Paragon, the dealer for Wilson Audio had pulled out all stops to show off the new Wilson ALEXX speakers.
The setting was a very large (conference) room -- larger than any other suite at the show:
The speaker are quite imposing in size and experience:
The room is rather dead as you can tell from wall to wall carpet and dropped ceiling. Given the large space, I was hoping for clean bass performance. Didn't quite get that. More on that later. Here is the impressive wall of gear driving them:
My favorite analog format, Reel to Reel was very well represent with frequent plays:
Full dCS stack for digital playback:
Tube power amps:
They played LP, tape and digital. Here are the music that I heard while there:
http://www.shazam.com/track/6432236...streamthe-soldiers-tale-suite#referrer=shz.am
Nice music and track. Overall impression on the playback system was just "OK."
I was surprised how much Dire Straights LPs got played at the show. Here it was Brother in Arms: http://www.shazam.com/track/5165362/brothers-in-arms#referrer=shz.am
This is the digital version but again, the actual playback was LP (and may be a different revision):
Ticks and pops were very frequent and distracting to me. There was serious lisping in the vocals and highs were distorted -- all of which I attribute to the source: turntable/LP. Same artifacts I heard in other rooms. The large room helped in keeping the bass from being too bloated (although some general boominess was present). The sound presentation as I said earlier, was grand and large. If you like that in large panel speakers, you have some of it here with the Wilson ALEXX.
This track was from tape,Helplessly Hoping, Crosby & Stills & Nash
: http://www.shazam.com/track/644530/helplessly-hoping#referrer=shz.am
Very nice and enjoyable.
Speakers retail I think for $104,000. I won't even try to add up the prices for the rest of the system. Personal impression was that if you are a Wilson man, this is the larger meaner version of their smaller systems. But otherwise, the experience was, "OK" for me
.
The setting was a very large (conference) room -- larger than any other suite at the show:
The speaker are quite imposing in size and experience:
The room is rather dead as you can tell from wall to wall carpet and dropped ceiling. Given the large space, I was hoping for clean bass performance. Didn't quite get that. More on that later. Here is the impressive wall of gear driving them:
My favorite analog format, Reel to Reel was very well represent with frequent plays:
Full dCS stack for digital playback:
Tube power amps:
They played LP, tape and digital. Here are the music that I heard while there:
http://www.shazam.com/track/6432236...streamthe-soldiers-tale-suite#referrer=shz.am
Nice music and track. Overall impression on the playback system was just "OK."
I was surprised how much Dire Straights LPs got played at the show. Here it was Brother in Arms: http://www.shazam.com/track/5165362/brothers-in-arms#referrer=shz.am
This is the digital version but again, the actual playback was LP (and may be a different revision):
Ticks and pops were very frequent and distracting to me. There was serious lisping in the vocals and highs were distorted -- all of which I attribute to the source: turntable/LP. Same artifacts I heard in other rooms. The large room helped in keeping the bass from being too bloated (although some general boominess was present). The sound presentation as I said earlier, was grand and large. If you like that in large panel speakers, you have some of it here with the Wilson ALEXX.
This track was from tape,Helplessly Hoping, Crosby & Stills & Nash
: http://www.shazam.com/track/644530/helplessly-hoping#referrer=shz.am
Very nice and enjoyable.
Speakers retail I think for $104,000. I won't even try to add up the prices for the rest of the system. Personal impression was that if you are a Wilson man, this is the larger meaner version of their smaller systems. But otherwise, the experience was, "OK" for me
.
