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Which amp with Wilson watt puppy 8

Hi there !

i live on an island with no audiophile shops around. 
I arrived in 2011 with a Jeff Rowland continuum 250 and Sonus Faber Cremona m speakers who were a great match. Unfortunately I blew the speakers a few times, then upgraded to columns, blew them also twice. I guess the amp is too powerful for them, but this time Sonus Faber was unable to provide me replacement tweeters and speakers, which is an enormous disappointment. I will never buy anything from them again. I ran through the web and found corresponding parts that I changed myself, but they seem to sound much higher in the trebles and lack bass, especially at high volume levels, (above 55%) . I tried swapping the cables, but it didn’t change anything. 
I now bought a pair of Wilson audio watt puppy 8 that arrived this week from a NYC store. I hope them to last lifetime. 
They have cost me around 11.5k$ door to door, look great and tough, but need to be driven above 60 % of volume otherwise nothing comes out of them, especially bass !
I also get the same sharp treble sound, which is very disappointing.
My problem is to find the issue : 

1/ room acoustic

2/ change my class D amplifier for tubes or transistors

3/ find better cables

4/ me turning old ?

what should I do next ? what amplifier would you recommend with this configuration (watt puppy 8, MIT Avtr 1, ps audio direct stream mk1, aurender n10, musical fidelity M6 CD) ?

thank you 


 

lendivf

Showing 3 responses by yoyoyaya

yoyoyaya's avatar
yoyoyaya
935 posts
 

@steakster - glad you got sorted out and +1 to Wilson.

@OP - were you Nigel Tufnel in a previous life?

yoyoyaya's avatar
yoyoyaya
935 posts
 

@OP A few further observations. Given what you say about occupational hazards, you should get an audiogram done. You may have an notch beween 2 and 6 Khz which is affecting your tonal perception. Also, the fact that you are blowing up speakers may be because hearing loss which can lead to playing things excessively loud in an attempt to get a more linear perception. That in turn can lead to exacerbating room problems etc.

All that having been the earlier generations of W/P can tend to sound bright. Also they are very critical of setup and listening height in particular.

It might be worth paying an experienced Wilson dealer to do a setup. Money spent on setup and room treatments are the two best investments in hi fi. I'm always surprised how people are willing to spend a lot of money changing equipment without addressing the fundamentals.

yoyoyaya's avatar
yoyoyaya
935 posts
 

@OP I would not pair a Chord amp with W/P 8. Chord's house sound is the antithesis of, for example, Pass. It will magnify all the weak points of the speaker. The Pass XA series amps do work very well with Wilsons including those that use the Focal ti tweeter.

BTW Quick comment on Wilson resistors. They will protect drive units to a point. But if the speakers are massively overdiven on a transient or with a short, at least the tweeters will fry before the resistor has time to blow.

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