Rather more difficult to grasp, though, are those terms that describe things added to the sound by the reproducing system, because understanding this terminology requires enough…
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Much of the descriptive terminology used in subjective reporting describes things we hear in live music, and expect—or, rather, hope—to hear from reproduced music, too. I'm referring to terms like width, depth, perspective, spectral balance, and tonal accuracy. If you read our reports, you know these terms as well as I do, and since they are (for most people) self-explanatory, I will devote no more time to them.
Stuck out here in the desert depths of the Southwest, we look forward to visits from out-of-towners. So when David Wilson, one-time audio reviewer but now full-time high-end manufacturer, called to say he was going to be in Santa Fe, there was a flurry of activity. David had agreed to an interview, so I started going through back issues of The Absolute Sound and Stereophile for background. Vol.6 No.2 of Stereophile from 1983, with its front-cover photograph of David and Sheryl Lee Wilson with their WAMM speaker system, seemed a good place to start—except that nothing inside the magazine…
The October 1982 issue of Stereo Review published what must be hailed (or derided) as the first reasoned assessment of high-end audio ever presented in a mass-circulation hi-fi publication. We disagreed with a few of the author's points, but our main gripe about the piece prompted a letter to Stereo Review. This is what we wrote:
I was irked by Alan Lofft's article on perfectionist audio ("High-End Stereo: Sense and Nonsense," October 1982), but probably not for the same reasons some other undergrounders will be.
Actually, I thought the article was excellent, and do not take…
The French have a phrase for it: plus ça change, plus la même chose, which can be roughly translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I was reminded of this when recently reading through the December 1980 issue of The Absolute Sound. There on p.368 was the statement that "Dave Wilson (Virgo) has joined the staff...to construct a testing program that will allow us to determine if some of the peculiarities and anomalies we hear in evaluating equipment can indeed be numerically measured."
Ten years later, both TAS and Stereophile are still expending a goodly portion…
Atkinson: Are you making very big adjustments?
Wilson: Very subtle adjustments. Now this is something I don't understand exactly why it should be so. With the Series 1s through the Series 4s, there was a range of adjustment of 2 or 3dB from WAMM to WAMM in different rooms. So the assumption could be reasonably made that what was happening was that the system was being equalized to match the characteristics of the room (which is what most people think equalization is for). As it turns out with the Series 6, of which there are probably 14 or 15 in the world today, all of those systems—…
Atkinson: That's quite a cost per octave...
Wilson: Lots of dollars per hertz—but it only hurts for a little while! So the development of the Puppy proceeded, the final configuration being two Dynaudio woofers—the units with the large magnets—in an enclosure which basically encloses four other enclosures; a ported design, with a rear-firing port; extreme rigidity to cut down panel readout so that it doesn't color the sound in the upper bass/lower midrange; a crossover point high enough so that it really can take the ball from the WATT up there where the WATT is still dynamically linear,…
Wilson: If you look at circulation figures for Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, then multiply that by the number of people who read them but don't subscribe, in my own mind the number that I keep coming to is around 100,000. There are 100,000 audiophiles in the US who are serious enough about this hobby, this passion, to want to read specific literature about it. That 100,000 base has been the fishing hole, if you will, that all of these little high-end manufacturers have been fishing in for years and years and years and years, kind of confident in the knowledge that, well, there are…
WILCO: Sky Blue Sky
Nonesuch 131388 (CD). 2007. Wilco, prods.; TJ Doherty, eng.; Jim Scott, mix; Bob Ludwig, mastering. AAD? TT: 51:18
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Nonesuch 131388 (CD). 2007. Wilco, prods.; TJ Doherty, eng.; Jim Scott, mix; Bob Ludwig, mastering. AAD? TT: 51:18
Performance *****
Sonics ****
For some Wilco fans, the response to a new Wilco album has become predictable: On first listen, it just doesn't grab you. Like looking out the window of a speeding car, it all seems to run together. But when you stop, go back, and walk along that same stretch of road (though when it comes to this band, tortured path may be a better metaphor), details emerge and deepen, until you're suddenly confronted with…
As I write this in the first quarter of 2007, CD sales are off over 22% compared to this time last year. The music industry as we know it, based on sales of some kind of physical medium, is over. While CDs and even LPs will remain available—they're so easy and cheap to make—they've become irrelevant to the mass market and to the future of audiophile recordings. The major labels have also become irrelevant (not to mention highly irritating).
However, a persistent number of audiophiles go into apoplectic dysrhythmia when the Apple iPod, music servers, or music downloads are mentioned in…
Synecdoche: That's what the Wilson WATT/Puppy is.
Synecdoche is not a city in upstate New York but a rhetorical device in which a specific example stands in for a whole class of similar things: fifty sail for fifty ships, cutthroat for assassin, etc. When it comes to high-end audio, Wilson's WATT/Puppy speaker has symbolized the entire high-end ethos throughout at least the product's last four generations—perhaps (to labor a classical metaphor) since the original WATT sprang fully formed from David Wilson's brow.
To those who view the High End as an attempt to fleece gullible…