Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

The Sabrina comes with a deluxe three-ring binder that includes detailed unpacking and setup instructions, but Wilson Audio strongly advises that you leave these tasks to an authorized dealer "trained in the art and science of the Wilson Audio Setup Procedure." In my case, this involved the Toronto area's Wilson dealer, Audio Excellence, and the setup expertise of Wilson's director of sales, Peter McGrath. Given McGrath's long experience in setting up Wilson speakers, I was content to leave the Sabrinas' initial setup to him—with input from me. Like me, McGrath likes to set up speakers to produce a wide soundstage. His setup of the Sabrinas was similar to what I've found optimal with other floorstanding speakers: along the long wall of my listening room (16' long by 14' wide by 7.5' high), roughly describing an equilateral triangle with the listening position, and toed-in to almost fully face that position (see photo of my room). When I'm seated, my ears are about 37" from the floor, which is within about half an inch of the level of the tweeters. (Given the Sabrina's backtilt, determining the exact height of the tweeter involves some eyeballing.) The speakers were a little farther apart than I place my Avantgarde Uno Nanos, and closer to the front and side walls. The Sabrina is supplied with heavy-duty spikes, as well as aluminum discs to be placed under the spikes to prevent damage to hardwood floors such as mine. I used the discs.

The positions of the driver modules of Wilson's larger speakers can be adjusted, to time-align the drivers' outputs for arrival at specific listening distances. For the Sabrina, no such adjustment is possible, but the driver array and the sloping baffle have been optimized for what Wilson calls a "typical listening room," and the tilt of the speaker can be adjusted by varying the length of the front and/or rear spikes. The speakers were initially set up with a slight additional backtilt, which is recommended in small rooms such as mine, to produce at the listening seat a soundstage of sufficient height. I later tried decreasing the tilt, and preferred the result: the focus was improved, and the soundstage was still high. Of course, rooms and listening positions vary; what worked for me can't be assumed to work elsewhere. While I wouldn't describe the Sabrina as exceptionally "tweaky," it definitely benefits from careful setup.

Except for grilles that have been engineered to be part of a speaker's overall acoustical design, I've yet to encounter a grille that does not degrade its speaker's sound in some way—and this was true of the Sabrina's. The sound was just a bit less open with the grilles in place, though the effect was quite subtle—and certainly not as marked as I've heard with some other grilles. I did all of my critical listening with the grilles removed.

Whether or not audio equipment needs to be broken-in is a contentious issue: a 2005 discussion of the topic at Stereophile.com had over 60 responses. The Sabrina's owner's manual states that Wilson Audio subjects all midrange drivers and woofers to a 12-hour break-in before the drivers are tested, calibrated, and matched. They acknowledge the benefit of additional break-in, and suggest that it will be 90% complete after 24 hours of playing. But being an audiophile means being concerned about that last 10%. On the subject of break-in, I tend to be on the "more is better" side, and use various break-in/system enhancer CDs (from Monitor Audio, Nordost, and Purist Audio), as well as music played at fairly high levels. I do believe that the Sabrinas sounded better with additional break-in, the sound becoming generally more relaxed, and losing the slight edginess that I heard from the speakers at first, just out of the box.

Amps
The first power amplifier I used with the Sabrinas was a McIntosh Laboratory MC275LE, which I reviewed in a Follow-Up in the October 2012 issue. This tube amp has a conservatively specified power output of 75Wpc, which seemed a good match for the Sabrina's recommended specified minimum amplification of 50Wpc and sensitivity of 87dB. However, I was a bit concerned about the fact that, also according to Wilson's specs, the Sabrina's impedance drops to 2.53 ohms at 139Hz. The MC275LE has separate taps for 4, 8, and 16 ohms; the Sabrina's nominal impedance is 4 ohms, so at first I used the Mac's 4 ohm taps. This seemed to work well, the amp driving the speakers at normal as well as very loud, "audiophile demonstration" levels, and the bass seemed fine. However, during setup, Peter McGrath questioned the use of the 4 ohm taps. He said that, in his experience, Audio Research tube amps worked better with the Sabrina through the ARCs' 8 ohm taps, and he wondered if that might be the case with the Mac. We tried it, switching between the two sets of taps, and we both preferred the sound through the 8 ohm taps, which I used for the rest of my listening. (In a similar comparison for my September 2012 review of the MartinLogan Montis, I'd also ended up preferring the Mac's 8 ohm taps.)

Although the tubed McIntosh worked well with the Sabrinas, it's probably atypical of the amplifiers that most people would use with these speakers, and probably not optimal for extracting low bass from them. I had two other amps on hand, but both were also tubed, and less powerful than the MC275LE. What I needed was a solid-state amp with more power than the MC275LE. As per Stereophile editorial policy, the amp would have to be one that has been reviewed in the magazine—a known quantity. Looking through the list of potentially suitable amps, the one that struck me as a good bet was the Theta Digital Prometheus, reviewed in the March 2015 issue by Larry Greenhill, who praised it for its "huge dynamic range and bass impact." He said the Prometheus was one of the best-sounding amplifiers he'd heard in his listening room, and it was his Editor's Choice for 2015. The claimed output of the Prometheus is 250Wpc into 8 ohms, 500Wpc into 4 ohms, or 850Wpc into 2 ohms—I thought it would be well able to take the Sabrina's impedance dip in stride. Jeff Hipps of Theta Digital kindly arranged to loan me a pair of Prometheus monoblocks.

There was a hiccup in pairing my Convergent Audio Technology SL1 Renaissance Black Path Edition preamp with the Prometheus. The CAT's standard, minute-long automatically muted turn-on period was apparently not long enough for the Prometheus; when the SL1 unmuted itself, I heard a soft, low-frequency "motorboating" sound. All I had to do was to keep the CAT muted for an addition minute after turn-on, and everything was hunky-dory. The combo was then dead quiet, with pristine clarity, and no digitalesque artifacts that I could hear. (The Prometheus uses Bruno Putzeys's NCore NC 1200 class-D amp module, with a linear power supply created by Theta's David Reich.) Just as LG had said, the Theta had great dynamics and bass impact, both of those qualities being superior to the Mac's (although I preferred the MC275LE's tonality). My descriptions of the sound of the Sabrinas represent a kind of averaging of the sound with the two amplifiers, with amplifier-specific distinctions as noted.

Listening
Dave Wilson's stated aim in designing the original WATT/Puppy was to produce "a compact and simple loudspeaker that could provide a degree of musical enjoyment rivaling—and even surpassing—much larger systems." Listening to the Sabrinas—even before the break-in period had passed—I was immediately struck by how "big" they sounded—or, in terms that more clearly reflect Dave Wilson's aim, how much they sounded like live music rather than speakers. And their resolution was first-rate: Playing familiar records often resulted in responses of "Hey, I haven't noticed that before."