Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (high-end bookshelf speaker)

[Marc v E]

But expensive watches and hypercars show excellent craftmanship and high performance, this does not.

Hand made watches show excellent craftmanship but not performance. A simple 25 dollar digital casio performs more accurate. They are a showpeace imo.

As far as I know hypercars are put together in a shed. Usually the core is an engine from a well known manufacturer like amg mercedes or audi. Then the outside shell is crafted by hand and so is the inside. It gives a feeling of exclusivity, of luxury.

To me the Wilson's are aimed at this audience. They are polished, have the exclusive brand name and luxury components. Probably sound quite good too thanks to the drivers.

 

[Puddingbuks]

People buying these will probably using them with a $5K amp + a $5K DAC at least, so total cost is around $20K which is insane

Don’t forget the subwoofer(s).

 

[Maiky76]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Wilson Audio TuneTot stand-mount/bookshelf speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs around US $10,000 (varies due to color).
View attachment 173759

I am not a fan of the way the front looks without the grill. The sides though sport probably the best finish I have seen on a speaker with deep gloss and polish. Speaker is also incredibly heavy and stiff for its size (29 pounds or 13 Kg). Drivers are custom versions of Scan-speak Revelator.

There is a down title rectangular port in the back:
View attachment 173760

I put in the very well designed dense foam plug that fits the port exceptionally well. In testing it really plugged the port unlike foam ones which half of the time feel like they are not doing anything.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

Reference axis was the center of the tweeter (aligned by eye). The grill was not used. It is getting colder with the measurement room temp at 14 degrees C. Accuracy is better than 1% for almost entire audio spectrum indicating a well designed speaker.

Wilson Audio TuneTot Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

View attachment 173761

On-axis response clearly doesn't look even. There is a massive peak around 115 Hz then real messiness around or near the crossover region. Directivity is lost around 3 kHz as well. Exploring the impact of the port, we see why that peak is there in bass:

View attachment 173762

Very strange to see the port tuned to boost the response at such a high frequency rather than extending it lower.

Oddly again, the sum of the early reflections is better behaved than on-axis:

View attachment 173763

This causes the predicted in-room response to be much smoother than you would expect from looking at our original spin graph:

View attachment 173764

As we could already guess, beamwidth is not uniform indicating room dependency:

View attachment 173765

Radiation pattern is wider than usual though which should give a more spacious impression than a point source around the speaker:

View attachment 173783

Vertically you lose some margin due to slanted baffle so best to not go above tweeter axis:

View attachment 173767

Distortion is kept very low at 86 dBSPL but I could hear a resonance during 96 dPSPL:

View attachment 173768

View attachment 173769

To rule out the Klippel stand from contributing to this, I literally held the speaker above it as the sweep ran and I could hear the resonance at a specific frequency. Strangely the frequency response drops there so the resonance must be out of phase. Here is the near-field response:

View attachment 173770

I only see minor variations of the woofer response so hard to say if the above is really the problem. I did like the fact that the port/cabinet resonances are kept low. Woofer response does step up some though and is reflected in the frequency response (between 700 Hz and 1 kHz). Is this due to too little baffle compensation?

Impedance is above average which should make it easier on the amplifier:
View attachment 173772

There is a sign of that resonance at 2.6 kHz that we saw in the distortion measurements.

Waterfall response shows a number of resonances corresponding with peaks in response:

View attachment 173771

For fans of timing analysis, here are the impulse and step response (yes, phase is inverted -- I need to fix this):

View attachment 173773

View attachment 173774

Wilson TuneTot Listening Tests and Equalization
Listening test system was a custom, silent Roon Server/Player ($2,000) connected to Matrix X-Sabre MQA DAC ($2,000), and Mark Levinson Reference Amplifier ($20,000, 400 watts/channel) playing custom tracks developed for testing headphones and speakers.

I started playing with the port open. With my female vocal tracks, the extra bass was not all that bad and compensated partially the slight brightness of the speaker. But when I played content with much bass content, it became overwhelming. I plugged the port but then there was not much bass to satisfy. So I removed the plug and deployed a few filters:

View attachment 173775

The first dip should be self-explanatory to remove the extra bass boost. Doing this from anechoic measurements is tricky though as in-room response likely looks very different. So I adjusted this by ear and admittedly on some tracks I wanted slightly more of it. With this filter in place the bass was now tighter and overall sound of the speaker more open. Per above though, there was some brightness that gave me hell to deal with. Likely due to bad directivity and mismatch of on and off-axis, using an electronic filter that impacts both is very challenging.

I eventually gave up on optimizing using on-axis response and roughly used the Predicted In-Room Response (by eye) to develop the two other mild filters. I performed a number of blind tests and overall I preferred the equalized response. There is a caveat that you need to know what good and clean bass is and the overall proper tonality. Otherwise, the "showroom sound" aspect of this speaker can be seductive making you want to listen to boosted bass and slightly elevated highs.

For comparison, I switched back and forth a dozen times with Revel M106 speaker ($2,000). The Revel had a smaller halo and sounded more focused than the TuneTot. It had none of the brilliance of the Tunetot but his was a dual edged sword in that the TuneTot constantly gave the impression of a more detailed, and "audiophile" high frequency notes that were very nicely delineated. TuneTot also had deeper and cleaner bass response than the M106. Overall, I preferred the TuneTot over Revel.

I briefly compared the TuneTot to my Revel Salon 2 ($23,000). Revel did not have the exaggerated spatial qualities of the high frequencies that TuneTot had but overall presented a much more balanced tonality and of course, much more bass impact. Its midrange was so smooth and nice. Still, I was amazed how the TuneTot did not sound small compared to it whereas the M106 did.

Sub-bass response on TuneTot was better than I expect from a small speaker. Push it though and the woofer starts to make bad sounds as they all do in this size factor and playback levels.

Conclusions
There is no question that there are some clear objective/engineering errors in the design of Wilson TuneTot. The port is tuned too high and the on-axis/directivity response is poor. What is strange though that the impact of these on the fidelity of the speaker is not at all this obvious. Either I am influenced by the showroom sound as much as the next guy or getting off-axis to be right in my rather reflective room overcomes issues in on-axis response. It is also possible that all the money that has gone to building such an extremely dense speaker and keeping distortion low is paying benefit here. One wonders how much better these would sound if they had had preserved all of this and at the same time didn't have the design errors.

If I were to just goy by the measurements, the Tunetot would not get good marks. But I have promised you all that I won't lie about what I hear no matter how much of a conflict this provides. To that end, I am going to recommend the Wilson TuneTot with equalization (cost not considered).

Hi,

Here is my take on the EQ.

The following EQs are “anechoic” EQs to get the speaker right before room integration. If you able to implement these EQs you must add EQ at LF for room integration, that is usually not optional… see hints there: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...helf-speaker-review.11144/page-26#post-800725

The raw data with corrected ER and PIR:

Score no EQ: 2.6
With Sub: 5.6

Spinorama with no EQ:

• 10K?

Directivity:

Better stay at tweeter height
Horizontally, better toe-in the speakers by 10/20deg and have the axis crossing in front of the listening location, might help dosing the upper range.

EQ design:

I have generated two EQs. The APO config files are attached.

• The first one, labelled, LW is targeted at making the LW flat
• The second, labelled Score, starts with the first one and adds the score as an optimization variable.
• The EQs are designed in the context of regular stereo use i.e. domestic environment, no warranty is provided for a near field use in a studio environment although the LW might be better suited for this purpose.

Score EQ LW: 4.5
with sub: 7.6

Score EQ Score: 4.9
with sub: 8.0

Wilson Audio TuneTot APO EQ LW 96000Hz
December212021-172818

Preamp: -3.1 dB

Filter 1: ON HPQ Fc 72.60,    0.00,    1.27
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 122.86,    -10.13,    2.08
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 296.72,    0.95,    1.52
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 812.51,    -3.06,    1.80
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 1500.65,    2.28,    3.74
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 1864.86,    -2.55,    3.32
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 2595.17,    3.69,    2.23
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 3000.17,    -1.51,    9.58
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 5235.93,    -1.10,    2.61

Wilson Audio TuneTot APO EQ Score 96000Hz
December212021-172705

Preamp: -2.5 dB

Filter 1: ON HPQ Fc 71.60,    0.00,    1.27
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 121.82,    -10.16,    1.99
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 302.47,    0.95,    1.52
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 841.31,    -2.60,    2.14
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 1514.15,    2.57,    3.99
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 1853.59,    -2.08,    1.76
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 2601.42,    3.71,    2.40
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 2993.17,    -2.24,    9.58
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 5234.93,    -1.31,    1.50

Spinorama EQ LW

Spinorama EQ Score

Zoom PIR-LW-ON

Regression - Tonal

Radar no EQ vs EQ score
Large improvements

The rest of the plots is attached.

 

[Mart68]

.
e) "TuneTot"? Really?

lamest
name
ever

 

[Robin L]

For $10,000 you ought to get 20hz.

Hard pass.

 

[Geert]

TuneTot also had deeper and cleaner bass response than the M106.

How does this work? Looking at the estimated in room response the M106 -6 dB point is at 50 Hz, while for the TuneTot it's 80 Hz. Going by the graphs I would think the TuneTot's have no bass at all,

 

[Geert]

For $10,000 you ought to get 20hz.

Their Watch Dog sub is 10k$. And that's passive off course.

 

[MZKM]

While there is no validation for it being accurate, here is my tonal balance graph, which is a weighted average of the on-axis & ER curves:

Other than the bass peak and ~2500Hz dip, it’s not really that bad, obviously ignoring the price. The mismatch in directivity (as seen in the DI curves of the Spinorama and in the normalized horizontal off-axis performance graph in my main post) isn’t nice to see but it does allow for the wide soundstage at the crossover region.

The only real thing I was confused by in Amir’s subjective position was about bass response:

TuneTot also had deeper and cleaner bass response than the M106. Overall, I preferred the TuneTot over Revel.

The LFX for this is 72Hz, not deep at all (Revel M106 at 47Hz).
In Amir’s EQ image, it looks like he reduced the bass peak to flat, but don’t forget he has the room mode at a similar frequency (105Hz?), so that small bass boost is still being added. Also, looking back at recent reviews, most of the time Amir isn’t taking out the room mode, maybe most of the time it isn’t a big deal or is beneficial like in this case?

 

[Koeitje]

The fit, finish and construction on Wilson Audio speakers is flawless. I don't know where you get the idea it isn't.

Notice the usage of the word 'and'. It only hits part of the requirements I was talking about.

 

[DuncanTodd]

This isn't a speaker for bargain hunters but for rich people who want something that will stand out and impress (for better or worse).
I find all their speakers to be exceptionally ugly and if I had any, I'd probably have nightmares of them coming to life and attacking my family.
They remind me of Daleks:

https://shop.eaglemoss.com/static/media/catalog/product/i/m/mscuk002_1.jpg

This is a science forum, but the subjective reviews clearly show that sometimes that there could be more to the sound than how it's measured.

 

[Vict0r]

I'm sure this speaker has redeeming qualities in a subjective listening situation, since Amir praised some of its characteristics compared to his beloved Revels, but all those disappear when you factor in the asking price. The value is so bad that it taints the overall impression.

 

[Koeitje]

Hand made watches show excellent craftmanship but not performance. A simple 25 dollar digital casio performs more accurate. They are a showpeace imo.

As far as I know hypercars are put together in a shed. Usually the core is an engine from a well known manufacturer like amg mercedes or audi. Then the outside shell is crafted by hand and so is the inside. It gives a feeling of exclusivity, of luxury.

To me the Wilson's are aimed at this audience. They are polished, have the exclusive brand name and luxury components. Probably sound quite good too thanks to the drivers.

You should read my entire post, it deals with the exact argument you just made about watches. There are actually watches out there that use mechanical movements that are controlled by a Quartz crystal which in turn is powered by the mechanical movement. Give you the best of both worlds: accuracy and no battery required.

Hypercars are cars like Koenigsegg and Rimac. They started in a shed, but are not owned or only partially owned by any of the major brands. They develop their own systems and power units. Rimac even sells their EV technology to other brands to use it in their cars. What Rimac and Koenigsegg are doing is absolutely bleeding edge in terms of car performance.

I don't think you can compare Wilson with either industry, because the two industries above all go for the combination for performance and craftmanship. Wilson only opts for the latter.

 

[3125b]

If these were reasonably priced people would just overlook them as mediocre albeit well built bookshelf speakers.
The only reason they get attention and status is the price.

 

[Koeitje]

This isn't a speaker for bargain hunters but for rich people who want something that will stand out and impress (for better or worse).
I find all their speakers to be exceptionally ugly and if I had any, I'd probably have nightmares of them coming to life and attacking my family.
They remind me of Daleks:

https://shop.eaglemoss.com/static/media/catalog/product/i/m/mscuk002_1.jpg

This is a science forum, but the subjective reviews clearly show that sometimes that there could be more to the sound than how it's measured.

The subjective reviews don't really show anything, not even Amir's, because they are sighted tests. The only thing useful from subjective reviews is in terms of SPL limits. Can they play loud enough?

 

[xaviescacs]

If these were reasonably priced people would just overlook them as mediocre albeit well built bookshelf speakers.
The only reason they get attention and status is the price.

This is a good question whenever you buy something. Would I buy it if it where half the price? And 5th the price? If the answer is no, you shouldn't buy it.

 

[Andreas007]

Amir, do you think that the 400 W Mark Levinson power played a significant role when coming to your conclusion?
I mean, would the outcome may have been a bit different with a less potent amp?
And, are all listening tests you do with passives powered by the ML?

 

[Koeitje]

Amir, do you think that the 400 W Mark Levinson power played a significant role when coming to your conclusion?
I mean, would the outcome may have been a bit different with a less potent amp?
And, are all listening tests you do with passives powered by the ML?

Think he normally uses pro class D amplifier which provides more than enough power. Just uses these amplifiers to deal with comments about using cheap gear to test.

 

[anibal66]

Thanks Amirm for this brave review.

I would only propose different titles:

Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (BOUTIQUE bookshelf speaker)​

Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (LUXURY bookshelf speaker)​

IMHO, the term "high end" is ambiguous, and thus unappropriate in ASR.
Frequently, like in this case, "high end" doesn't reflect technical accomplishment, but a very respectable marketing niche where values like exclusivity/craftmanship/looks set the price.

 

[xaviescacs]

Thanks Amirm for this brave review.

I would only propose different titles:

Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (BOUTIQUE bookshelf speaker)​

Wilson Audio TuneTot Review (LUXURY bookshelf speaker)​

IMHO, the term "high end" is ambiguous, and thus unappropriate in ASR.
Frequently, like in this case, "high end" doesn't reflect technical accomplishment, but a very respectable marketing niche where values like exclusivity/craftmanship/looks set the price.

Or "high-end" bookshelf speaker

 

[Lambda]

looked at the picture. "looks like snake oil"
looks at the price "pieced like snake oil"

looks at the review "sounds like snake oil"

who buys this crap in the first place?