actually laughable.

You guys have no idea what you’re missing out on!

Oh, wait, you’re talking about ASR? I thought your post was a parody.

I don’t think your post deserves further comment. You might have more fun at a Wilson fanboi forum. ASR will just bore you with measurements and testing.

 

[kokakolia]

I can't recall my reaction to this marvel, and didn't find a post of mine. So, the issue with this speaker is the neglect of well established best practices. As if it was made for provocation.

Maybe it is meant to be a sarcastic freak show or some other revelation. Or the designer actually and deeply hates his audience or his employer.

It's just fascinating how "subjective" impressions are positive but "objective" measurements are poor. The price is too darn high! You could just end it there.

Maybe you're not the right audience for this type of "luxury" product. This forum focuses a lot on measurements and performance per dollar. And that's OK! The goal of this forum is to make informed purchases. Luxury products are frequently bought with emotion, not logic. So logically this speaker should fly off this forum's radar.

I'm sure that this is the speaker for people who already have the best, and they want something different and exciting. Imagine yourself sampling 12 excellent speakers in a room. It would be challenging to pick a winner. The Wilson Audio Tune Tots may stand out (in a good or a bad way). This is perhaps the designer's goal.

On the other hand this Wilson Audio speaker feeds the narrative that expensive doesn't equal better. So I can almost feel the cynicism against luxury boutique products most people can't afford on this forum. Which translates to: "Ha! A $600 pair of speakers sounds better! Only fools would purchase this speaker for $10k.". Fine! You made your point. Have a cookie.

To be fair, there's no obvious ill-intention in reviewing a Wilson Audio product. It's business as usual for this forum. There is no preferential treatment.

 

[sarumbear]

Millionnaires and Billionaires need things to to spend their money on. I think they should have encrusted some diamond around the drivers, at the very least around the tweeter.

That is a market!

Jewels are used on everything, why not on speakers? Someone missing a trick here

 

[Mart68]

On the other hand this Wilson Audio speaker feeds the narrative that expensive doesn't equal better. So I can almost feel the cynicism against luxury boutique products most people can't afford on this forum. Which translates to: "Ha! A $600 pair of speakers sounds better! Only fools would purchase this speaker for $10k.". Fine! You made your point. Have a cookie.

whether people can afford them or not is irrelevant to the fact that they are poor value for money.

if someone wants to be in the position where they can afford to spend $10K on loudspeakers they will get there faster if they avoid buying products that are poor value for money, whether that is loudspeakers or anything else.

 

[fineMen]

Maybe you're not the right audience for this type of "luxury" product.

Sure, it sounds different. I would even say it sounds spectacular. The problems with the speaker are totally unexpected, in that they come up in areas, which nearly all speakers get halfway right. It is not a typically compromised speaker, but an exotically poor speaker. That for even informed people, with a trained focus don't identify the flaws instantaneously.

My special qualification with this comes from DIY. When fumbling with speakers I did all the errors the Wilson Audio Tune Tot showcases myself several times and again ... And so I can tell, what the consequences are. First a wow factor ("different must be better"), then fatigue, then revelation and ...

Regarding luxury and exclusivity I wouldn't tell the Wilson Audio Tune Tot is bad. People should get what they deserve.