Wilson Audio Sophia.
I heard these at a local deal with Spectral monoblocks, MIT wire, all the "best" stuff. They were wonderful with female jazz type combo and light music however fell down completely when playing larger-scale classical pieces.
Best,
Paul :-) |
Paradigm S8 most definitely.
Within 30 seconds of listening to them, my wife and I were begging the saleman to please stop the pain. Migraine generators for sure. Maybe these are used for sonic torture of Al Qaeda prisoners? |
As the owner of Sophia speakers I don't think they qualify,here. Like any speaker,it might not float everybody's boat but they do reproduce near the full spectrum. At "this" price range the Merlins MM's I owned for 4 or 5 months were quite a few hrtz. short of the Wilsons. There are a few speakers with a serious hump or shortcoming. There are probably many whom love either one of these speakers and find neither as "OVERRATED". So, it's all in the mind;or the ears. |
My vote also goes with the Sophias. I was auditioning preamps about a week ago and as the listening room at the dealer had recently undergone some renovation, it was admittedly not completely set up yet. However, no amount of manipulation made the Wilsons sound good. While they had a pleasant high end and with a lot of experimentation, a decent soundstage, the mid-bass/lower midrange remained awful. On any sort of drum, woodblock, etc it always sounded like someone was hitting a mud puddle with a stick. |
I had the same experience with Sophias and Spectral: I couldn't even recognize Muddy Waters' voice I had to ask teh sales person. Never had such an experience before even with small monitors and a British integrated. |
I was going to add this to my original post but I was late. My Sophia's took at least 2 months of 24/7 to get there. I can tell you bass is not their shortcoming; once they have enough hours on them. (like so many things) |
I know the whole line: Gershwin.
They're all upto $15k and all as one are overrated. |
Vivaldi's listing at 5000 a pair unmodified. The 1000 modification I heard made it worse. |
Legacy Focus.
The bass was boomy and the bass doesn't blend it at all with the mids and tweeter.
The crossover Legacy uses is terrible on that speaker |
Not here to bash the Sophia.I was going over the freq response of this speaker. I noticed by the Stereophile measurements there's a hump that starts to rise around 40Hz and continues past 200Hz. With room lift there's no telling how high the hump would be, maybe another 6 to 12 dB ? This could be the reason for the midbass problems in certain rooms as stated in previous post.From what I've read and been told ,the only way to bandaid the problem would be to use a DSP to change the time delay of the signal to the drivers and also change the slopes of the crossover.Has anyone had luck doing this? |
What's a multi-thousand dollar speaker doing with a mid-bass hump ?
Larry |
Hey Larry if you think that's bad check out this $30,000 speaker .The company claims a response from 25hz to 60khz. A blind man can see this speaker will never make it to 25Hz with usable output. Verity Sarastro . You can get a $500 speaker with better response than this. This speaker has humps and suckouts like nothing I've seen! JA suggested blocking one of the ports to tame the midbass LOL. I couldn't imagine paying $30,000 for a speaker and using socks to make it listenable! ;-)All I want to know... does a new owner get a free reach around after purchase? |
Gmood,
Stop it, you're killin' me.......
Oz |
A friend of mine owns the wilson Sophias...he has A Large listening room, high celings, nice thick carpet...best speakers I hAve ever listened to. |
B&W 801, 802, and 803. $15K can get you much sweeter sonics than these. |
Shoe: you mean best room you have ever listened to! |
Legacy Focus or any Triangle Floor Standers. Just not pleasing to listen to.
Chris |
Doug99 I think you hit upon the worst 'HiFi' speaker ever made! None of their products sound good, but the Legecy Focus is the worst. After that, anything B&W ever made... |
