Here are some impressions on the sonics.
Steve's system beguiled with a warm, yet transparent and incredibly colorful presentation. The saturated colors in all their shadings were reminiscent of live music, and they had that character also from digital streaming. The streaming through Taiko switches and Taiko Extreme, as well as Lampizator Horizon, was just amazing. Natural sound, without anything remotely synthetic in the timbres.
There was great detail on everything, but never with any exaggerated emphasis; detail was naturally flowing instead.
Voices sounded beautiful. You were drawn into them emotionally, as they were presented with great expressiveness in inflection and phrasing, also helped by very good micro-dynamics. Liberty by Anette Askvik was perfection (like most of the music we listened to, from streaming).
Violin tone on Hilary Hahn playing Ysaye sonatas was to die for. When we streamed Bruckner Symphony 3 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Barenboim conducting, there was gorgeous string tone on orchestral violins, very velvety. There was very good separation of instruments, and macro-dynamics were good as well, quite remarkable given that those large Wilsons are driven by only 32 W/ch Lamm SETs. Again, all the colors and the emotional sweep of the music were conveyed very well, and the presentation drew me in.
Transients on the system were sometimes slightly on the softer side, but this blended beautifully with the lush tone, which made it really work for me. I prefer that to tilting of transients towards an exaggerated harder side.
Scheherazade (Reiner, CSO) on vinyl sounded very good as well. On tape we heard Beethoven piano trios op. 70/1 and 2. It was an Ed Pong tape, again wonderful tone.
The room designer did a fabulous job with creating a space where those large speakers really sing despite the relatively compact room dimensions. On all music the sound was very open, despite the somewhat dampened acoustics. Coherence of sound was amazing, despite the listening seat being very close to the speakers (you sit within the equilateral triangle resulting from the distance between the speakers). Coherence was also maintained on the higher chair behind the main listening chair, belying the notion that the speakers need to be adjusted to the height of the listener.
The soundstage was incredibly immersive, to my ears another highlight of the sound. Due to the speaker position right against the front wall there was not much spatial depth, but this was of little importance given the immersive nature of the soundstage.
The bass could be a little thick at times; for rock and jazz this would work less well for my preferences. Yet we listened most of the time to classical and to voices, and I loved it. I enjoyed every minute of it!
Well done with your system and room, Steve!
