The $27,900 disappointment? Wilson Audio Watt Puppy 8 issues.

Low impedance is immaterial when speakers are paired with amplifiers that are right for them.

Lots of folks out there under-power their speakers.

Some speakers, especially vintage ones, will react to this indignity by either sounding like garbage or by frying the offending amp.

Other speakers will still sound pretty good, yet withhold their best. 

At the end of the day the vast majority of speakers, polite ones included, benefit sonically from high-power / high-current amplification.

fyi, Here is the Stereophile measurements of most of the Wilson Watt/Puppy and related line of speakers in order of release. Probably covers almost 3 decades of Wilson Speakers - Impedance, Phase, Frequency. It shows a pattern and trend that is obviously part of the Wilson philosophy. I do not see that the W/P 8 is any different or special from the rest of the line. If I am reading it right, it seems the only obvious change was with the Shasha DAW and Shasha V where two low freq. (15hz, 45 hz) impedance peak higher and sync up better with the phase ? is that correct ?

There are certain amps (i have a couple) that can make any turd of a speaker sound ok. 

At what point is it the speaker's magic on its own? Or at what point is it just getting carried by a very high quality front end?

Its funny - I’ve read time and time again about Wilson’s lack of efficiency and low impedance. Hence requiring high quality amps to drive them. And when they are driven by the proper amp most people seem to agree that they sound very good.

here’s the thing, I’ve never heard a Wilson owner complain about this. I think thats because most Wilson owners have no intention of buying anything but a high quality amp.

Based on these impedance curves of speakers over 3 decades, it has to be obvious that these curves are providing exceptional sound to the people grading and buying these speakers. The objective they have set for the speakers are being met. Wilson speakers are very expensive, so, is it reasonable that they expect quality amps to drive them to get the most out of them - either a stereo amp or two mono amps ?

I see two main issues:

1. Adding a woofer planar amp to the Puppy so you can dial in any bass you want is creating a whole different speaker. It is now basically a sub-woofer type situation that is user definable. It is obviously not what Wilson was selling, and is completely changing the sound of the speaker. A more valid comparison would have been to compare his new crossover with the same amp setup.

2. The deterioraton of the old diffracton foam on old Wilson Speakers is a well known issue. Wilson sells new diffraction pads for people to update their speakers. Why not try that first to fix any diffraction issues ? When I bought my W/P 8 used, I knew that updating the diffraction pads was an additional expense that I had to factor in. Did I notice a difference when I added the new Wilson Diffraction pads ? Yes, I think I did. Maybe, I am wrong because I could not A/B the change, but, it would have been nice to measure the before and after using the Wilson recommended method for addressing this issue.

Lastly, I am not sure what to say about the whole "off axis" response issue.

If we're gonna question every W/P owner's posting credentials, why don't we bring up Danny Richie's past association with AV123 and its convicted criminal scammer Mark Schifter? Geez. I hate YouTube personalities.

@mulveling  Nobody is questioning EVERY Wilson owners posts, so your exaggeration is unfounded.  Apparently, Schifter was/is a very smooth operator conning multiple people.  Association by doing design work, is not proof of any wrongdoing.  Grasping at straws to level criticism at Danny, like you have done several times from behind your keyboard. 

Personally when I was really listening to loudspeakers years ago I thought Wilson loudspeakers were astounding but eventually thought they were not what I wanted ultimately, but still very good. Others must feel they are wonderful based on sale; it's not all marketing you know.

And if an amp cannot handle some 2 ohm lows it must not have balls balls at all IMO. I feel sure that my relatively inexpensive Odyssey Audio Kismet monoblocks can drive anything well, and to any volume level one might desire.

It's tough hearing a speaker-basher make his name doing such reviews and ripping on everything he speaks of. Oh well, folks make money that way after all.

I think you are missing the real point when describing design flaws with certain speakers. It is not an issue of the quality of the amp or what type of load the amp can drive. The simple fact is that lower impedance speakers are harder to drive, result in more distortion and quite possibly prevent the speaker from sounding as good as it could if the impedance were higher. 

...Or, they could sound better if reducing the impedance also reduces the Q resulting in a more linear response or reducing a peak.

To simplify, based on the impedance curves above, Wilson likes to parallel two 8 inch woofers in their Puppy cab which gives you a low impedance in some specific lower frequencies.  This seems to be done in all the models throughout the decades.  Obviously, Wilson and others like the way that makes the low frequency sound.  So, saying it is wrong to do that, is maybe looking at it in the wrong context...  For example, Wilson assuming that the customer will use an amp that can drive a 2.x ohm load for some specific lower frequencies may sound better to them than using a lesser quality amp and changing the woofers wiring/crossover to achieve a higher ohm load.  The context may be to take account the quality of the amp together with the speaker crossover/wiring -- Wilson may be looking for that little additional edge in bass sound from a total system.  So, when making assumptions, we should assume both the postive and negative.   One thing I can tell you is that everybody that has heard my W/P 8 loves the bass coming out of those things.   Subwoofer not required. 

An amps ability to drive lower impedance loads has no relation to the amps quality. 

yes, ok.  How about, for the same db, lower impedance requires more current, which equates to a bigger power supply (ie. in A, AB) which may increase the cost of the amp.  Something like that.

"An amps ability to drive lower impedance loads has no relation to the amps quality."

I can’t agree with this. The ability to drive lower impedance loads means that the power supply has to be up to the task. This would include such things as heavier gauge wiring in the transformer, and other places, and "bigger" supply caps, and that does infer a higher quality.

"An amps ability to drive lower impedance loads has no relation to the amps quality."

I can’t agree with this. The ability to drive lower impedance loads means that the power supply has to be up to the task. This would include such things as heavier gauge wiring in the transformer, and other places, and "bigger" supply caps, and that does infer a higher quality.

And more output devices, and more heatsinking...but this assumes an "equal grounds" approach via traditional A / AB topologies with linear PSU’s. There’s rail switching designs, PSU modulating, class D - all kinds of alternate approaches that can be utilized to generate more power and low-impedance handling with less cost.

Boy we are way off topic lol. All good engineering makes certain assumptions about the intended applications and audience for a product. It’s completely valid for Wilson to take the approach they have - for the sound quality they were trying to achieve, the context of the time perdiod, their intended audience (who are generaly NOT cheapskates when it comes to amps), etc. Complete hubris for DR to come in 20 years later and act superior for tearing down a Wilson against the parameters of his TOTALLY different goals and customer base. He wants to show neat "high value" BOM’s and flat FR graphs for his modest boxes (mostly focused on bookshelf form factor) and drive them with receivers, I get it.

I'm guessing the owner feels the speakers are lacking in a certain department within his room. We do not know if the owner has any treatments. For all we know the room may be four concrete walls. The speaker manufacturer cannot know every customer's listening situation. 

In my view, a company like GIK Acoustics could go into the owner's room and "fix" whatever the owner lacks. Plus that "fix" would be lasting with any speaker the owner buys. 

All good engineering makes certain assumptions about the intended applications and audience for a product. It’s completely valid for Wilson to take the approach they have - for the sound quality they were trying to achieve, the context of the time perdiod, their intended audience

This. Wilson makes choices with their design, they arent flaws (to them). They create their speakers to function optimally within a given system, even if it means they wont perform as well in a different system.  They’re building a product that is designed to work with high quality components because thats what their customers will have. 
As a Wilson owner, if you asked me if I would be willing to sacrifice some performance in my setup, so that my speakers would sound better in a lower end setup, I would obviously be against that. I didnt buy them so that I could connect them to a mass market amplifier and I wouldnt expect anybody else would either. 

No one with expensive high quality speakers would drive these with cheap electronics. This isnt the issue. The issue is if Wilson can achieve the same quality of sound making the speakers higher impedance with a more refined curve. As it stands Wilson is excluding a great number of amps on the market because they cant drive lower impedance loads.

I should add that Wilson has been very successful to date with some idiosyncratic performance issues so I cant blame the son for not changing much on the new designs. Thank goodness he changed the tweeter.

It’s the people who have never actually owned Wilsons who seem to criticize them the most. As an owner of the WATT/Puppy system all the way back to 1986 (Puppies came out in 1988), I found little to criticize other than an overly tight treble,  and congestion on big crescendos (Prokofiev's Scythian Suite could sound very bright on the first generation WATTs).

Otherwise, having lived with them for 12 years, I don’t seem to have heard all the "flaws" that so many others have. Funny, innit?? People who’ve heard a speaker for - perhaps - 10 hours total have more to say about them (and not positive comments!!!) than those who have owned it for decades.

Well I think this is not surprising. Those who are attracted to this sound buy the speakers and those that arent dont. 

No one with expensive high quality speakers would drive these with cheap electronics. This isnt the issue. The issue is if Wilson can achieve the same quality of sound making the speakers higher impedance with a more refined curve.

Sure. Let’s see all new Wilsons engineered for 8ohms and 90 dB minimum, so that any HT receiver can drive them. But why stop there? Let’s also spec their boxes much smaller, so it’s easy to ship and integrate into grandma’s home decor. Let’s lower all prices to $5K max, so even college students can afford a "top" Wilson. We’ll also redesign their voicing to show nice flat FR (for the ASR crowd) and stick it full of parts that (listed at full retail, of course) make it look like there’s very little room for profit atop the BOM. Wow! Now we have a Danny Richie speaker.

Why is anyone else trying to tell Wilson & its customers what they "should" care about in their design decisions? Again, good engineering starts with sorting out the "I don’t care"’s from the "I REALLY care"’s - and Wilson has clearly made an enduring name for themselves, in a crowded industry, with their choices in this matter. 

My sarcasm detector is chirping. It probably needs new batteries.

Here's a thought...,  

If you design your speakers so that anything can run them, there's going to be a lot of crappy stuff out there running them making them sound crappy and giving them a bad rep, even if undeserved.

Anybody else remember Dave Wilson demoing the Sophia at the 2004 CES show with a cheap Parasound amp and an iPod? Guess the equipment didn't matter much that day.

Great how did the demo sound?

Absurd thought that because you can drive a $ 20K plus speaker with cheap electronics you would. As if this would be a reason to not make a speaker easy to drive.

Many of you are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of how most amps react to low impedance speakers. Low impedance is never a good thing. Yes can make a good sounding weird curve/high impedance speaker which sounds good, but why would you. You seem to think that enormous thought goes into every aspect of speaker design. 

Remember that when David Wilson started building speakers, no tube options were available or at least in favor. 

Don't assume anything about what I understand or don't understand. I have owned Sophias and I know they need good equipment in front of them. I wasn't at the show so I don't know how the demo sounded.

I was only trying to take folks down memory lane.

I meant weird curve/low impedance speaker. Sorry!

So you mention a demo which you didnt hear. I guess because Dave did this demo we should assume the sound was excellent. C'mon show us a bit of respect!

Yes sarcasm from Mulv., but not very clever or applicable. 

Many of you are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of how most amps react to low impedance speakers. Low impedance is never a good thing.

Low impedance is neither a good nor a bad thing. It is what it is. When low impedance is present, appropriate amplification is required. This is not optional, the right amps must be chosen and I don’t disagree that many folks don’t, either because they underestimate or simply ignore their speakers’ needs, and then they’ll go and bad-mouth glorious speakers just because they sounded terrible in their inadequate system.

@audition__audio I think we are on the same page wrt the need for quality speakers to be paired with quality amplifiers, but I would argue that many amazing sounding large floorstanders out there do have unforgiving impedance curves, so to me at least, high current amps are a must-have.

Besides, very few speakers, including higher-efficiency ones, fail to benefit from an abundance of current, even when it’s a nice-to-have and not a must-have.

This is not to say that a person can’t put together a system that sounds fantastic in their room out of a single-digit-watt amp driving a single full-range coaxial driver.

It is all a matter of taste in the end.

Yes I agree with you. There seems to be some commonality between many of the very expensive floor standers in not only impedance but also in the material used to make the drivers. I am considering getting  250W transformer coupled tube monos to explore the possibility that I can work around some of the limiting factors with hard to drive speakers and tubes. Beating the speakers into submission with lots of tube power. I would love to explore S.S., but the only amps of this type I can listen to are all over $ 50K, except perhaps for the Trilogy amps. 

Thanks for discussing and not taking a more aggressive approach. Notice I have never said Wilson made bad speakers.

@audition__audio 

I was not familiar with Trilogy so I looked up the brand. Really beautiful amps. However, nothing in the published specs suggest they would excel at driving difficult loads. 

Have you looked at Accuphase? Some of their amps are stable below 1 ohm, and they have a sound that can be described as warm. Their A300 monoblocks are rated 125W into 8 ohms, 250W into 4 ohms, 500W into 2 ohms, and 1000W into 1 ohm. That's really as good as it gets. They're also beautiful and their build quality is gorgeous.

I am not a fan of Wilson speakers honestly.

1)Does anyone here think Wilson isnt aware of these measurements?

2) Lets assume we all agree that they are. 

IMO if 1 and 2 are true, then its intentional, and perhaps for reasons we’ll never be privy to. But the reason could be that flattening the curve for the sake of proper engineering may completely ruin the sound. 

My guess would be that the drop to almost 2 ohm at approx. 25 hz and 85 hz for all those Wilson speakers listed above will pull more current from the amp(s) and increase the bass presence. 

Well it may not be intentional but necessary given the drivers used and crossover design.