Wilson Audio Sabrina X Reviewed ! WOW

I have to say that I tend to read audio equipment reviews, especially those of expensive equipment, with a grain of salt.

I had a chance to hear the new SabrinaX speakers recently while I was auditioning DACs. The SabrinaXs were powered by a Simaudio Moon 700i integrated amp. I brought along my Pro-ject streamer and Qutest DAC for comparing to other DACs. The SabrinaXs certainly sounded good and probably were very good on ’audiophile’ attributes such as bass extension, imaging, placement of instruments and voices, etc. BUT, I continued listening to the same music after I got home through my Monitor Audio Silver 300 speakers and consciously had the surprising thought that I didn’t feel like I was missing anything listening at home versus listening via the SabrinaXs at the store. The MA Silver 300s are 1/9 of the price of the SabrinaXs. In fact, if you blindfolded me, I’m not entirely sure which of the two speakers I would prefer even if cost were not a consideration.

Don’t get me wrong. I have heard high priced speakers that I would LOVE to own if I had the money and the space in my home (i.e., a separate music listening wing of my house. Haha). The Martin-Logan CLSs (now the CLX) comes to mind as one memorable example.

I’ve been lucky enough to live in 4 major US cities on both East and West Coasts and have been able to hear a good amount of high priced audio equipment. Perhaps I’m a bit more jaded than others about how good high priced equipment is "supposed" to sound.

@james633 I appreciate hearing your thoughts on the sound quality of good affordable speakers and good expensive speakers. As with any product, the marginal improvements with audio must also get smaller and smaller as you go up in price. My comments are really only based on my own listening preferences which are at pretty moderate listening volumes. Another possible factor is that my current room (300 sq. ft in a hexagonal shape) seems to sound pretty good with only minimal acoustic tuning and perhaps better than some listening rooms at audio stores.

I did listen to 11 pairs of speakers including a set of last-gen Monitor Audio Gold 200 speakers that I missed out on before getting the Silver 300s so I do know that they must fit my listening preferences pretty well. I was just personally a bit surprised that the SabrinaXs were not clearly better sounding given the large price difference. I will say that I heard Wilson Watt/Puppies a long time ago and those sounded somewhat sterile to me in sound. Perhaps the Wilson sound is just not my cup of tea.