Wilson Sabrina Review

Looking good in your system. Seems that the interaction of the port with the room is unpredictable. Some have reported being able to place them within 1 ft (?) from the rear wall while you have experienced bass happiness (boom or excessive bass) in your decent size, treated, room some 3 - 4 ft from the rear wall.

Would you say that they sound great for the money or do they compete with higher priced speakers?
 
nfnc said:
Would you say that they sound great for the money or do they compete with higher priced speakers?
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It think they are hard to beat in the sub-$20k category. If I had $23k available, I think I would go with the Rockport Atria or Magico S3.

But for $16k, Wilson has a winner IMO.
 
Here are mine:

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Dr Tone said:
Yes, probably not the exact one but a close variation there of.
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Since they're all made by Scan Speak, they're likely nearly identical. There's not anything new that can be done with silk domes anyway. But I've never seen a nasty 15khz resonance like that on a Scan silk dome.
 
Vapor1 said:
Since they're all made by Scan Speak, they're likely nearly identical. There's not anything new that can be done with silk domes anyway. But I've never seen a nasty 15khz resonance like that on a Scan silk dome.
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Well all I can say is the tweeter in the big Wilsons of the past often made me sad; the ones in the new Alexx really made me happy.

(As an aside, I am quite sure I can't hear 15k.)
 
FlexibleAudio said:
(As an aside, I am quite sure I can't hear 15k.)
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I know I can't. As JA said it's really narrow and 3db or so. Same as the internal acoustic resonance he mentions right at 242Hz that would need continuous exciting to entice.

It has a couple of measurable anomalies for sure but neither should be an issue while listening to music.
 
FlexibleAudio said:
Well all I can say is the tweeter in the big Wilsons of the past often made me sad; the ones in the new Alexx really made me happy.

(As an aside, I am quite sure I can't hear 15k.)
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I can hear just barely to 15khz, but that isn't what you hear anyway. Highly likely that resonance also creates a spike in odd order distortion that propagates downward, you can hear 5khz and 3khz I'm sure.

I enjoyed the Alex at Axpona too btw.
 
Vapor1 said:
I can hear just barely to 15khz, but that isn't what you hear anyway. Highly likely that resonance also creates a spike in odd order distortion that propagates downward, you can hear 5khz and 3khz I'm sure.

I enjoyed the Alex at Axpona too btw.
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Maybe you can explain to me what's going on specifically? JA says there's a suck out at 15khz and that's what I see on his graph, yet you say peak?
 
Dr Tone said:
Maybe you can explain to me what's going on specifically? JA says there's a suck out at 15khz and that's what I see on his graph, yet you say peak?
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Look at the CSD graph and see how that suckout turns into a ridge of stored energy. Something about the geometry of the rear chamber or pole piece is causing a resonance to form, and there doesn't appear to be any damping inside the motor, so it just rings and rings. I imagine a small disc of damping material inside the rear chamber, about the size of a fingernail, would eliminate that behavior.

What is really needed to evaluate the audible significance of that behavior is linear and non-linear distortion data, but Stereophile doesn't provide them.
 
Doubt that ...

Looking at the impedance mag/phase i really dont see any nasty resonance that would shine a light on the tweeter at 15K . A closer look at the FR measurements it looks to me more like baffle interference and or mic aberration, maybe a proximity effect due to it's narrow sharp response...

If it was tweeter resonance i would expect to see something in the Imp/mag/phase response and John's measurement test are not really meant to be complete or deep enuff to show all warts, since being only done at the 2.83V standard.

IMO, I would like to see the response avg with an increase in test voltage up to say 25 watts rms (worst case) ...

the Imp/Mag/Phase does tell alot ...



Regards..
 

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Actually the CSD graph (in the discussed region) is pretty clean initially and the developed stored ridge is pretty low and late to the party to really have any effect on anything but pure tones, I'm not even sure if removing it at that point would have any positive effect.


Edit: I can see a possibility of the ridge becoming an issue over extended period in that region (continuous cymbal strikes for eg) it would have been nice to have the THD numbers ...
 

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a.wayne said:
Doubt that ...

Looking at the impedance mag/phase i really dont see any nasty resonance that would shine a light on the tweeter at 15K . A closer look at the FR measurements it looks to me more like baffle interference and or mic aberration, maybe a proximity effect due to it's narrow sharp response...

If it was tweeter resonance i would expect to see something in the Imp/mag/phase response and John's measurement test are not really meant to be complete or deep enuff to show all warts, since being only done at the 2.83V standard.

IMO, I would like to see the response avg with an increase in test voltage up to say 25 watts rms (worst case) ...


Regards..
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Tweeter resonances often don't show in impedance graphs. Woofer resonances do because it's the heavy moving part resonating which cause the voice coil to wiggle in the gap. And the higher in frequency, the smaller (in physical size) the resonance is, meaning less likely to result in shifting the magnetic field. It's expected not to show on an impedance chart. I've measured and eliminated that type of behavior many times over the years.
 
a.wayne said:
Actually the CSD graph (in the discussed region) is pretty clean initially and the developed stored ridge is pretty low and late to the party to really have any effect on anything but pure tones, I'm not even sure if removing it at that point would have any positive effect.


Edit: I can see a possibility of the ridge becoming an issue over extended period in that region (continuous cymbal strikes for eg) it would have been nice to have the THD numbers ...
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Seriously? If that's what you believe, you need to spend more time collecting and interpreting measurement data. I'm not trying to be a know-it-all, but your interpretation is off. That stored energy ridge is nasty, the only saving grace that would make it difficult to hear is high Q. Removing it could only have a positive effect.
 
That's a measurement artifact; JA mentions to disregard it in several past reviews.
 
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