A 5db, medium Q peak in the midbass is definitely audible. Speakers, unlike DACs, aren't solved problems. The flaws this speaker presents versus other measured speakers would certainly be audible.
Flatter is still flatter. If you can get flatter anechoic on axis and in room, deeper bass response, and better directivity control while maintaining the same power handling and *distortion (*which is a suspicious metric) the result is a technically superior speaker.
I think the critique in this thread is not that the speaker is broken (even though the design has serious--imo inexcusable--flaws, most notably the excessively high port tuning and apparent lack of any engineering given to the port), or even that it sounds bad, but that the value proposition of the tune tot is that the product provides the consumer status rather than good objective performance.
Thanks for your sensible answer and view. I can follow it to a certain point.
We like to make objective evaluations of speakers here. But we need to have all the information to do so...People dont see to notice there are still many blanks which are not filled.
There are 4 types of speakers.
One that measure good and sound good. Very easy to evaluate....case closed.
One that measure bad and sound bad.... same thing here...case closed.
Then you have those that measure good and sound bad or measure bad and sound good.
Those are interesting to investigate and find out what is going on.
This speaker is falling into the last group and hence my quest for an answer. If we find the answer we learn and grow to understand things better.
Many talk about the port tuning and EQ-ing.
Can we dissect that?
1 EQ the bass bump.
Amir said it was too strong. When closing the port he said there was not enough bass hence his solution to EQ it.
But :
- this speaker doesnt have baffle step compensation and to provide sufficent and balanced bass output it should be placed close to the wall.
Did Amir listen to this speaker with closed port and close to the back wall?
It would have the sealed box slope and lift from the wall re-inforcement below 100Hz.
2 EQ at 700Hz.
What is the idea here? Killing the resonance at that frequency?
If so, as show in the graph below and like someone here already pointed out, the resonance comes from the port/woofer. If the port is closed this issue will be solved as well. (if this is the reason why amir EQ it....if its something else....)
3 EQ 5Khz
Amir mention something about the schowroom brightness.
Is he trying to solve that with this EQ setting?
If so, there is also an other route....Wilson provides resistors to adjust the tweeter level.
Only Amir can confirm what his listening conditions was and what problems he want to solve with the EQing.
But if it is match the situation like I mention here, then we can have a good sounding speaker without EQing.
Just my point is, there are blanks that we dont know to make a proper evaluation and that in my book is enough not to condemn a speaker.
One is guilty till proven guilty. (that is why i mention the movie 12 angry men....very good one
)
Also dont forget. Wilson wants to sell speakers. Many other commercial brands have this "showroom sound". This is appealing at first and when some audition speakers this will get there attention as sounding good. Revel/genelec has a change not to be liked and skipped by many because of this.
Then at least I find it good that they offer a way to overcome this "showroom sound"
Dont forget the people here are already a niche group.
And same happening with TV's they also have a showroom picture.....also here many would skip a TV with accurate imagine.
