I heard the Genesis 1.1s...but completely and i mean completely reworked...external Dueland Silver crossovers, ribbons, etc. It is to date the finest sound i have heard and by a wide, wide margin. I have been to Sound by Singer, Extreme? in Turkey, Audio Exotics in HK, KJ & Metropolis in London, A10 in Amsterdam, a few spots in Cambridge, MA, Madrid Spain, and elsewhere. I have heard at least 4 installations of Wilson X1s, X2s, XLF...plus Tidals with full Sunrays dual tower subs, big Thiels, ML CLX/Descents, Maggie 3s, Apogee Stages, SF Strads with subs...nothing prepared me for this. Or my wife who kindly joined me (and also has heard the XLFs, Strads, X1s as well). She, having minimal interest, has patiently taken the time when asked to listen to a few systems and provided comments. In her mind, as my own, there is no contest to what we have heard to date.
The system was in high-ceilinged room (maybe 15') and 17' by 30'. A panetheon of Kondo electronics...Gakuons, M1000, DCS Scarlatti, poured concrete flooring that had been physically separated from the floor that sustained the speakers...you name it. But in the end, i strongly suspect the noise floor, detail and human-ness of all sounds was from the extraordinary dedication to electronics...but the sweeping stage was the speakers:
- It made the X1s and XLF installations i heard sound artificial and small by comparison. Dire Straights on Walker Proscenium III...was the last track of the evening, and the scale of the stage (not soundstage...i mean the stage where they were playing)...eclipsed that of the XLFs. OK...different room/different system...but this was not a close contest, and while i would NEVER say NEVER on the XLF sounding bigger in a different room...it would have to reach so far to achieve what i heard last nite, i personally am extremely skeptical it would do so...again having heard big Wilsons in 3-4 set ups in different rooms, some also very large and professionally treated (unlike the set up last nite which had no treatments other than isolation).
- the clarity of detail was so effortless, that listening to deep house, you could hear mumbles and little voices that i honestly think the artist never thought anyone would ever hear, and the words just lifted out of space into the room like they were always there and you knew what words he was saying as easily as if my wife read them to me sitting next to me.
- Audio Exotics in Hong Kong had done a tremendous effort in bringing forth detail from my music...and i had until last nite heard its equal...but unlike trying to compare Tidals to XLFs...where i honestly felt both were contenders...you could choose one over the other, prefer one over the other...extrapolate whether it was the room, or the digital front end...but you could at least make the case that the speakers were contenders to each other...i do not find either to be a contender compared to what i heard.
they're utterly and positively insanely good. I have my own opinions. I make mistakes. I could be making one here. But i have heard good electronics before, quite a bit of it actually. I can extrapolate what the Kondos may be doing, and i have auditioned the Scarlatti before...electronics dont do to a pair of speakers what happened last nite. Its the speakers. If I could ever get my head around how to get a pair, and find a house/room big enough to fit them...I obviously would do a far more extensive test, audition, but if i had to [off hand] provide a measurement of scale/effortless/sheer beauty and resolution that is utterly 'there' without any sense of force whatsoever...its XLF to Sasha (NOT Alexia...which is far closer to XLF than XLF is to last nite's highly modd'd Genesis 1.1s with dual tower subs]. For me, they were that good.
