I listened to a $300,000+ system

What show would that be? One that uses professional sound reinforcement loudspeakers?

Accurate, faithful, transparent speakers are quite boring to listen to - if you are listening to speakers instead of music. I suspect these speakers, where part of the price is subsidizing the majority of them found in showrooms and on tour in audio shows instead of living rooms, are made to "pop", like the too-bright default settings on TVs, to appeal to the easily-pleased trinket-purchasing hedge fund manager with fading high-frequency hearing.

There is a more modern reason also - one design philosophy often pursued is total field response. While speakers have diffusion characteristics that vary depending on the listening angle, computerized measurement can at least ensure that for the bulk of the listening space, the total energy produced by the speakers is uniform. This can make for brighter speakers at the "sweet spot" with them canted in, especially in rooms with lots of reflective surfaces. One speaker line where you can experience this, which punched far above its weight, is the late 90's US-made Boston VR series such as VR970, which measured at +/- 2dB ... but had the crossover attenuated in later iterations due to tastes.

 

I believe my Harbeth M40s fit that description, and I don't find them boring at all. Of course, it's the music I listen to, not the speakers.

 

Indeed he did!

 

Oh....I see you don't know what's up! No biggie.

 

Of course not! The problem is what most people always neglect!

Audiophile air!

I get mine shipped weekly from the mountains in Switzerland.

 

- Who did the settings?

- How much of it do you think could be due to the acoustics of the listening environment?

- How did other gear sound in the same environment?

 

- Don’t know who did the settings.

- As I said, the lumpy bass could have been due to the room acoustics, but not the crispy treble.

- Didn’t get a chance to listen to other gear in the same environment.

 

Screw that nonsense

https://jbl-l100classic.com/

 

Thirty eight grand, and they're ugly.

jeff

 

Late-night (0125) LOL!

 

Hi

There are plenty of very expensive systems that just don't sound that good and plenty that may be very good but in the particular set-up - a dealer, a show or even a home just don't sound that good with the gear or in the room.

I have not been all that impressed with any of the numerous Wilson Audio speakers I have tried finding the treble to be disconnected from the rest of the music - I heard drivers in a box everytime I listen but obviously some people feel they're more accurate as they can hear the treble midrange and bass in isolation - perhaps a kind of studio monitor sort of sound that many makers strive to emulate or emulate as a matter of course.

Price often has a lot to do with performance but not necessarily to do with preference.

I covered the California Audio Show - price didn't win the day. I preferred far less costly rooms and speakers to very expensive rooms.

Where price USUALLY matters is when you compare within a company line-up. I'll use Vandersteen as an example - they make $2k speakers and over $70k speakers. As do many brands. Now - IF you like the Vandersteen house sound - (or Magnepan, or Wilson, or enter any speaker here...) then you will listen to the $70k Vandersteen and acknowledge that in the bigger room it was designed for the sound is a LOT better than the $2k version - IF you love the Vandersteen house sound then the $70k speaker isn't a crazy price.

To people who are no crazy about Vandersteen's sound the $70k model is just plain silly. They will say - hey I like speaker XYZ at $10k way more. Perhaps they love Magnepan and so to them the $15k Maggie 20.7 is way better value etc etc and the Vandersteen flagship is batcrap crazy.

Wilson has that sort of sound in the treble that I don't care for or that I find resembles live music instruments - so the more expensive Wilson gets - the less and less I find value in them. I find Magnepan to lack resolution, dynamics, weight, definitions - so while I can recommend the 1,7 and below I like the more expensive ones a lot less because at higher price points there is better competition IMO.

This is where the camps form. You have the transmission line, Open baffle, Horns, Electrostatics, Sub Satellite, British LS-3/5a family BBC Dip, Active pro monitors, speakers using DSP, omni-directional, Time aligned sloped baffles, single drivers, ribbons, line arrays, and indeed, speakers like the Perfect 8 Technologies that use a mix of a bunch of these approaches - and guess what every design team at EVERY one of these speaker makers claim they make the best compromises. Most of them make affordable to the not affordable.

All this is to say - you may not be a fan of the school of speaker design that is Wilson Audio. Now there is a chance this was just one bad room, lack of synergy - your particular mood that day - the music etc. Which is why I have learned to try and listen to all speakers I comment on at least 3 times in three different locations with different gear before I say anything too critical. If I really like something the first time - then I know it has the ability to sound terrific so if in the future they sound weak - then it's a system or room issue.

YG Acoustics and MBL I once chose as the bottom 2 rooms at an Audio Show - at a different show both speakers wound up being my top 2 speakers and ahead of a room of speakers that I own! As I get some grief for my objectivity at times I need to provide the evidence of my show show coverage from 2012 2012 CAS Coverage, Part X

 

Agreed with the post above mine. I don't typically like how Wilson speakers sound, regardless of how expensive they are. So sometimes it just ends up being personal preference on these things.

 

Wilson speakers have a more or less even FR with small dips and peaks but nothing too extreme and definitely they are not bright.
My guess is that the brightness came from something else in the system.

 

My experience with ‘Cost No Object’ demonstrations is similar :
Sometimes there are real flaws in the frequency response (boomy basses, shrill highs, ...) that I wonder who will pay so much for this. Once I got nearly kicked out for making remarks about the mediocre quality of the sound reproduction. Do these audiophiles have different ears than mine ?
When the sound demonstration is impeccable I hardly get the wow feeling. True, this gear sounds wonderful, but not that wonderful to pay so much for it. And the difference with my home gear is not that big ! I guess that disqualifies me as a real audiophile.

 

See, I disagree with this. I've heard Wilsons in many different setups and they pretty much always sound bright to me.

 

Sure, but look at the measurements in Stereophile or in Soundstage and compare them with some other designs out there. The Wilson usually do have a small peak around 6K that offers a lot of presence to the sound and a smaller peak at 10K which gives them the right amount of air. It is true that if you pair then with the wrong equipment they can sound edgy but this is nothing like some other speakers like the B&W 702 S2 for example. Now this is a bright speaker.
I have friends who own Wilson speaker and I am very familiar with their sound so believe me when I say that they are not bright.

 

I agree, but guess it was more likely due to the room acoustics and seating. I haven't seen the space, so it just fits with my experience. I don't sell either brand, but I do a lot of service work as well, and I went on a call not too long ago where a lady had a pair of Wilson Audio Witt speakers. The customer also had a pair of large Definitive Audio speakers.

These are very nice sounding speakers. They didn't work when I got there due to crossover damage from an amplifier mishap. It was a real job as these are 250 lbs each and the owner was a lady. They belonged to her recently past husband who had advised her to contact me should she have any concerns with any of the gear. The crossovers were in the bottom and accessed through a very substantial door. The cabinet construction and bracing is exceptional, as are the choice of crossover and driver components. I found a few damaged parts and they were hard to find, expensive types, so I had to return later once I found those and do the repair on site. She had insisted before I started that these Wilson speakers sounded wonderful and that she felt the Definitive speakers sounded very poor by comparison and was wanting to get the sound that she remembered back. After I finished the job and got the speakers in place (the room was very sub-optimal for audio) in her open, hard surfaced living space, I let her find something to try them out with and she just connected her preamp to a Spotify or Pandora feed. The sound was actually very good, even in that space, with clear highs and mids, and deep and accurate bass response. She was so moved by the restoration of the sound system that she cried. She thanked me and gave me the, muddled by comparison, Def Tech speakers to take away.
-Bill

 

Perhaps I don't understand the dynamics of room acoustics well enough but is it impossible for room acoustics to play a role in accentuating certain higher frequencies and diminishing others thus producing what may be perceived as "crispy treble"?

 

This thread leaves me craving impressions from more than one guy who attended the event and determined that the headline was “crispiness.” I don’t doubt it’s a valid report by an experienced and skilled listener, but it would be useful to know how widely this singular flaw was perceived as the primary takeaway.

As with @Bill Hart’s friend above, mention of the problem in this account FWIW.

Michael Fremer Brings His Record and Pony Show to Innovative Audio! - Audionirvana.org

 

I don't listen to measurements.

 

Sounds like 98 % of the systems I've heard at audio shows, affordable or expensive. The exhibitors have always looked perfectly pleased, so I have come to suspect that this sound is what people want today.

 

Nope, no question it was new speaker wires, they were not burned in!

Case in point, BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU HAVE AND UPGRADE WITHIN REASON!

 

I heard to one of those amazingly priced systems at KJ in London it was a truly wonderful experience but I realised that in my home space it could never truly work.

 

The friend I mentioned was Myles Astor, a long-time reviewer who hosts that site. I had not remembered any criticism of the system in Myles' write-up, but re-reading it, he did mention a couple of flawed masterings that sounded terrible in the comparisons-- something that should be no surprise to us-- the many participants here who listen and compare different versions of a release.
Are you suggesting that our OP heard one of these flawed renditions as the basis for his conclusion?
I'm not really sure I'd draw any conclusion from any of this---I don't doubt the OP heard what he heard and I wasn't there. I really doubt the Lyra Etna was a culprit-I've heard the Atlas in more than one system- it is very dramatic, and I gather that the Etna is a little less energetic. Ditto Wilsons- which are very polarizing- I've heard them sound good and bad, depending on set up. Any judgment would be speculation on my part.

 

I don't know if my nearly 67 year old ears could appreciate a system worth that much money. These days I'm happy with a CD player and my AKG headphones. It would be fun to give a system like that a listen though.