You are wellcome JK. I am familiar how W/P8 sounds. It is a good choice and has potential for future upgrades.(amps, digital...) I will stick with my Sophias longer than usual because I don't have dedicated listening room as you do. As far as Ayres concerned, they are not available where I live. So I don't need to worry what I have been missing... But sooner or later you will upgrade your Ayres to something bigger in size and painted in ''red''.:)))
Thanks for the input, I'll consider upgrading the digital gear in the future. As it is now, I just invested in a very nice turntable for my setup. In my experience so far, you get much more bang for your buck when investing the bulk of your money on the speakers.
The Ayre monos sound incredible; the best of non-global feedback sound (tube-like musicality) with the solidity and authority of solid state. I'm very happy with them.
I'm being lazy, I'll have to post something soon. I only finally took the plastic wrap off fully yesterday despite having been using them since day one. ;)
instead of investing 28000usd on w/p8, you could use Sophia 2 as main speakers, and improve your digital gear. Result will be better than you get, I bet...Period.(Ayre monos another subject of discussion, I don't how they sound but they don't look ok to me because they are simply so small compared to speakers)
I just put in an order for an SME 20/2 turntable, Lyra Titan cartridge and Sutherland PhD phonstage.
I haven't had a chance to take pics of the Wilson Sophia 2 speakers yet, but I will likely get a chance some time this weekend. I'll update when I do.
I will say this though... After doing the subjective fine tuning of the surround field wih the Meridian 861 (the coarse tuning required minor adjustments by ear), and despite my not so perfect surround speaker positioning, the surround field (back to back, front to back on both sides and front to front) is seamless.
I am happy to be retiring those Samson Resolv 80a studio monitors from the surround positions in the listening room to my new office area so they can be used with my Digi 002 and Mac G5 for recording music once again.
I didn't get to listen carefully or critically with them off of the tray ceiling. The entire room was done all at once, so I can't help you with your question much. They should break up any direct sound waves and reflections that hit them (1st point, oblique, tangential, etc) and create a "lively" bloom effect instead of simply absorbing the sound or reflecting it. At least that is my understanding of how these kind of diffusors work based on information that RPG gave me when I inquired on the Skyline's effects. They also said that the greatest impact is had when the closest (longest) peaks on the Skyline are ~6' away and not much closer than that to the ear height.
I hope that was helpful. The best way to get more precise information is to call RPG and ask them.
I was wondering what you noticed in terms of improvement in sound when you added your RPG skylines. I have been considering these, but I wonder how much difference they will make given my ceiling is quite a bit higher that yours. (Room dimensions 22 x 16 x 11 ceiling) Thanks,
I got my Wilson Sophia 2 surround speakers today. They arrived unharmed, of course... How could they not in those amazingly strong wooden crates? I haven't plugged them in yet to hear them, and won't have time until tomorrow most likely, but I don't see how they would be damaged internally without the crates showing signs of wear, and there is no overwhelming wear on the crates.
The dealer built me custom 8" high stands to put them on, but those haven't arrived yet. Once everything arrives I'll have him over again to voice the surrounds, and the center as well (so I plan on some time in August for all of this to occur).
I'm very excited and will be bringing my Bryston 9B SST out of storage to use until the Bryston Powerpac 300s arrive for their permanent use.
Those pipes made A LOT of noise. Insulating them as thoroughly as we did with mineral fiber and OC703 eliminated the sounds of running water completely. Now I have to do a similar thing in the electronics closet, as the ventilation fans we are adding are making noise I can hear through the closet door. So we will be surrounding the pipe in OC703 as well as partially boxing it off and adding a solid door to the closet instead of the hollow door we have been using.
All I can say is WOW, I could also add Wow! Great system, thanks for providing the link to see the room in the early stages. Great tip in insulating the pipes as well as the walls. Gentlemen start your HT space. Great pic of the car well.
I was listening to Yes "Yessongs" earlier today. That has currently been one of the hardest live albums for me to get good playback from on a sound system, in my experience. It didn't sound too great on my last loudspeakers at all. It finally sounds right to me on the W/P8s. For me that is a great and worthy achievement, as it is one of my favorite live albums.
I used to have the conception that because studio albums on the W/P7 sounded so eerily lifelike, that somehow a live recording wouldn't sound as coherent or great. I never got a chance to test the Yes "Yessongs" album on the W/P7s, but if the W/P8 can be any guideline for what I could expect on the W/P7, then I was completely wrong. Why did I believe this would be the case on the W/P7? At the time I couldn't upgrade to the W/P7, and I fell in love with it from the moment I heard Love Street from The Doors' "Waiting for the Sun" on a pair when demoing Ayre gear. I think it was my best attempt at making myself feel like my current speakers were somehow better at something that the speakers I really wanted weren't capable of doing. A little comforting deception on my part until I could finally afford to take the leap into the W/P8 speaker.
"Heart of the Sunrise" in particular, to single one song out, was mind-blowing. The bass solo really shows off the improvements made to my passive resonator and the merit of the deep bass frequency response of the W/P8. The bass solo is tight, coherent and consistent from top to bottom. Steve Howe comes in near the end of the bass solo with his melodic counterpoint on the guitar, and as Squire and Wakeman eventually join in, the notes move from the fringes of the soundstage to the center (the heart of the sunrise?). The notes have never been so individually clear and localizable as they are in my current setup.
Then Anderson begins to sing and I become keenly aware of his voice in the original acoustic space (though with the obligatory acoustic coupling that occurs between any reproduced sound recorded in an acoustic space and the new space it is being reproduced within - i.e. it is a miniaturized version of the original scope and magnitude of the event). The acoustics of the original venue are clearly defined in the music, but the voice reveals it most clearly, and consequently, I now hear the original acoustic space more in all of the other instruments as well, as my awareness of its presence has brought it to the forefront of my consciousness.
It is a different experience to sit here and type this, and nowhere near the ecstasy the music evokes in my mind when actually listening. I can only take aspects of the entire experience and break them down into relatable chunks. The gestalt is much greater than these singular elements in my experience so far. This setup continues to light my endorphins on fire!
I keep myself very busy, that is why when I get the chance to sit for awhile and listen to music, like I did last night, I really appreciate it. I'm enthralled with my new speakers, so much so that I put in an order for the Wilson Audio Specialties Watch Center for my center channel speaker and Sophia Series 2 for my surround channel speakers. I'm in for a pound now, instead of just a penny.
I haven't listened to Sting's first solo album (The Dream of the Blue Turtles) all the way through in a long time (likely since I was in highschool and bought it as my first CD for my first CD player). It is a very well engineered album, also quite involving and engaging on the Watt Puppy 8s. I close my eyes and get to be there.
We finished some of the last notes on the room construction yesterday, and I think I hear a VERY clear difference in the bass response and coherency. It is now tighter, faster, and more distinct. What did we do? Well we caulked the passive resonator in the front of the room to be sealed air tight and we applied the final framing to its entire edges so it matches the framing around the rest of the room (red oak). It is now sealed tight, and the bass seemed to respond in kind.
I can hear the difference when I tap on it as well. It used to reverberate longer and oscillated more during that vibration, now it has a fast, steady decay. It seems to be the same effect I'm hearing from the lower bass as well.... Who knows though, perhaps it is all in my head. I won't know until I take measurements and compare the 3D spectral decay charts (if I understand what they are correctly...).
I've made an unfortunate discovery upon hooking up my Meridian 861 and two Revel subwoofers for the first time through the processor itself instead of using the subs chained together with the speakers.... The bass management doesn't appear to work at all. In fact, at the least, the crossovers settings don't appear to do anything at all no matter what source I use in my system (including digital and analog outputs to the processor). No matter what I set them to, they still send the whole signal through to both the regular speakers and the subwoofers at the same time.
I called Meridian and the guy there at Meridian USA doesn't seem to know how to troubleshoot the problem even though I was quite explicit on what is wrong and how I tested it. I am going to call the UK branch on Monday and hope they have better technical knowledge of their own equipment and why it might not be working correctly.
My speakers are all set to small and I am running the subs in stereo mode. I have no center channel. The person at Meridian tech support stated that he has never dealt with any people who have no center channel before and perhaps that was causing all the problems. I hope the people in Britain have a more comprehensive troubleshooting department with a more complete approach than the, "I don't know, your local dealer might know more, perhaps it is an unusual setting in your system" approach to helping the customer.
This is an awfully expensive piece of equipment to be lacking a very strong and well trained technical staff to troubleshoot it when it is not working correctly IMO....
Measurements were done with long sine sweeps, full range on ETF5. I am adding more treatments in the next few months, as well as altering some to different types of treatments. So when the time comes, I will replace the old measurements with newer ones....
Update posted: I added measurement pics to the equipment menu.
The nulls appear to be common to the room in the 20Hz to 200Hz FR measurement, as I had them on the 802Ds when near these positions as well. The reinforcement in the 60Hz to 80Hz region may be a characteristic of the speaker, though the 802D had a similar reinforcement there as well because it too is known to measure heavy in that bass frequency region.
I liked the Lamm room also. I keep forgetting about that room, I don't know why, possibly because it was the end of a long day when I finally got to it. I did enjoy the BAT room better, but I visited that a few times during the day, so it could be that I just had more time in their than in the Lamm room and am not remembering it well. In any case, they both sounded fantastic. I also liked the MBL room, even though my listening was distracted by the loud presentation in the room next door (there was a flimsy partition on the right side of the room, nothing solid enough to sound proof).
I agree on thw Wii. I couldn't find one on the day of release, but I had talked my father into waiting on line in Florida (where there isn't as much demand) so he could give one to his grandkids (my kids) as a present. So I have had a chance to play around with it. Pretty innovative control system, too bad Sony and Microsoft weren't more on top of that idea when they made their systems, though I don't know how I would be able to integrate that into my HT (the equipment closet is pretty far away).
It would be easy enough to just answer DITTO. I believe in speaker cables & power cords. I run fully balanced from CD to amp. Phono is a different story. One of my phono stages yes, the other no. And you are 100% IME that interconnects have much less relevance when you are running balanced. The Lamm room was incredible. The BAT room was a little small but it did some things incredibly well. I heard some of the best Piano ever. I run full VTL pre & amp. I heard it at HE 2004 (I think) and went nuts over the sound. WP7s, Watchdog, & VTL MB750s & 7.5. They were using the ARC cd player. I went to Audio Aero but then switched to Meitner. The latest is amazing. I love SACD, but am a Vinyl guy at heart. The new EMM definitely brought SACD much closer than I ever thought.
Now let me shift gears. Never mind XBox & Playstation, Get the Nintendo Wii. I love it. It will make a grown up a kid again. It is such a wonderful technology. If you don't like it I will buy it off of you. The Sports package that comes standard is the way to go. That will keep you busy for a long time. You will do excercise while listening to music.
I loved how the W/P8 sounded on the BAT monoblocks at HE2007. I wouldn't mind hearing the BAT monoblocks and/or the Audio Research Reference monoblocks in my room. Of course, I would want to match them with all tube equipment from the beginning of the signal processing to the end. IMO, it wouldn't make much sense to mix and match gear from different companies, as it defeats the vision of the designer and the specific criteria they were trying to accomplish with their equipment. So I would want to do the Reference CD7, Reference 3, and Reference 610T with ARC, or the VK-150SE, VK-51SE and VK-D5SE with BAT.
A BIG selling point for me with the Ayre gear was the balanced wiring internally. The equipment is qired to handle the signal in balanced form all the way through to the amplifiers, this means I can be lazy with setting up my wiring in the equipment closet. Any signal interference caused by stray power lines is eliminated before it goes out to the speakers, no matter where it occurs. So the only wires I have to be cautious of are the speaker wires. I would likely want to stick with that kind of philosophy, so BAT seems like the more logical choice, but I would want to hear both in-depth first.
I was very impressed by the audible difference between tubes and solid state at the Stereophile workshop during HE2007. It was quite a difference in sound. The tubes sounded slightly more dimensional, warmer, a little more detailed, though ever so slightly higher pitched tonally. I really never expected the difference to be so noticable. I think it surprised a few people. It was more immersive and less clinical, and I sort of liked that.
I wonder how your system would sound w. tube amps. I know the AYRE are excellent & very non solid state. I just think the Wilson speakers benefit from tube amps. It is subtle though. I haven't heard the D tweeter from B&W but owned the 801s. I found the treble to hot. I hear the diamond tweeter changed things. I just knew that the Kevlar drivers are going to still dominate the sound. They play great loud, but not low.
Oh, BTW, I think I was using bad terminology when I referred to them as recessed. I didn't mean 3-dimensionally as much as obscured/veiled by other frequencies. It often was very hard to hear male vocals, they seemed hidden behind other frequency ranges most of the time.
You were right about Dark Side of the Moon having those qualities (as I mentioned I think in an earlier post), but it is a lot better on the Wilsons. It was also better on those studio monitors I was using temporarily - though there were no redeaming qualities at all on those monitors for listening enjoyment, they just happened to bring male vocals out of the obscurity I was experiencing on the 802Ds.
**** One correction from my last post. I meant to say "so far, no luck" not "so for, no luck."
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I'm going to be adding measurements of the room sometime in the next day or two (perhaps later tonight), so people can see how well things are measuring.
That is a major gripe people have against Wilson speakers it seems (i.e. how they measure). I think the setup process really helps to integrate the Wilson response with the room response. I still have some fine tuning to do, and extra treatments are on order (four RPG BAD ARCs), but I was very happy with how well it measured after the Wilson voicing. The only areas where I am having problems are areas that my last speakers had problems with as well in the already treated room, all of them due to room modes.
Unfortunately, in the 1/6 and 1/12 octave measurements, the biggest problem is in the ~60 to ~70 Hz region, also a room mode issue (a mode reinforcement). That frequency is so low that it can't be effectively treated in my space because it would require corner traps with ~5' x ~5' dimensions to achieve the required 1/4 of the largest frequency's wavelength needed to impact the soundwave.
Also, there is an impulse response issue at 6' after the direct sound reaches the listening position. This appears to be an issue of reflection on the ceiling. I haven't had time to work on it yet, but we plan on covering all reflection areas on the ceiling with custom made treatments wrapped in the same acoustically transparent fabric we are using in the room already. If that doesn't solve the issue, other options will be explored.
I'm not a fan of the perfect measurement school of thought, since any room is going to alter any perfect speaker's perfect measurement to its own mold anyway. So a flat speaker isn't going to measure flat in a real world circumstance unless it is EQed anyway. So those kinds of arguments have always annoyed me since they aren't based on listening to music and the sound of a speaker as much as being biased against a speaker without having even listened to it. At least that has been my experience so far with EVERY person who has made this argument against Wilson speakers that I have interacted with personally. They all tout that one same argument, and none have listened extensively. I haven't met a person yet who has come into my listening room, audiophile or non-audiophile who hasn't left completely blown away by how real the music sounds.
Speaker preference is subjective, and Wilson isn't the only speaker I like. In fact, I miss that diamond tweeter on the 802Ds... If these W/P8s had that tweeter to match their incredibly vivid mid-range I don't think I would ever leave my listening room. I would never exchange the W/P8 midrange for the 802D midrange though, the 802D midrange was congested, raspy and veiled sounding in comparison. I also love those Dynaudio C1s I heard on the Simaudio gear at HE2007 and would really really love to talk my wife into letting me put a pair in the Master Bedroom in the future (so for, no luck...), as she 100% wouldn't let me put Avantgarde Unos in their (I tried that one already).
I'm definitely happy with my speakers and plan on using them for awhile to come. I don't begrudge other people for having their own preferences, except when they do so at the expense of another speaker that they have never heard (demoed). I can't blame people for pushing their current speaker, though I can see how it would be annoying. The way I look at it, they are often simply very excited because they love their speakers so very much (or hopefully not as often, are extremely unhappy with their speaker choice and are trying to convince themselves otherwise).
