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Wilson Chronosonic - why?
- Thread starter Wseaton
- Start date
Have you ever seen the bills that dentists and doctors send to your insurance company? Not to mention good old daddy.How do those fools get so much money to be parted with, anyway?
That's what I wanna know, dang it!
I've never thought those systems, especially the bigger Wilsons, sounded particularly good. To me systems like the IRS, the Wilson Maxx's, and the Porizeli Pipedreams, to name just three I've heard, all sound like they are multiple speakers lashed together playing different ranges of the audible frequency range with three, four, or five different voices. They generally can get very loud, they may have one or two regions where they sound very 'expensive', but as overall systems, they never seem to sound coherent and unified. The bass in particular always seems overblown . I think that's because in the audio showroom, the sales force attempts to show where all that money went in creating the system, and huge, overwhelming, bombastic bass is the proof for the dumb and monied that no expense was spared in making the product. To that end. high end showrooms make no attempt to use dsp to control room nulls and especially peaks caused by standing waves, so these systems more often that not sound incredibly turgid to anyone with experience on what real music sounds like. But the target market isn't musicians, really experienced audio professionals or seasoned audiophiles, but rather nouveau riche professionals and coke dealers, and as long as their new $800k system stands over seven feet tall, has amps made entirely of aircraft aluminum the size of top loading deep freezes, and burps 16hz sound waves at 125 db, they're happy.
And the Wilson's drive Maybachs. So it goes.
And the Wilson's drive Maybachs. So it goes.
MattHooper
Master Contributor
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Wilson doesn't do anything "small":
www.ecoustics.com
Lovely looking center channel, isn't it?
Makes me want to duck and cover!
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Speaker is One Beast of a Loudspeaker
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Loudspeaker tips the scale at over 200 pounds and $21,000. Overkill to say the least.
www.ecoustics.com
Lovely looking center channel, isn't it?
Makes me want to duck and cover!
fpitas
Master Contributor
Some high-end speakers are gorgeous. Not those.Wilson doesn't do anything "small":
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Speaker is One Beast of a Loudspeaker
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Loudspeaker tips the scale at over 200 pounds and $21,000. Overkill to say the least.
Lovely looking center channel, isn't it?
Makes me want to duck and cover!
Penelinfi
Addicted to Fun and Learning
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Maybe they are selling them to people who aren't so great with technology, or just love fiddling with mechanical adjustments. Like how people enjoy putting on a record.
Now you can adjust each driver minutely and go to "hear" the difference . It feels like you did something more than when you do it on a phone screen, despite the phone being an easier, flexible method (with the active system)
Now you can adjust each driver minutely and go to "hear" the difference . It feels like you did something more than when you do it on a phone screen, despite the phone being an easier, flexible method (with the active system)
Wilson doesn't do anything "small":
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Speaker is One Beast of a Loudspeaker
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Loudspeaker tips the scale at over 200 pounds and $21,000. Overkill to say the least.
Lovely looking center channel, isn't it?
Makes me want to duck and cover
Looks like something that can move rapidly on those four feet and maybe suck small living things into its intake port. Watch out for your Yorkie if you ever get one of those. Never let it out of your sight! You've been warned!Wilson doesn't do anything "small":
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Speaker is One Beast of a Loudspeaker
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Loudspeaker tips the scale at over 200 pounds and $21,000. Overkill to say the least.
Lovely looking center channel, isn't it?
Makes me want to duck and cover!
Galliardist
Major Contributor
... but on looking, I find that anyone in the EU at least can have their own Wilsons at a surprisingly reasonable cost!
wilson-hifi.eu
Not sure how they got away with this one, maybe they have gone under the radar. They appear to be a Polish company
Wilson – Music for Everyone
wilson-hifi.eu
Not sure how they got away with this one, maybe they have gone under the radar. They appear to be a Polish company
Last edited:
They are fugly too.
i would imagine the places that sell these speakers to clients never ever just sell the speakers alone... these places are selling an entire setup for close to seven figures and that obviously includes an amp that is approved by David Wilson... maybe something from d'agostino? gryphon?
very very few people are buying the speakers by themselves to hook up even an AHB2
very very few people are buying the speakers by themselves to hook up even an AHB2
I'd love to hear them driven by something like a Fosi V3
Especially if the salesman was convnced it was a big Macintosh or something.
About 15 years ago I visited a dealer that prominently carried Wilson Audio speakers. One of the employees said that they sold one or two pairs of the most expensive Wilsons each year, and that was enough to keep the store in business (they have since closed shop, so maybe the Wilson sales slowed down for them?). He said that sometimes for these super expensive sales, the buyer is often not the person who will actually own them - because that person is too rich/busy to go speaker shopping. Instead, the buyer is a personal assistant or decorator or something similar for that ultra-wealthy person, and they have been tasked with buying the best stereo system they can find. To them, best simply equates to most expensive.
there's a few articles out there on this end of the market... sort of like the Robb Report for audio setups
they're detailed and the pics are of the type you see in vanity fair
some billionaire wants the best for his $20 mil. plus mansion and he knows something about high end audio enough to be dangerous and so his personal assistant will arrange it all and a team rolls up in a high roof Ford Transit and they will setup your gear and maybe run your assistant thru basic usage
these speakers i imagine have alignment and azimuth adjustment and all that... this is what those onsite guys do
this is a consult and to me its over the top but should be no surprise to you that super high end hifi places love this shit
they're detailed and the pics are of the type you see in vanity fair
some billionaire wants the best for his $20 mil. plus mansion and he knows something about high end audio enough to be dangerous and so his personal assistant will arrange it all and a team rolls up in a high roof Ford Transit and they will setup your gear and maybe run your assistant thru basic usage
these speakers i imagine have alignment and azimuth adjustment and all that... this is what those onsite guys do
this is a consult and to me its over the top but should be no surprise to you that super high end hifi places love this shit
I'd just short cut that and say nothing Wilson does is particularly great except in the odd aesthetic sense to impress.....and even then that is for the odd ***** squad
Keith_W
Major Contributor
I spoke to the Wilson distributor for Australia at a recent show. I asked him how they do their time alignment when they set their speakers up in the room. Answer: they have charts and tables that tell them how much to physically move each driver module depending on room geometry. No microphone and no audio measurements are taken. The only measurements taken are with a tape measure.
Wilson doesn't do anything "small":
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Speaker is One Beast of a Loudspeaker
Wilson Audio's Mezzo CSC Center Channel Loudspeaker tips the scale at over 200 pounds and $21,000. Overkill to say the least.
Lovely looking center channel, isn't it?
Makes me want to duck and cover!
That thing killed a bunch of people in the movie Robocop:
I had the good fortune to listen to a pair of Wilson Chronosonic XVX speakers a few days ago. They were impressive in some ways, as they ought to be for 400,000 GBP. But I wouldn't trade my KEF R11s for them. They sounded pretty rough in the 1000-3000 Hz range.
The only thing wrong with that is using a digital active crossover on a speaker like that will uncover all the inherent problems with that type of crossover. Having myself attempted using a number of digital crossover/equalizer DSPs, I found they all have many issues that you'll never consider until you're struggling to use them. Then when you're readings on the plot show you're close to dialed in, you play some music for the first time and it sounds awful!
There's no end to the people who praise DSPs but from what I've gathered, most people are using speakers that simply aren't able to reproduce the sound with any realistic clarity (they simply can't hear those sounds that are being lost) or they don't know what the DSP is losing in the digital world before its converted back to analog. I noticed there was a significant loss in fine detail, more like the quieter parts were lost. The trailing edges of the sound were missing parts and if enough was removed it was deleted by the way D/A - A/D is set up to work.
Until they make the next step up from 24/96 to a 48/ 192 (imagine the price tag on that) system, there will be audible loss in sound. To show the loss you need to understand how conversion works and then look at the processor used in typical DSPs like miniDSP or Behringer rack mountable DSP systems that tout numerous equalizers and appear to be able to utilize them without any limitations in both EQ settings and crossover settings (plus time alignment delay and even analyzing possibilities).
The reality is, everything is dependent on how much memory is available and how good the processor is
Instead of having the ability to pick out precise EQ points and Q widths, you find that you're not able to always do that depending on how much memory is left after choosing crossover points (again you can't pick an exact point, you're given choices near what you want) and slope types, you'll rarely have enough power to do much else. There's a running tally of how much processor and memory you have used as you work with them.
Then after a week or 2 of sitting there hitting tiny buttons or constantly having to access your computer to make s simple setting change (which can be done in a split second using active analog crossovers and EQs) once you have settled on "either or" and the trade offs you've made along the way, listening to music has just lost its magic.
The intricate sounds of complex analog signals have been lost in the shuffle of conversion due to memory and processing power limitations.
Now I'll explain my idea of what the future of high end sound reproduction will be after DSP has been perfected.
Since we all know sound is actually mono in its source but we use 2 ears to decode it for our brain to determine it's location. It's a 3D type delay sensory function that positions the source. But sound travels in every direction as long as nothing blocks it. Meaning if you blow up a firecracker that's being suspended inside a sphere the blast would cause a wave to emanate outward in all directions (not exactly evenly depending on how the firecracker was made but with a perfectly made encasement it would try to be evenly distributed) and continue in that spherical pattern until it hit a more dense object or reflected in a new direction that is determined by the angle and density of that surface. As long as the atmosphere remains constant the pattern will continue at the pace it originated until the wave has stretched to a point that it can no longer affect the atmosphere to propagate it's existence and the sound becomes quieter.
So the future speaker must be able to put out sound in all directions. Hanging from the ceiling or on a thin pole or by magnets or whatever. It must be able to control the dispersion pattern and manipulate the length and volume of each wave constantly as the input directs it to be reproduced. That means multiple small speakers must be covering the surface (let's say there are 360x 1" drivers aimed evenly in all directions). Each driver has its own amp and DSP controller. Each DSP also has a mic that is set up to aim at each diver from the edges of the wall surface. 360 tiny mics aimed at the hanging ball.
When the input to the speaker tells it that the sound is footsteps coming from around the corner, the ball will create sound in all directions but it will use some speakers to deaden the sound or cancel it out in places the reflections should not be heard. It also will direct which sound and volume each driver produces and it will add reflections into the playback to make the sound come from a point in any place of the room. The main limitation being the sound distance cannot be too far outside the room boundary. Meaning a life like recreation of a band or a play or anything that has a set distance environment could be scaled to fit within the boundaries and be able to change the scale as the point of the recording mic moves in relation to the original recording. Of course for movies this becomes quite a difficult task but for a fixed mic the task would be able to reproduce sounds exactly as they were originally but scaled to fit the room so you aren't loosing any sounds they are simply adjusted to seem like they were originally coming from a space that's exactly the same size as your room.
Making recordings based on room size might be a way of simplifying the task or making the system based on a set room size that is required might be more realistic. The memory and processing needed will be enormous but not impossible by any means.
It's just a matter of how important it is to us as time progresses and the cost to make it might end up being more for a theater type set up that would be used on movies that were recorded and based directly on this device to ensure there is not going to be any situations where the DSP cannot function properly or fast enough to keep the 3D sound image placed properly. Moving cameras would make complex reproduction. A simple concert would become ideal for this type of technology to shine. The only step further for home use would be to have each person wearing a positioning locator to adjust the sound to be as if you were actually moving within the environment. This would only be practical if the sound was accompanied by actual images projected into the space your standing. A wall would be shown but not felt. Perfect for computer games that use virtual reality and able to incorporate the entire room where the sphere is positioned. There again basing the games and the sound field on a set room size would make the reproduction much easier. Scaling would be used to adjust to changes in surroundings as you move about and enter new areas.
This seems to be the only realistic way that sound can be accurately reproduced, using 2 speakers and expecting miracles has not worked. We have finally got to a point where we understand what's going on but we are stuck on this idea that we need 2 full range speakers to reproduce the original mono signal!?? It appears that we have gone off course along the way because it's easier to fake a real sound with 2 speakers than with 1. But of course the design of the speaker enclosure has been problematic and we continue to try and force that design to work by eliminating as much of the unwanted inaccuracies as we can.
Reflections, refraction, bounce,combing, cancelations, adding, tonal deviations, phase shift, positioning, dispersion, driver limitations, loss in path, interference, conversion and ability to capture the source signal accurately are just some of the problems we have been trying to element and so far we have not gained much ground other than setting up a fixed stage that positions sounds to a certain degree. I think we have evolved to see the limitations of the design we have been trying to force into what it simply cannot be
DSP is the pathway to controlling sound and manipulating it to where it can be placed within a room at any point. Stopping reflections or adding them in as needed is the next step. There will not be a need for room mode corrections using physical objects. Hard surfaces will not be a problem when DSP can cancel them out entirely. Off axis will be something that future people will never discuss, you can buy a home and use any room that's large enough to set the speaker up and it can also contain that some in that room by setting up boarders and cancelling the sounds that will travel outside that room.
Please provide evidence of this loss in AD-DA conversion. Did you take this test?
8th generation ADC/DAC loop vs the original.....can you hear it?
Download this zip file. It will unzip into a folder with three 30 second snippets of a Fiona Apple song. Two are the original digital file. One is an 8th generation loop thru DAC/ADC. Pick the odd file out on the poll...
audiosciencereview.com
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