-
Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
New Wilson Audio flagship speakers
- Thread starter Pearljam5000
- Start date
EJ3
Master Contributor
Both are ugly enough that they would not be in my home, no matter how perfect the sound may or may not be.
Star Wars lore says an X-Wing is 165,000 imperial credits, and the worst estimations say 1 credit is 4$.
So yes, you can have an F-16 size powerful starfighter with hyperdrive, and still have a lot of money leftover for bass bombs and stuff.
So you agree, the midrange setup where they're all sitting proud of the cabinet is a bad design.
That's pretty cheap. Say what you like about the Galactic Empire but they clearly have inflation under control.
It's dirt cheap, the militaries of this world would trample Incom headquarters. Less than a million for a fighter with blaster cannons, shields, and hyperdrive?
Screw supercars and luxury stereos, that's a life goal lol
wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that having the midrange units sitting proud of the cabinet is automatically a “bad design”. Acoustically, whether a driver is recessed or slightly protruding only matters once the wavelengths are small enough for the edges to become significant. For most of the midrange band, the wavelengths are still large compared to those little geometric details, so the physics simply don’t support the idea that this alone ruins the response.
What actually would be interesting to know is the crossover strategy. If this system is meant to behave like a kind of D’Appolito arrangement, then the two 2‑inch domes need to be managed very carefully. If both of them were playing the same upper‑mid frequencies at full level, then yes, their spacing could create interference at higher frequencies. But that’s not the only way to design it. You can avoid that entirely by letting one of the domes roll off earlier and letting the other carry the higher part of the band. That way the effective radiating area shrinks with rising frequency, and the interference problem simply doesn’t appear.
Without knowing the actual crossover topology, slopes, and target curves, we’re all just guessing. The visible edges are the least interesting part of the whole design; the real story is hidden in the filter network, not in whether the drivers sit flush or proud of the cabinet.
If we set aside aesthetics, why would anyone choose Wilson for ‘pride of ownership speakers’ when Magico measure so much better?
Keith
Keith
Waxx
Major Contributor
the mids and the tweeter are in any case way to far from each other what will cause lobbing, and the cabinet will have bad diffraction on how it's build. And you sounds like the marketing department of Wilson, do you have proof we are wrong or are you just talking b******t?
I saw various measurings of older design that had all the errors that i accuse this speaker from, and this is even build worse than those in that matter, so if you say it's not a problem, proof it.
And no, no crossover can magically solve lobbing and diffraction problems, they can only make it worse.
I saw various measurings of older design that had all the errors that i accuse this speaker from, and this is even build worse than those in that matter, so if you say it's not a problem, proof it.
And no, no crossover can magically solve lobbing and diffraction problems, they can only make it worse.
Have you looked at them? Big and impressive and well made, but rather plain. If you want the WOW factor when impressing rich friends, this isn't it. You need totally out there design that looks so complicated it's endlessly intriguing. Wilson delivers.
In that category, you can't put aesthetics aside.
Does anyone remember YG Acoustics speakers? I don't know how they measured, but they looked better-engineered than Wilson and Magico speakers.
According to a WBF poster, 10 pairs of the new $788K Wilsons have been sold, three by the dealer in Santa Monica alone, who also ordered a fourth pair for himself.
Last edited:
You’re mixing up the classic D’Appolito spacing rule with what actually determines lobing in a real system.
Yes if both 2‑inch domes were playing up to ~800 Hz and above with similar output, then the center‑to‑center spacing would set a hard limit and interference would appear. That part is fine.
But that’s not the only way to use two domes.
If one dome is intentionally tapered or rolled off earlier, the system no longer behaves like two equal radiators at the crossover region. The effective radiating area shrinks with frequency, so the spacing stops being relevant. That’s exactly how you avoid interference without changing the physical layout. This is standard practice in multi‑way designs: you reduce the contribution of one driver before the wavelength becomes comparable to the spacing, and the interference mechanism simply disappears.
So no the cabinet doesn’t “automatically” create lobing, and no — a crossover doesn’t “make it worse”. The crossover defines which driver is active at which wavelength, and therefore whether interference can even occur. Without knowing the actual crossover strategy, declaring “it will lob” is just guessing.
And one more thing: the visual design is not an engineering accident. In this price segment manufacturers don’t just build something and hope people like it. They show multiple design directions and mockups to the actual clients — the people who will spend six figures on a pair.
We may not like the look personally, but the target audience clearly does. The final form is a combination of engineering constraints and the aesthetic preferences of buyers who actually sign the cheque. Calling it “badly built” because you dislike the styling misses the entire context of how this market works.
Audionaut
Major Contributor
The unveiling of this new Wilson loudspeaker fomented an ongoing debate on WBF, now spanning over 500 posts, regarding what Wilson calls "time alignment."
As presumably affluent WBF members spend their time arguing about the audibility of moving a midrange module one millimeter--a change that, one WBF member says, totally tamed the aggressive upper part of that driver's passband in his system--the GDP of wherever those WBF members live must be taking a considerable hit.
The owners of WBF seem worried about the use by LLMs of scraped forum content, so they shut down access to non-members, obscuring the wisdom deposited there to both non-WBF members and LLMs.
I'm just shocked that they still allow me to log in!
As presumably affluent WBF members spend their time arguing about the audibility of moving a midrange module one millimeter--a change that, one WBF member says, totally tamed the aggressive upper part of that driver's passband in his system--the GDP of wherever those WBF members live must be taking a considerable hit.
The owners of WBF seem worried about the use by LLMs of scraped forum content, so they shut down access to non-members, obscuring the wisdom deposited there to both non-WBF members and LLMs.
I'm just shocked that they still allow me to log in!
Last edited:
You know, we’ve had similar situations here in Germany. People making grand statements like “a country must change its policy by 360 degrees” or talking confidently about places that are supposedly “hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.”
When you hear things like that, you immediately know what’s going on: either a simple slip of the tongue, or just the usual intellectual mediocrity that occasionally surfaces in public discussions.
There’s an old saying in Polish “każdy orze jak może.”
You can’t translate it literally, but the closest natural English equivalent would be something like:
“Everyone does the best they can with what they’ve got.”
And sometimes… well, what they’ve got isn’t much.
MattHooper
Grand Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
- Messages
- 11,212
- Likes
- 19,932
I think they are moderately cool looking, in a sort of alien franchise/HR Giger way.
Not something I would personally want to own, but still sort of visually interesting.
And for me really high-quality finishes and materials can go someway and making me accept even otherwise awkward designs.
TA21
Member
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2024
- Messages
- 22
- Likes
- 54
Steve Guttenberg did a poll of his viewers last year of what they looked for, for when upgrading a component. The most popular answers were (in order): soundstage, dynamics, tonal balance and bass. If you talk to Wilson Audio fans, they often seem to love the soundstage, dynamics and bass of Wilson speakers. Wilson hits on things that audiophiles love. They like the perceptual sense of liveliness, how these factors convey the sense of performers being in the room, over absolute accuracy. Some of this I believe comes from how Wilson voices their speakers, which is not what "measurement guys" companies like Magico necessarily aim for.
But different people will have different ideas of what they think a speaker should sound like, or what factors are more important to their enjoyment. SET amps and horn speakers guys will rave about how realistic they sound - how pure SET amps can sound, or how lively horn speakers can sound. Others will just hear the tonal imbalance or coloration, and cannot get over that.
Brands like YG Acoustics and Magico are like "measurements guys" who are fanatical about a flat frequency response. Both companies also have design preferences for aluminum cabinets - it's "everything aluminum" for YG Acoustics, which may not be for many people's aesthetic taste.
DatSpeakerTho
Member
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2026
- Messages
- 86
- Likes
- 209
People that drop $788k on bad speakers don't deserve to have $788k.
EJ3
Master Contributor
Similar to this?
Konstantin Jireček
“We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”
― Konstantin Josef JirečekSimilar threads
