Wilson Audio Specialties Factory Tour (Horizontally Challenged)
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2024
- Before visiting Dave and Sheryl Wilson's home to hear the new $685,000 WAMM Master Chronosonic loudspeakers AnalogPlanet.com editor Michael Fremer stopped at the factory where he was offered a surprise tour that was not on the original schedule. He'd not brought his HD camcorder so was left to shoot using his iPhone. Unfortunately he shot "vertically", but despite the narrow aspect ratio, the tour was wide-ranging.
Interesting tour of the factory
It’s just funny how they said “another diamond tweeter we developed “ when it’s a Seas tweeter that’s around 6k and available for anyone
Speaker Toni bravo to underline this
Lots of scan speak drivers as well.
@@theoracleprodigy no nooo
I’m sure they just look the same on accident haha
@@speakertoni2680 yep and the boxes with the names is there for nostalgia. I do wonder though how much their research goes back to the manufacture. Also thought it was interesting how they created a back wave for the scan speak tweeters. The back of those looked nothing like what I have.
@@theoracleprodigy I’m sure they tweak the drivers to their liking in some way
but claiming that they develop all those drivers themselves seems like a bit of a stretch
I helped build the first X-1 Grand Slamms back in 1993, it won several product of the year awards in 1995. I worked there from 1993-1997, shortly after they moved out to Provo from Novato, CA. I also built some of the first WITT's but mostly worked on the WATT/puppy. First year I built enclosures, then moved into building crossovers and installing speakers, crossover, etc. it was a fun place to work back then.
What a grand tour. My first experience with Wilson was with the Watt Puppies driven by Audio Research gear. VT-100 power amp which I liked very much with this setup and I don't remember the exact model of the AR preamp either. Time has since erased the memory of these particulars from back in the mid 90's.
Listening with these loudspeakers was something that to this day I have never forgotten. They changed my expectations. I could clearly hear what people meant in saying (get the equipment out of the way..)
For pure musical joy it is a must!
It wasn't the cost or their beauty that grabbed me or any of the things people think about audiophiles being snobby over blah blah... I heard recorded music that at the time was already approaching 40 years old and it moved me in a way that it never had up to that point in my life before! The Wilson's brought me into the music with all the things associated with that.
If you can afford them!! it is not money wasted for a life time of joy that they will bring.
Thank you Michael you've been a shining light for me in analog for a couple of decades now
Thank you sharing this!! 👍👍
Marten Dekker Stop being a hater!
$2,500 for the speakers, looks like their using SB Acoustics, Scanspeak, Seas, Where do they get $685,000 ??
From the customers :)
expensive MDF
They have to pay the ugly design. Most of the manufacturers have a decent design, few of them have a very nice looking with a refined design, just one has the ugliest possible coffin design and that is Wilson.
Terrific insight into what this company is all about. Job well done!
The Wilson's factory is a miles behind the Focal (France)
An american company, but they use Scanspeak drivers from Denmark.
Aren't the Americans able to produce own drivers?
$685k? how can some speakers cost 6 times more than a Mercedes S class?
Not even 1 pair is more complex and harder to build than 1 single Mercedes.
3 X TESLA Roadster with 85k left over to spend
Because the value system in the hi-fi world is totally messed up.
@user name loll
@user name right...
I like the video. Good work as always. I just took delivery of my "Alexia" on Christmas Eve Day. Awesome!!!
The reason Wilson pots all the crosovers is to help prevent the chinese from copying the speakers!!!
Why didn't you shoot horizontally with your phone? Too frustrating to watch which sucks because your videos are so informative!!!
not sure if anyone cares but if you guys are bored like me during the covid times you can watch all of the latest movies on Instaflixxer. I've been watching with my girlfriend lately :)
@Axton Lionel Yup, been watching on InstaFlixxer for years myself =)
Great tour of a great speaker builder. Engineering costs?
What I learned from minute 23 is that they should make the cabinets out of whatever that hammer is made from...
Surprise! Smartphones can be positioned horizontally... I stopped the video after 10 seconds, it hurts for about 30min.
I wish you could've listed the model range in the museum - I didn't recognize much I saw there. Fantastic tour otherwise, nice to see where the dreams are made...
The phone camera would be fine if you held your phone properly, now I have to move my projector and screen vertically just to watch your video!
Clearly over priced speakers? They have the right to charge any price the they feel is marketable. I have been working in Manufacturing for the past 36 years. The special X & S material they are using is countertop resin based material used for decades in kitchen. I know that Wilson has a big following and that they are excellent sounding speakers. Their build quality is very high end, but highly over priced as far as I am concerned. Nice video and thanks for sharing. High-end audio is a fun hobby with lots of opinions.
exactly. But Mr. Fremer would say you are foolish and your conclusions are ridiculous. What is ridiculous is watching someone review expensive HiFi equipment in his broom closet--which is like 1/3 of his videos. He is a stickler for HiFi--just doesn't care about good production value in his videos.
On that note, Mr Fremer has been in the Industry for a long time. I'm in the same age bracket and an Audiophile as well. I take a different approach to my component selection and the I money spent, but I am just a passionate as Mr. Fremer, but not a Video Blogger. I also raced road bikes for over 3 decades and the Video Bloggers within that hobby are far more professional with their final product then Mr. Fremer's videos. He has a lot of knowledge, but does lack interest in putting out a much higher Video Blog then other RUclips Bloggers. It's an approach and Mr. Fremer can put out any level of quality and not really care, it's just the way he rolls I guess. He has a large following of Audiophiles who watch his RUclips videos, it would be much more enjoyable if they were more professional in the area of video processing, etc. It's his Blog so we will just have to deal with it.
excellent points and well said.
Mr. Fremer, I like your work and your production in any form. If you took it up a notch it could rival many other less dedicated Bloggers in the Audio world. Your passion is very obvious and also your plant tours and information on all levels can be helpful to people who are not hardcore audiophiles. I like the the products that you focus on and I am also a vinyl fan from the 1960's. Today we have more wealthy people who are willing to spend almost any amount of money on high end products, like Audio, Hyper cars, etc. As you know this industry has a lot of critics, and opinions. It's just stuff and the industry has a lot of technology that can bring results. Keep sending us your Video Blogs they are informative.
No worries, your video are nice to watch and I take what I get. Baby Boomers are like that. No whining, deal with it. Better video production will help with followers.
$700k..because they can get away with it...It's 'what the market will bear'...Personally I think B&W 800 series blow these into the weeds...You never see Wilsons in studios either.
Great insight into the company. A lot of employee so costs more plus shipping very heavy speakers. Look at the man hours spend on every process of making the speaker. They try new materials designs that costs money, driver testing and manufacturing to try and further push the sound. People run them down as they can't afford the speakers. If you can't afford it stop dreaming and move on to what you can afford.
My mistake by saying they are over priced, that would not be fair. They are only over priced for me because I choice to not spend that amount of money for speakers. There are plenty of people laying down their hard earned cash for Wilson; because they are that good as far as the buyers are concerned. So I support anyone who wants to buying speakers at the prices that Wilson charges. Audiogon has a lot of very expensive speakers that lose more than half of their value in the first year, so maybe that would be a good way to enter the highest end of our hobby? They are great speakers and sound amazing just not my cup of tea for the money. Thanks Micheal for sharing your information and taking the time to put together your video blogs.
Resonant frequency depends on mass and stiffness. Now here the stiffness is not just material but also the suspension stiffness which they have attached to do the test. Im sure the results will be different if they are fixed differently. Nobody can defy physics in this dimension. Period.
Man I wish I could afford a pair of those slam speakers! My watt puppy's still sound fantastic ! One day.
I don't care about what people say ...cause the sound I get when I listen to English , &'Japanese jazz along with some Rolling Stones etc . Sound amazing!!! I've had B&w , I've had Magnepan , and the watt puppies V ,sound spectacular . So do the Magnepan speakers. The sound stage , the clarity is awesome. Everyone has different taste to what sounds great and what sounds bad.. so the watt puppy's are fantastic to me. That is all that matters for my taste. A lot a times , all those so called experts have different agendas , and have a different taste in how they perceive music. I wonder what makes them experts at listen ? Anyway we can go on about this topic but I won't . Lol. Enjoy what you have till you can something you can afford..
Marten Dekker Stop being a hater!
Nobody hating fool “ I’m happy with my watt puppy’s , learn how to read ! Clown !
Why do people film vertical?
All these complaints about the vertical aspect! What the hell is wrong with everyone? Get used to it. Grow up. It's not going away. Free your mind.
Next time please remember you camera nice tour as always .
Not the lack of a proper camera that's the problem. It's the monumentally dumb vertical video!
700K Speaker with paper cones lol Wut
Paper cones are not made of newspaper. Paper cones have many salutary properties that are superior to plastics and other materials. That they are "paper" doesn't make them "bad" or not great.
Yeah, that's for sure since vintage JBL speakers, and Kinoshita Rey audio have paper cones and sound great (despite the driver cost like 250 bucks, 1000 at best), but that doesn't mean for thaat money they couldn't use better materials with better physical properties, lighter, more resistant, and that can have a certain level of sound dampening, something like, Idk Carbon fiber or zylon reinforced peek?
And that's something that really gets me mad about Hi-Fi audio equipment, they look cool, they sound great, but i just expect better stuff from those things when i see their specification on details, why they use toroidal autotransformers? Shell Type, double winding, preferably amorphous steel (oil cooled if possible) transformers are way better options than the little autotransformer that i see in most hi end audio equipment, (incluiding your dartzeel amps), they were invented like 15 years ago, they handle better the power, the peaks of current, have less magnetic losses for the nearly non existance of eddy currents in the transformer core and can damp very well the resonances and imbalances of the power line in your house (thingy that autotransformers don't do)
Also how many solid state Power amps have at least thyristor valves instead of diodes? Because siemens and abb sell their AC to DC rectifier thyristor valves for 45 dollars each, and hi fi audio equipment should make at leas their DC source for the transistors have at least 24 or 48 pulse rectification, and they are not just consumer grade stuff they are high voltage, high current, devices that have to deal with the problems of working with AC and DC at the same time at over 500,000 volts
Other problem that i see on most hi-fi audio equipment are turntables, not because i dislike vinyl, (i love it because the artwork, because is physical, and you can touch it and enjoy it) but because tuntables are stuck with bad aligment and engineering, most turntable that i noticed have a central bearings instead of a rotary table bering like the turntables on cnc machines, that work with vertical aligment of microns.
And that's very disspaoinging because having a pivot point in the middle means that doesn't matter what you do the table platter will move irregularily, meanwhile with CNC rotary table bearings, the pivot points are around the circumference of the platter, and there's just no way the platter and the record can rotate more flat than that
The Power of Dreams love to see and hear your upcoming amplifier and turntable designs!
yeah, hopefully someday
Horizontally challenged....lol
Plonker...should have held the camera in landscape mode.
give a positive review for a BIG discount on his WA speakers. SMH
Prices are ridiculous,,, their highest priced speaker betrays utter contempt for the consumer.
The cabinets are worth more than the speakers. And definitely the worst looking shop ever seen on RUclips
And those drivers!!!
No wonder they use so many crossovers
How much are those speakers....
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!
Hifi garbage. Thank God I saw this video
And by the way I think if this video was hd it really would have shown how awful
That shop really is .
Those drivers,SMH
How many have you seen from inside? Don't make a fool of yourself just because you dont own Wilsons... In fact, they could produce them by hand in a basement, i would not care if the sound remained the same. IF. because it would not work without the shop, tools, and foremost people you see there,
Vandersteen
Sooo,,,the speakers have no moving (mechanical) parts, are not made from precious medals...they ARE made using very efficient automated manufacturing machines common to most fabrication shops. R&D did not cost tens of milions of dollars. So how does the price of something FAR less technical than a Mercedes 500SL--or a Chevy Aveo, for that matter--wind up costing $685k??? Stupidity, hubris and greed. I applaud anyone who can steal that kind of money from gullible rich people, but do we have to celebrate them? Nah.
I'm a manufacturer who has fabricated enclosures for 30 years from $100 to $90k. Please tell me how a set of speakers could cost more than a Ferrari to manufacture and market. You showed us their factory. They aren't building anything ridiculously complex. So what gives?
I can afford $685k speakers, and I would happily buy them if they were worth the money. I've been to dozens of audio shows around America and love HiFi--I've heard Wilson's. But I've never heard a system worth 6 figures. Seen craftmanship worth that much? Sure. Heard? of course not.
Good point! Dave Wilson and his family have created an amazing medium size company, and they employ 47 US workers in the US! This is a big deal and it says a lot about their passion and their approach to the market. Their are at least 4 or 5 companies in the same price bracket that Wilson is in, and they all take a unigue approach to their way of building the ultimate loud speaker. I respect their commitment and their approach to the final product. It's not my cup of tea, and I believe there are other options to achieving a great system for a lot less money. Steve Jobs was a fan of Wilson from what I have read.I really appreciate the passionate manufacturers like Wilson have and how they do bring a new level of design and results.
Good points and a fun discussion on hobbies and gear. We all love music and our hobbies. I try respect the opinions of others and the path they choose. It's good to have more information on the gear that is out there. I believe Wilson is in the top of the high end gear. It's their choice to make it and sell it at any price. Even if I could afford the Wilson line, I would not pay that much for all of the reasons that I may have. Dave and his family and employees are making great gear and they have their niche and that is what counts.
+Analog Planet What do you think of serato? (dvs)
The screen size is reduced by 2/3
They all have orange peel. And the paint work sucks. On all wilsons.
There's not one wilson with a good paint job
I’m into the video and I can’t stand any more. Shame on the guy who doesn’t bring his camera to a potentially awesome video and then can’t even hold the phone in the correct orientation!
Two big thumbs down and only a partial watch. 👎👎
I'm sorry, but this shit is obscene.