[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 07:13:56 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a
medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's
several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating,
what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard.

snip

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave
away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not
the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing.
I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about
8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are
fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are
strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by
practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume
with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a
human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum,
the
Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to
trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best
reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of
cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think
that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably
your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Dear AE -

You probably knew you might hear from me on this. You would also be
surprised to read that I agree with your observations 100%.

Recall that my EEFs (Essential Elements of Fidelity) are Physical Size,
Power, Waveform Fidelity in the electronic domain - (freedom from distortion
and noise and flat response), and Spatial Characteristics. I, too, have
noticed many times that in a large auditorium the reproduction sounds much
more realistic because the acoustics and physical size of the playback space
match up a lot better with the original venue and sound more like the music
is being heard in a real space, because it IS being heard in a real space -
a space much more like the real thing than you smaller home listening room.

This magic is not due to anything that Dave Wilson did with the design, but
rather in spite of it. Your remark about the horns kind of shows this. I am
thinking that the problem with horn repro has less to do with the POWER of
the tweeters and more to do with the radiation pattern not matching the rest
of the system by the time the frequencies get up that high. There can be a
disconnect when the radiation pattern narrows as frequencies go up. In fact
nothing gives away the "speakery" sound as opposed to live faster than
having this megaphone effect at the high freqs. Maybe if he had chosen HORN
tweeters (ha ha) there would be less disparity in the acoustic power output,
but I think he should also put some of them on the other faces of the
speaker, especially the sides, to even out the power response throughout the
spectrum.

Summary, biggest factor was physical size, he had plenty of power, no
problem with waveform fidelity, and mitigating factor spatial
characteristics and possibly power in high frequencies.

Gary Eickmeier

PS - the others may not realize that I have a copy of your jazz recording,
just played it yesterday (again), and it IS possibly the best I have in my
collection. Thank you for that!



Well, while those Wilson Audio speakers were definitely the "best of show"
Their longsuit seemed to be that they excelled at getting the dynamics of
live music correct. In an unfamiliar venue such as half of a hotel ballroom,
any observations that I might make about imaging and soundstage (they seemed
to do that very realistically) would be tempered by my unfamiliarity with the
room and the equipment. So I make no claims there. The sound was big and
real-sounding from a standpoint of my familiarity with the source material
and nothing else. The speakers are huge. The Alexandrias, each had two
woofers, one a 13" and the other a 15". The "Thor's Hammer" subwoofers had
two woofers as well, both 15". The three speaker systems moved a LOT of air
and the bottom descended to 10 Hz!

Thanks Gary, for the kind words about my jazz concert recording.

Audio_Empire