Sonus Faber Aida vs. Wilson XLF
Since my initial experience in listening to the Sonus Faber Aida speakers at CES, I have been curious to hear them in direct comparison to the new Wilson XLF. If my understanding is correct, the only dealer in the US to carry both of these speakers in house is LMC (Legendary Music Cinema) Home Entertainment in Phoenix, AZ. After a few months of trying to coordinate a visit there with Steve, we finally managed to make it out to the desert in April 24th. Mike Ware, the owner of LMC was gracious enough to pick us up at Phoenix airport and then let us play at his store for a few hours before returning us to the airport again. LMC is a remarkably upscale shop with not only music demonstration rooms, but some pretty impressive theaters that will bring a lot of smiles to the video crowd as well. It is simply a drop dead gorgeous store.
I’ll begin by saying that when we first arrived, we were led to a room housing the Aida’s driven by some nice McIntosh gear. However the amps were cold, and the speakers were located close to the front corners of the room because the last customer who listened (and ultimately purchased) them, had a wife who would only allow hubby to buy the speakers if they were buried deep in the corners of their room. Poor bastard. Need I say more?
To get right down to it, we spent a considerable amount of time trying to get the speaker to sound as good as it could in the room. I suggested bringing the speaker in a good distance, but Mike identified the spot that worked best from previous experience. We had the benefit of using a simple Phonic frequency analyzer with pink noise to get the best rough-in position, but it was not until much later that we made small position changes (<1 inch range) that allowed the speaker to sound its best (see Fig 1 (initial placement) and 2 final placement). (Note space between horiz dashed lines on meter face is equal to 5 dB).
So what exactly did it sound like? The answer is that it sounded quite good. But unfortunately, the room was not yet treated with the sound absorption materials that are currently on order. Thus, no matter what we did, there was a considerable suck out of 40 Hz that put a room stamp signature on what we heard even though we were able to achieve a fairly smooth response throughout the rest of the range . The main result of this is that the speaker’s sound lost considerable weight as a result of the 40 Hz suck out.. This defect in a key part of the bass range was also unfortunately aided by the fact that the speakers were on Teflon sliders and not spikes. Therefore, full-throated orchestral material, brass bands and even solo classical piano lacked the “weight” that is often a desirable characteristic of a true full range speaker. The rest of the range however sounded quite lovely. The McIntosh single chassis tube preamp and the Mc 2301 tube amps presented a very coherent, seamless sound field. It was hard to find fault with the speaker other than the obvious room boundary effect at 40Hz even though the Aida was not heard at its best. I have been fortunate to hear the speaker under stellar conditions twice previously. The first was at the ARC demo at CES. Drop dead stunning. The second, and possibly even more impressive, was at David Zucker’s Sound Experience in Boca Raton Florida about a month ago. David has a smaller room, and used a superb amp from Zanden Tandem (with which I was previously unfamiliar) to extract simply magical sound from the Aida’s. One can only hope that when the Aida is best set-up in its completely optimized room at LMC, it’s significant merits will be fully apparent.
Next up was a move to another, larger room to hear the Wilson Alexandria XLF. Again, the room is in the process of being optimized. But Mike let us listen to the speaker with the 2 chassis Mc tube preamp as well as both the 1.2KW SS amps and the 2301 tube amp. Fortunately, the room geography did not present any “fatal” suck-outs or bumps, and thus the overall sound was very pleasing. Once again, the speaker was not spiked to the floor, but rather on wheels, as is often the case for speakers that have not found their permanent home in a particular showroom. Still the frequency response was quite respectable but with a noticeable absence of low bass (Fig 3) . We tried changing the direction of the port from rear to front, but this was to no avail so we put it back to the rear port configuration. However Mike surprised us and told us that even though the room we were in was yet to be optimized, his plans called for a new fully dedicated room for the XLFs that will begin construction shortly. He assured us they will be spiked and thus show their full potential upon that room’s completion.
What we really came to hear of course, was the new silk dome tweeter on the XLF, since that’s a big part of both this particular speaker as well as what we are all guessing will be an eventual tweeter change in the entire Wilson line. And there’s good news to share here. Steve characterized the sound of the new tweeter as relaxed, open, and detailed and I concur. What I like most about Steve’s characterization is that he used the word “relaxed” first. Usually the sound of a particular driver can be thought of in terms frequency response, phase response amplitude, and distortion. But in this case, the word “relaxed”, which describes the subjective nature of the listener more than the sound of a transducer, was the perfect “non sequitur” term (if that makes any sense)!
Finally, and just for fun, we had the opportunity to listen to the big 4 piece MBL 101 X-treme Reference loudspeakers (an omnidirectional line source) that carries a big ticket price of about 250+K. That's right folks. After listening to speakers priced at 120K and 195K, it only made sense to listen to a speaker that was twice the price of the Aida! After all, it was right there. What were we going to do, say no? To be honest, I heard these speakers last year at the factory showroom in Berlin, and I noticed the same annoying property at LMC I disliked when I originally heard them under very good circumstances in Berlin. Specifically, when I played human voice, I was able to envision the voice emanating from either the top or the bottom balloon midrange driver, but never as a single voice in the middle of the vertically separated drivers. In other words, rather than hearing a single vocal image, I always heard a double set; one from the bottom set of Radialstrahlers and one from the top set. It was, at least for me, just eerie. Too much “omni” in my opinion. But then again, that is a very subjective view.
So, what speaker did we come away in our thinking that one was top dog? The answer is- neither. Both the Aida and XLF are clearly very fine speakers. But unfortunately, we arrived at a time where the room environments were just not optimized for either. I think we made the collective comment that if each speaker is capable of a “10” on its own accord, we were listening under conditions that afforded only a 6, or 7, maximal score at best which was driven by the fact that both rooms had not been fully treated, and neither speaker was set up on spikes, thereby dramatically attenuating the best bass response that both speakers are fully capable of producing. Still, it was a great day, if only to visit a unique retailer with a spectacular venue well under development (the big home theater is to die for!), and who exemplified the best of high end retail in his knowledge, help, good cheer and modesty. Thanks Mike!
Since my initial experience in listening to the Sonus Faber Aida speakers at CES, I have been curious to hear them in direct comparison to the new Wilson XLF. If my understanding is correct, the only dealer in the US to carry both of these speakers in house is LMC (Legendary Music Cinema) Home Entertainment in Phoenix, AZ. After a few months of trying to coordinate a visit there with Steve, we finally managed to make it out to the desert in April 24th. Mike Ware, the owner of LMC was gracious enough to pick us up at Phoenix airport and then let us play at his store for a few hours before returning us to the airport again. LMC is a remarkably upscale shop with not only music demonstration rooms, but some pretty impressive theaters that will bring a lot of smiles to the video crowd as well. It is simply a drop dead gorgeous store.
I’ll begin by saying that when we first arrived, we were led to a room housing the Aida’s driven by some nice McIntosh gear. However the amps were cold, and the speakers were located close to the front corners of the room because the last customer who listened (and ultimately purchased) them, had a wife who would only allow hubby to buy the speakers if they were buried deep in the corners of their room. Poor bastard. Need I say more?
To get right down to it, we spent a considerable amount of time trying to get the speaker to sound as good as it could in the room. I suggested bringing the speaker in a good distance, but Mike identified the spot that worked best from previous experience. We had the benefit of using a simple Phonic frequency analyzer with pink noise to get the best rough-in position, but it was not until much later that we made small position changes (<1 inch range) that allowed the speaker to sound its best (see Fig 1 (initial placement) and 2 final placement). (Note space between horiz dashed lines on meter face is equal to 5 dB).
So what exactly did it sound like? The answer is that it sounded quite good. But unfortunately, the room was not yet treated with the sound absorption materials that are currently on order. Thus, no matter what we did, there was a considerable suck out of 40 Hz that put a room stamp signature on what we heard even though we were able to achieve a fairly smooth response throughout the rest of the range . The main result of this is that the speaker’s sound lost considerable weight as a result of the 40 Hz suck out.. This defect in a key part of the bass range was also unfortunately aided by the fact that the speakers were on Teflon sliders and not spikes. Therefore, full-throated orchestral material, brass bands and even solo classical piano lacked the “weight” that is often a desirable characteristic of a true full range speaker. The rest of the range however sounded quite lovely. The McIntosh single chassis tube preamp and the Mc 2301 tube amps presented a very coherent, seamless sound field. It was hard to find fault with the speaker other than the obvious room boundary effect at 40Hz even though the Aida was not heard at its best. I have been fortunate to hear the speaker under stellar conditions twice previously. The first was at the ARC demo at CES. Drop dead stunning. The second, and possibly even more impressive, was at David Zucker’s Sound Experience in Boca Raton Florida about a month ago. David has a smaller room, and used a superb amp from Zanden Tandem (with which I was previously unfamiliar) to extract simply magical sound from the Aida’s. One can only hope that when the Aida is best set-up in its completely optimized room at LMC, it’s significant merits will be fully apparent.
Next up was a move to another, larger room to hear the Wilson Alexandria XLF. Again, the room is in the process of being optimized. But Mike let us listen to the speaker with the 2 chassis Mc tube preamp as well as both the 1.2KW SS amps and the 2301 tube amp. Fortunately, the room geography did not present any “fatal” suck-outs or bumps, and thus the overall sound was very pleasing. Once again, the speaker was not spiked to the floor, but rather on wheels, as is often the case for speakers that have not found their permanent home in a particular showroom. Still the frequency response was quite respectable but with a noticeable absence of low bass (Fig 3) . We tried changing the direction of the port from rear to front, but this was to no avail so we put it back to the rear port configuration. However Mike surprised us and told us that even though the room we were in was yet to be optimized, his plans called for a new fully dedicated room for the XLFs that will begin construction shortly. He assured us they will be spiked and thus show their full potential upon that room’s completion.
What we really came to hear of course, was the new silk dome tweeter on the XLF, since that’s a big part of both this particular speaker as well as what we are all guessing will be an eventual tweeter change in the entire Wilson line. And there’s good news to share here. Steve characterized the sound of the new tweeter as relaxed, open, and detailed and I concur. What I like most about Steve’s characterization is that he used the word “relaxed” first. Usually the sound of a particular driver can be thought of in terms frequency response, phase response amplitude, and distortion. But in this case, the word “relaxed”, which describes the subjective nature of the listener more than the sound of a transducer, was the perfect “non sequitur” term (if that makes any sense)!
Finally, and just for fun, we had the opportunity to listen to the big 4 piece MBL 101 X-treme Reference loudspeakers (an omnidirectional line source) that carries a big ticket price of about 250+K. That's right folks. After listening to speakers priced at 120K and 195K, it only made sense to listen to a speaker that was twice the price of the Aida! After all, it was right there. What were we going to do, say no? To be honest, I heard these speakers last year at the factory showroom in Berlin, and I noticed the same annoying property at LMC I disliked when I originally heard them under very good circumstances in Berlin. Specifically, when I played human voice, I was able to envision the voice emanating from either the top or the bottom balloon midrange driver, but never as a single voice in the middle of the vertically separated drivers. In other words, rather than hearing a single vocal image, I always heard a double set; one from the bottom set of Radialstrahlers and one from the top set. It was, at least for me, just eerie. Too much “omni” in my opinion. But then again, that is a very subjective view.
So, what speaker did we come away in our thinking that one was top dog? The answer is- neither. Both the Aida and XLF are clearly very fine speakers. But unfortunately, we arrived at a time where the room environments were just not optimized for either. I think we made the collective comment that if each speaker is capable of a “10” on its own accord, we were listening under conditions that afforded only a 6, or 7, maximal score at best which was driven by the fact that both rooms had not been fully treated, and neither speaker was set up on spikes, thereby dramatically attenuating the best bass response that both speakers are fully capable of producing. Still, it was a great day, if only to visit a unique retailer with a spectacular venue well under development (the big home theater is to die for!), and who exemplified the best of high end retail in his knowledge, help, good cheer and modesty. Thanks Mike!
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