WILSON ALEXANDRIA XLF SPEAKERS-

Razmika - do I sense an irony here ?

I have owned speakers using Scan Speak 2010, 9300, 9500, 9700 silk dome tweeters (at the time considered to be the best), various electostats, the previous top of the range Scan Speak Ring radiator (the one with silver tip), Accuton ceramic tweeters (in Avalon Eidolon speakers) and now the Sasha, to my ears, the latest incarnation of Wilson tweeter is better than those (pls note that I'm specificly referring to Sasha/Maxx 3 tweeter, not earlier Wilsons designs).

Ofc, there is always a question of personal taste etc, so I'm not gonna say that 'it is the best'. But I think it is absolutely incorrect to state that it is 'good distance away from todays best'. This is simply not true.

Plus, please remember that it is difficoult, if not impossible, to judge the tweeter performance with no relation to the system in which the given tweeter is to be used !

Ribbon tweeter, for example, may be better at some freq (even Wilson used a bunch of them in the WAMM, remember ?), but then it needs to be crossed over much higher. That would probably mean you would have to use another, smaller midrange unit (like it was done in the WAMM, or you can see in Verity Lohengrin for example) or you would have to compromise the all important midrange ... you see, it is all a question of balance and a chosen set of compromises and design goals. There is no free lunch.

From what I undersood from my talks with Dave Wilson, he likes the tweeters with have low resonant freq and high power handling, which allows him to cross them over relatively low. That rules out all ceramic drivers (which also have other problems ...), and most silk dome ones.

I have asked Dave once, why they have used (then) top of the line Scan Speak Ring Radiator tweeter in the Alexandria as an 'ambience' tweeter. His answer was simple - because its cheaper than the titanium tweeter and gets the job done.

Same goes for the Duette monitors, which also have the Scan Speak silk dome tweeter (although this time the cheaper one, with wide surround but not the 'wave guide' tip).

So as you can see, Dave Wilson is clearly not someone living in his cave, he have used in the past and still uses various tweeter designs, including silk dome tweeters, but for various reasons preferes the inverted dome titanium tweeter over other alternatives.

Silk dome vs. Titanium dome...DW has finally seen and heard the light...enough said, IMHO.

I can’t claim to know DV’s thought process, neither am I claiming that this particular driver was used or was not modified, but the ScanSpeak Revelator R29 series is as close to idealistic as it gets for an ambience tweeter. Its output rises in the upper frequency band and it has rather high sensitivity(94.5dB @ 2.83v/1m) to match the Alexandria's. The only thing it has going against it is its increasing directivity at higher frequencies which is inevitable with most tweeters.

When it comes to well known soft dome brands(ScanSpeak, Seas, and Morel) their mid to top of the line models feature ressonance freq around 470Hz to 580Hz which is as low as it currently gets for 1" dome tweeters.

BTW – Maybe I'm mistaken but I thought DV used electrostatic arrays instead on the WAMM?

some might take this the wrong way and others the right way, but other than the X-1's, my experience is that Wilson Audio's top of the line speaker (WAMM's and Alexandria's) seems to have so many good things happening all at once that IF there is something lacking it's too minute for me to hear. I for one have an organ recording that broke up the MAXX-2's bass drivers, but on the Alex-1's they sailed right through it. of course i couldn't afford either super-speaker, but the sense of limitless power, dynamic range, and frequency extension is certainly there. OTOH, Wilson can't quite deliver the ultimate experience for a lot less money (let's say $35K) which will forever be a disappointment.

The WAMM's did indeed have a 9 element electrostatic array for the "super tweeter" section.