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

@deep_333  +1 Meyer Sound Labs Bluehorn system. 

https://meyersound.com/product/bluehorn-system/

A more recent similarly lively system was Devon Turnbull's total system presentation at the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Arts showing of The Art Of Noise, June, 2024.

I'm a sucker for a large space and horns, reminiscent of my old loft and the bands Altec A7's.     

@mclinnguy 

 There will be a part II 

Excellent! Looking forward to it.  Thank you.

He started it!

what an unruly class!

Wow.

What's next, gonna push me off the swings at recess?

At least I have a package.

Gosh, clever.

Brains and brawn, you're the total package.

At least you can take the soprano parts in the choir.

@viridian ,

I'm terribly sorry, was that a bit too hyperbolic for you?

How about this: I wrote something and he was mean to me. I cried for hours, good thing I had my emotional support emu to comfort me.

We all can't be built all tough and macho like you...

LOL, "crucified", grow a set.

At least you guys aren't getting crucified  on another thread for simply pointing out to Terry London he screwed up the word 'artisan' with 'artesian' in one of his reviews. Also my post that had Ianus in it got deleted. That's it, I want my money back.

@ozzy62 

+1.

Bob

Why the anger for all this. I constantly hear audiophiles harping on the lack of negative reviews of equipment, so now we don't like negative reviews!

He's providing a service, up to his customers to determine the value of that service. And since when is marketing oneself via social media such a bad thing.

he bought the wrong speakers in the first place.

+1 @ozzy62

There’s a difference between upgrading something you like vs trying to change the a component’s disliked sonics.  Seems foolish.  If they were targeting the latest Wilson sound on the cheap upgrades aren’t the answer

FWIW, whatever changes Danny makes to the speakers other than upgraded parts, will make it sound like something other than a WP. If that’s what the owner wants, he bought the wrong speakers in the first place.

@fertguy   Deep Dive Part II just dropped, it appears...

"GR Research Upgrade failure or success with Wilson Audio"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIt2pcQvf6M

Danny and Eric Alexander in the same post is like tag team wrestling. One will tell you that your gear is flawed and needs to be fixed, at a price, while the other sues you.

Isn't the obvious question why is he reviewing/modding and slagging a 13yr old iteration of the WWP? Is there really enough commercial constituency to make it worth his while? It just doesn't seem relevant.

FWIW I heard older models and was not impressed enough to buy a pair. I just heard the 50th anniversary models- and was and did.

Who in the world spends $30k on a pair of speakers?! That’s absolutely nuts!

Danny Hates every speaker that arent his. I dont trust that guy at all. He is tryin to sell upgrade parts. Wilson is a well known high end brand. The audacity to think he can fix them is hilarious

Not entirely true, he praises speakers designed by guys who know their stuff (A.Jones, Peter Comeau, etc, no engineering flaws), but it is true that they all get budget restricted w.r.t crossover parts, etc. Even a few hundred dollars worth of crossover part ugrades will get it up a notch, but, that is all something guys in the diy space attempt anyways, without danny selling them a upgrade kit.

I know he’s a flat response chaser (which i’m not), but, i have a couple of different speakers around this Puppy price range that...i suppose he could measure it 50 different ways and still won’t be able to ’improve’ anything on it. 30k or above, i expect a speaker to not quite be "upgradeable", Puppy failed there, it seems.

In Puppy’s case, it isn’t just a flat response issue....but my main issue with Wilson generally is...at 30k or 60k, you just bought a Focal driver and threw it in a box?! I would buy a Focal instead then, a focal utopia maybe..I could just buy a focal driver and throw it in a box myself, don’t need your help there buddy. Try designing/simulating/f’abing/testing, develolping all the tooling, etc for drivers in house by yourself. Now, the price starts to add up and finds a justification.

For the flat response chasers, the Tekton designer came up with the epic response, nuff said.

"First, a loudspeaker can be designed from a viewpoint of rigid science [what this website looks to be all about] or it can be designed from a viewpoint of art and creativity. In my opinion, a great loudspeaker should have a beautiful balance of science and art. Think of what a mastering engineer could do to a song! A mastering engineer is both an artist and a scientist. Good loudspeaker design must be approached from an identical viewpoint; no different than a mastering engineer producing a track of music - I make the loudspeaker sound exactly how I want it to.

Second, to assume I cannot design and market a ’flat responding’ loudspeaker is woefully shortsighted. If I wanted to produce a linear loudspeaker (as the reviewer has turned my design into) I would have done that; my simulator does this task in under 3 seconds. The facts are most audiophiles don’t go for the frequency response and corrections the reviewer has suggested. The only linear loudspeaker models we offer are intended for professional studio engineering and they are tools for a toolbox. Changing crossover parts values to flatten the frequency response is a super simple task; my job is to get the speaker sounding right for an audiophile. The problem is most audiophiles don’t go for ’scientific sound’; to my ears, it’s analytical, sterile, forward in the midrange when turned up, and frankly not much excitement to be discerned. Shipping the Mini Lore with a MiniDSP and a preloaded file converting the Mini Lore into a scientific masterpiece is no more difficult than changing a few values on the crossover.

Anyone wanting an improved version of the Mini Lore pair as the scientific reviewer has suggested my model be changed into is free to call me and I will accommodate your request.

Tekton Design caters to the audiophile community and when two pairs of Mini Lore’s were returned in 2023 we must be doing something right with the design.

Respectfully, Eric Alexander - audio designer and owner of Tekton Design, LLC""

@thecarpathian is your aunt on social media? Now I am intrigued. 

Someone who thinks some Alexia sounded "live" hasn't probably heard a Meyer Bluehorn, Klipsch Jubilee or a Levinson M1.

BTW, I have a friend who drives his Wilson Alexia 2 with high end Audio Research amps and preamps. Very few systems can recreate the live event, e.g. jazz clubs, as his. He has worked hard on all aspects of his audio chain and the results are astonishing. 

I don't recall Danny showing us the crossovers in the Wilsons.  Usually he points out the junk parts as part of his video.  

@knotscott  There will be a part II 

Wilson built its reputation years ago when they really had something special when compared with other speakers of the time. They do some things very well for a dynamic speaker. They also seem to ignore other very important aspects of design which back you into a corner concerning amplification. They have never been on my radar due to what I consider to be bad engineering and design decisions. 

I don't recall Danny showing us the crossovers in the Wilsons.  Usually he points out the junk parts as part of his video.  

I’m surprised she reposted while still leaving s@“t in the post. I’ve had s@“t deleted for less than that, lol….

@arafiq 

Oh you are lucky, I would have banned that for sure. 

I also had something strange yesterday- I typed a semi-long response in a different thread, and I hit the post button on the bottom, and it disappeared and I got a 'log in using 2 factor authentication" pop up on screen. Sometimes strange computer issues happen. Of course I couldn't refresh or go back and retrieve the message and had to re-craft it.

In the future I hope I remember to save the whole message before posting. 

For anyone considering a Wilson Audio Tune Tot though I encourage you to look at Fritz as a better sounding and more affordable alternative.

BTW, I have a friend who drives his Wilson Alexia 2 with high end Audio Research amps and preamps. Very few systems can recreate the live event, e.g. jazz clubs, as his. He has worked hard on all aspects of his audio chain and the results are astonishing. 

@mclinnguy I sent a note to Tammy (admin) and she has reposted my original message. If you scroll up you can read it :)

This is an infomercial masquerading as a hifi enthusiast video. If you have the cheese to buy these speakers, you shouldn't try to drive them using a 100 wpc (insert name) receiver bought from Best Buy. Your in a different league now. People don't listen to frequency response curves, they listen to music. This guys whole thing is to criticize someone else's work. Why I wonder there are no samples of music we can listen to? As a musician I can tell you, I've never played a gig or concert where we showed the sheet music or charts and never played a note. This whole video was a waste of 18+ minutes.

move along, nothing to see here, clickbait

I really didn't want to love the WP8 but I did. That being said;

I wonder if the owner had adequate amplification and befitting room treatment? 

Reviews of the rarified air top audio gear pieces we often get reviews like a car guy complaining that the Ferrari just isn't as fast 0-60 as his Dodge, ergo: Dodge is better. 

@paqua123 +1

@deep_333 I'm not necessarily talking about THIS incident! I'm talking about many other ones over the years!

I'm not of fan of this guy.  While he may have decent products himself, spending his time slagging off competitors to create hype is a shabby way to do business.

Didn’t they stop making the WP-8 more than a decade ago?  

@arafiq 

Hmm.. I posted something a few mins ago. There was nothing offensive in my post. I see that it has been removed.

Well I'm curious. Maybe it was a technical glitch. Try it again and see if it gets removed again 

Isn't this a "review" by a competitor who mostly criticizes the design choices made by Wilson for the Watt/Puppy? 

No, it is not a review.  An unhappy Wilson owner sent the speakers to Danny.

That is how it goes and this is less a review than a personal discourse on one builder's preference on design.

So would you drop $27K on a choppy FR and accept that as a design preference?  The bad FR was duplicated by another respected reviewer.  That Wilson FR is not even close to what is considered industry standard +/- 3 dB.   

A Frequency Response curve shows if a speaker is accurate.  That curve is a mess and could not even be deemed a ":voicing" choice.

Danny Hates every speaker that arent his. I dont trust that guy at all. He is tryin to sell upgrade parts. Wilson is a well known high end brand. The audacity to think he can fix them is hilarious

I have to say, a waste of time. Yeah, little conflict of interest going on here. Wilson designed a speaker differently than he would, not a big surprise. I have heard different Wilson speaker for decades. They sound great and are consistent in there sound. They are not for me... but I completely understand why they have such a huge following... because of the way they sound... not how they chart on paper or connect their filter. 

These are great speakers (I have heard many iterations of them) and it is reasonable that someone is going to power them with a high end audiophile amplifier capable of dealing with their impedance. 

I'd feel really bad if anyone saw this video and did not go down and hear them before writing them off.

@deep_333 ,

"He is very fit for a guy his age.."

What a coincidence! So is my aunt...

Seems legit to me.  Yes, he has a business and promotes it.  Don't have to watch or buy.

No, I'm totally surprised. It did not contain anything that violated the policy to the best of my knowledge.

Was it about his hair?

I bet it was...

Hmm.. I posted something a few mins ago. There was nothing offensive in my post. I see that it has been removed.

I don’t think he know what he’s talking about.

The cabinets are no longer made of Corian though that’s what he said.

He make a huge deal about the tweeter and midrange sharing a common cable out of the crossover so that the tweeter has to go through a 220 mfd cap, which he po poo’s to no end. But when I look at the picture of the speaker’s backside, I see separate mid and high sets of cables out of the woofer cabinet. So why would he think the tweeter goes though the big cap?

He doesn’t know how Wilson does the woofers and didn’t bother to read the Stereophile article that clearly notes that both woofers are in parallel along with a 20 ohm resistor.

BTW, I put a 30 ohm resistor in parallel with the 18" JBL woofer of my speakers.  It smooths out the response tremendously.

Never really heard a Wilson speaker that I liked.

I don't begrudge Danny for such videos. This is how his business model operates. From what I know, his main source of revenue comes from selling DIY kits and not upgrading speakers from other manufacturers. So why does he do it? Because it establishes his reputation in the industry as a cut above the other riff raff like Wilson, B&W, etc. The message being conveyed is that this guy knows his shit, he is a better designer than those idiots at Wilson. The halo effects helps him sell his DIY kits. It's a brilliant business strategy whether we agree with him or not.