Pearljam5000
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14 people need to explain their vote lol
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Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (high-end bookshelf speaker)
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Audio is a somewhat passionate hobby. I appreciate you clarification and don't think there's a need to apologize.
I would question the idea that someone goes to buy Wilson speakers because they read about them in Stereophile. We went to buy speakers and could have bought from any of about 4 or 5 brands. I'd heard other Wilson speakers before. I'd not read about them in Stereophile, but then I don't subscribe. Nor had I looked at the Wilson website. My wife was the final arbiter as she has to live with them as much as me. She's never looked at an audio magazine and if asked the brand name of the speakers we own would not know. I don't think we are that uncommon for people who buy from bricks and mortar stores.
I think it is much more the people who buy online who are dependent on these print and online resources and rely more on brand recognition.
Steve Dallas
Major Contributor
You keep mentioning the bolded part above, but I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean 'wobbly' frequency response or 'wobbly' directivity, because this speaker has both. The former was more or less corrected by EQ. The latter cannot be, but is very common to speakers which lack waveguides and/or fail to address baffle diffraction (among other things). Fortunately for this design, horizontal directivity is wide enough to overcome its unevenness.
Bass exaggeration is a head-scratcher, as no sane company would market a speaker that has to be placed exactly 75cm from the front wall in an otherwise anechoic room, which is what you think must be likely.
What intrigues me is that you seem to continue to assert all this is intentional. Why would you make that assumption?
What is much more likely to me is a scenario in which Wilson applied all their house construction techniques and gimmicks, exaggerated the bass to achieve 'showroom sound,' decided it sounded good enough for the garish audiophile crowd, and slapped a high price tag on it as an add-on item.
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KxDx
Senior Member
I agree that the measurements do not justify the price. Not something I would buy if I even could afford it. But these are "audio furniture" first and "high fidelity" second (if that). Just like tube DAC's and $1000 per foot power cords, these speakers aren't made for the ASR crowd.
From what I read in the UK, many magazines favour certain brands and smaller ones don't get a look-in. Hardly surprising. And why would a print mag cover Topping knowing it gets done here, plus they won't ever get advertising revenue?
I've bought a couple of things having read about them here and nowhere else. They are not sold retail so you have to take a chance.
I met a most charming guy, a very serious musician, I sold him some speakers. He actually reviewed a piece of equipment that was named after him! The designer is one of his oldest friends. It appeared in a well-known magazine.
I have a superb turntable, UK designed and made by an engineering company that machine a lot of audio for over companies, two excellent mainstream print reviews. They sold about 30 of them because they never got a dealer network and you can't sell an unknown brand online.
Just illustrates the weird nature of the audio industry, which seems to operate in so many different ways on different levels.
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So much convoluted reasoning to justify the price or the measurements in this thread.
Since The Matrix is back in theaters, Red Pill or Blue?
Since The Matrix is back in theaters, Red Pill or Blue?
JRS
Major Contributor
Likely drunk or wanted to punk the survey. No one in their right mind gives those msmts a glance, and gives it a thumbs up. I suspect there is a whole host of 500/pr speakers that measure better. Recently theres been a spate of these--the Hegel Integrated and the forget the name but a multichannel amp that didn't have the gas, and Audioholic's Gene got involved and what a mess, the maker blaming a transformer mix up, etc.
I think this is a popular "hi end" tuning. That peak of that bass is intentional, the drums sound louder and gives that feel of being in the middle of the band even if it wasnt present in the recording. It backlashes with certain other recording. I listened to the Canton reference 7k recently and noticed this, the kick drums sound louder all the time like how it sounds near a band. But in a recording normally its more flattened by choice. So in a way on some scenarios , this tuning goes into preference of many people if they dont know it isnt how its supposed to sound. Honestly the kef R11 I compared it with was very "meh" sounding but thats how the hifi business is running. They all know how to make it flat, yet they dont do it as the religion likes it the other way
More recent thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...sound-big-and-smaller-ones-sound-small.21481/
The other one was around sometime when I joined the forum, I really don't like this forum's search compared to XenForo. IIRC the replies were fairly similar to the one I linked. It's also discussed in the video review of the Genelec 8361a thread.
Amir at 19 minutes for listening test of 8361a, specifically mentions large orchestral music. These are not even small speakers in comparison to most monitor speakers.
As for my comment about sounding like a toy, yes the LSR306 MK2, even with a pair of subwoofers that are properly integrated flat out sounds like a toy compared to the best that I have heard symphony music sound like in the home. I deleted my Imgur account for privacy reasons so the image is no longer showing in my thread, but the system that Bjorn pictured here was very similar to the one I was posting about on page two of that thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...controlled-directivity-horn.1120/post-1018018 (his directivity measurements are actually better than the system I heard)
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dshreter
Addicted to Fun and Learning
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It’s been mentioned that research points to neutral speakers sounding best, and the speaker ratings are given with and without an ideal sub.
But for a speaker that cannot reproduce full range and will not be used with a sub has it been answered if a mid bass boost is preferred? Obviously that’s the approach taken here, and it would be interesting to know if this technique has merit.
But for a speaker that cannot reproduce full range and will not be used with a sub has it been answered if a mid bass boost is preferred? Obviously that’s the approach taken here, and it would be interesting to know if this technique has merit.
What I find most puzzling above all is the ~110 Hz tuning frequency. I've built some small speakers in my day and never have I tuned a box above 100 Hz on purpose. I thought for a second there must be an error, then I took a better look at the picture amir took of the backside and couldn't believe it when I realized you can basically see poly-fil through the slot port. That port isn't even a real port! It's only the depth of the back panel, in other words, it's basically just a hole. Which you better believe just a regular ole' hole in a box will drive the tuning frequency to the moon for sure.
For kicks I modeled the ScanSpeak 15W/8530K-00 5.5" Revelator Woofer (specs on Madisound, might be different but close enough for a sanity check) in a sealed, normal/standard vented alignment (flat) and this monstrosity. The driver basically only needs 17L and with the external dimensions of the TuneTot we've got around 22L max to play with depending on wall thickness. Assume walls are thicker than most and some massive crossover exists on that back panel and we end up at around 17L net. So far so good, they've got the volume. In a sealed alignment the box is a bit large, resulting in an overall system Q of 0.55. It's not terrible, overdamped a bit but still usable. In a vented alignment a "normal" tuning frequency would be more like 38 Hz, which results in an f3 of 35 Hz. Nice! All from a 17L box too. Port length will be an issue, but whatever, give me that deep bass! And then last we take that port and shrink it down to only 3/4" and you end up with what amir measured here, this massive underdamped, incredibly peaked response at around ~110 Hz. Low-end suffers, transient response suffers (based on model). It's an usual design choice for sure.
I'm in the process of performing some subtle mods to a commercial speaker I picked up and literally one of the first things I did that honestly has made it sound so much better was to lengthen the port by just 2 inches. It dropped the tuning frequency from 72 Hz to 56 Hz. For me that was a welcomed improvement. Obviously not everyone shares the same opinion of what makes up an ideal tuning frequency. Even though there are standard models (using T/S params) for this kind of thing so that they can be done properly. At the very least they could have tuned this speaker anywhere from 38 Hz to even 70, or 80 or 90 Hz and it would have had some of that mid-bass punch they were going for without being so over the top. The only option is to run them sealed with a sub, high-passed at ~70 Hz (where excursion bottoms out) and maybe they'll do the job just fine.
For kicks I modeled the ScanSpeak 15W/8530K-00 5.5" Revelator Woofer (specs on Madisound, might be different but close enough for a sanity check) in a sealed, normal/standard vented alignment (flat) and this monstrosity. The driver basically only needs 17L and with the external dimensions of the TuneTot we've got around 22L max to play with depending on wall thickness. Assume walls are thicker than most and some massive crossover exists on that back panel and we end up at around 17L net. So far so good, they've got the volume. In a sealed alignment the box is a bit large, resulting in an overall system Q of 0.55. It's not terrible, overdamped a bit but still usable. In a vented alignment a "normal" tuning frequency would be more like 38 Hz, which results in an f3 of 35 Hz. Nice! All from a 17L box too. Port length will be an issue, but whatever, give me that deep bass! And then last we take that port and shrink it down to only 3/4" and you end up with what amir measured here, this massive underdamped, incredibly peaked response at around ~110 Hz. Low-end suffers, transient response suffers (based on model). It's an usual design choice for sure.
I'm in the process of performing some subtle mods to a commercial speaker I picked up and literally one of the first things I did that honestly has made it sound so much better was to lengthen the port by just 2 inches. It dropped the tuning frequency from 72 Hz to 56 Hz. For me that was a welcomed improvement. Obviously not everyone shares the same opinion of what makes up an ideal tuning frequency. Even though there are standard models (using T/S params) for this kind of thing so that they can be done properly. At the very least they could have tuned this speaker anywhere from 38 Hz to even 70, or 80 or 90 Hz and it would have had some of that mid-bass punch they were going for without being so over the top. The only option is to run them sealed with a sub, high-passed at ~70 Hz (where excursion bottoms out) and maybe they'll do the job just fine.
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LOL. This has to be the most predictable-ASR-responses thread of all time. Sending a Wilson speaker to ASR for evaluation, given their price, audiophile rep, and known response errors....especially a teeny $10,000 model!....is like gently lowering a wriggling lamb in to a den of starving lions. There's hardly any wondering at what will happen and the thread didn't disappoint for the expected braying and bloodletting. The opportunity to tear apart one of the audiophile Crown Jewel brands, known for luxury pricing, is pure catharsis for the cohort that is attracted to the ASR site.
Not that there's anything wrong with that
The most surprising aspect is Amirm's actual review, the interesting combination of how the (predictably wonky) measurements combine at points in interesting ways, as pointed out by Amirm, combined with Amirm's listening impression. I agree that ideally blind listening would be employed, but unlike some I do enjoy Amirm's listening impressions. Even taken at a lowered-confidence-level being sighted, it's intriguing to see how some of the idiosyncrasies in a speaker measurement play out when Amirm listens. In other words I not only like to see notable characteristics in a measurement pointed out, but I can still be left asking "Ok, to what are the sonic consequences subjectively? Because that's what I care about anyway. How does all this add up in how it SOUNDS?" If a careful listener like Amirm reports "Not as obvious as the measurements might seem to imply" or whatever, I take that as possibly useful information, even if not on the level of scientifically vetted.
I haven't heard a Wilson speaker in ages so I don't know if I'd get anything out of one on casual listening. But Amirm's measurement/listening review is a nice addition, and in some cases antidote, for the existing subjective reviews out there which don't have measurements.
Not that there's anything wrong with that
The most surprising aspect is Amirm's actual review, the interesting combination of how the (predictably wonky) measurements combine at points in interesting ways, as pointed out by Amirm, combined with Amirm's listening impression. I agree that ideally blind listening would be employed, but unlike some I do enjoy Amirm's listening impressions. Even taken at a lowered-confidence-level being sighted, it's intriguing to see how some of the idiosyncrasies in a speaker measurement play out when Amirm listens. In other words I not only like to see notable characteristics in a measurement pointed out, but I can still be left asking "Ok, to what are the sonic consequences subjectively? Because that's what I care about anyway. How does all this add up in how it SOUNDS?" If a careful listener like Amirm reports "Not as obvious as the measurements might seem to imply" or whatever, I take that as possibly useful information, even if not on the level of scientifically vetted.
I haven't heard a Wilson speaker in ages so I don't know if I'd get anything out of one on casual listening. But Amirm's measurement/listening review is a nice addition, and in some cases antidote, for the existing subjective reviews out there which don't have measurements.
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This speaker costs more than a pair of Buchardt A700s. What were they thinking.
That they'd sell a bunch of them. And likely be right about that?
Or maybe that they'd only sell a few but still make a bunch of money due to the pricing?
Zensō
Major Contributor
Yup. I’m only guessing, but I have to wonder if these are primarily targeted at existing Wilson customers who already own a pair of their >$100K speakers and want something smaller for a secondary listening area. Once you’re price anchored at $100K plus, $10K probably sounds pretty reasonable.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #698
That was the way I carried it!!!
There will always be such products in every field which rely more on brand image and more margin even if number of sale is less. There will always be market too for such products because for many people status is more important than actual performance. It's the sites like ASR which clearly segregate products by means of objective approach. Now it's someone's own choice to spend money on such products even after knowing the poor performance.
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JRS
Major Contributor
That is some fine writing. Did you say you were a engineer?LOL. This has to be the most predictable-ASR-responses thread of all time. Sending a Wilson speaker to ASR for evaluation, given their price, audiophile rep, and known response errors....especially a teeny $10,000 model!....is like gently lowering a wriggling lamb in to a den of starving lions. There's hardly any wondering at what will happen and the thread didn't disappoint for the expected braying and bloodletting. The opportunity to tear apart one of the audiophile Crown Jewel brands, known for luxury pricing, is pure catharsis for the cohort that is attracted to the ASR site.
Not that there's anything wrong with that
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