Reference Sounds – Wilson Alexx V with Dan D’Agostino

Listening Impressions

For my listening session, Michael had also invited another reviewer and had prepared a short Roon playlist that he played for us while we rotated our seating positions for each track to make sure we both got equal exposure in the room’s ideal spot. After the demo, Michael retreated with the other reviewer and handed me the iPad so that I could make my own selections, a privilege that I made use of for well over an hour.

The first thing I noticed while Michael played the first track, was how marvelously realistic the midrange was. Wilsons always had this special quality in the midrange that made you feel like you were listening to the real thing. It was always a mixture of presence, openness, attack, and dynamics, and the same was heard with the Alexx V, but now accompanied by an amazing level of transparency and focus, an unprecedented level of coherence, zero coloration, and an utter lack of edge. Transients felt absolutely instant and were positively startling but never hard, let alone aggressive. It soon became clear that these speakers do not need to play loudly in order to convey the realism that they are capable of, but they certainly provoke it! If ever I heard a speaker with limitless dynamic headroom, the Alexx V is it.

But these speakers are not one-trick ponies, far from it, in fact. But what they do particularly well is to convey the lifelike, human aspect of vocals, string instruments, and natural percussion. But they are equally as impressive when playing hard-hitting house or other electronic music. In fact, with the latter, specifically, the Alexx V’s seem to beg the user to turn up the volume just a little more. No kidding, when Michael played dub-techno-y track, I was grinning from ear to ear.

One expects great bass from speakers this size, and naturally, that is what they deliver. The bass goes as deep as any note on any of the tracks that Michael or I played, and probably considerably lower still and at full force. But don’t think for a minute that these big boys produce ploddy or overblown bass. The Alexx V’s are very fast speakers, and their bass sections remain strictly within that concept. There is a silent force and superb grip behind the woofers but never in an excessive manner. If I were to be guided in this room blindfolded, I certainly would not have guessed these speakers’ size, judging from the sound of the bass. And that is honestly one of the biggest compliments that one can give to a large system like this.

There is simply none of the lingering flabbiness that is sometimes associated with big bass drivers in large cabinets. Nope, the Alexx V bass section starts and stops every bit as instantly as that of the Sasha DAW’s and I’m under the impression that it is even better integrated with the rest of the frequency range. Perhaps that’s another benefit of these speakers’ super-accurate time-domain adjustment capabilities.

Something else that I noticed was that while the speakers at 161cm are physically quite tall, vocals are not projected as high as you would expect given the drivers’ positions. I made sure to listen to this aspect with my eyes closed so as to not allow my mind to play tricks on me based on the visual input, but sure enough, I heard it right. Maybe one would expect a singer’s voice to be located on a virtual line at a height across the upper midrange drivers but that’s not the case, and neither is the voice located on the tweeters’ horizontal level. Actually, it is projected at the same height as the lower midrange drivers, which is spot-on perfect as far as I am concerned. This is not a deficiency or downside, but again actually the biggest compliment that one can give to speakers of this size. When discussing this with Michael he smiled in recognition and went on to explain that this is another benefit of the fully adjustable speaker pods and how the top two are slightly tilted down.

Of course, I paid special attention to the integration of the 5 drivers but try as I might, I could not detect the crossover points, nor did I hear an inherent character in any of the drivers. The speakers simply sounded as one. The only valid conclusion that I could reach (again, with my eyes closed just to be sure) is that you can indeed hear that these are large speakers, not because of image focus height or a lack of coherence or integration but simply because they have a large radiating area.

I know there are people who swear by two-way speakers for their simplicity, preferably even with a coaxial or a full-range single driver, for their resultant purity and intimacy, and no doubt these people would see their opinions validated when listening to these speakers. I heard a similar effect with the very tall Magnepans and Apogees that I used for over a decade but this aspect never bothered me. My current Magico S1 mkII’s do indeed image on a more narrow horizontal plane and I can see the allure of this, but this effect is hugely overshadowed by how massively better the Alexx V’s are in terms of imaging.

First, I should note that the sharpness and precision of focus between the speakers with the Wilsons are more or less on par with what I am hearing at home with the simple Magicos. While that may seem like faint praise it is actually a huge accomplishment for the Wilsons. After all, with so many drivers, there is all the more opportunity for phase errors. But more significantly, the Wilsons simply walk all over the Magicos, not only the S1 MkII’s but any model that I have heard, in terms of soundstage depth, spaciousness, and layering.

There are speakers that always sound wide or deep but this is not what the Alexx V does. Rather, these speakers follow whatever is in the recording and can sound utterly monoaural like a single speaker or like a fully-equipped surround theater, just as easily.

One of the recordings that Michael played was eerily spacious and razor-sharp in imaging at the same time. It contained certain mono sounds that were portrayed smack in the middle and right in front of me with great clarity and certain other sounds that seemed to have been recorded out of phase. These latter sounds did not simply float somewhere besides my head but they converged behind me and with the same razor-like precision as the mono sounds in front of me.

In the field of resolution and precision, as far as I can tell from the last time I visited the Reference Sounds room, the Alexx V’s are at least on par with the DAW’s but I can’t shake the feeling that these big boys are even more linear and transparent than the DAW’s which were already great in these departments.

Room Acoustics

There’s one thing that one should keep in mind, which is that Wilson Audio speakers are designed in the USA where they are almost always used in rooms with walls of wood and sheetrock construction. In many parts of Europe and the Netherlands in particular, our houses are made with thick concrete floors and walls and are often smaller than in America.

On occasion, I’ve been at demos, although never those organized by Michael, where Wilson speakers were crammed in small demo rooms where they excited room modes to the point where they were impossible to ignore. Alternatively, or sometimes coincidently, Wilsons can sound overly bass-heavy, in non-sympathetic rooms. Often, that means small rooms or fully concrete rooms, but the exemplary bass performance in Michael’s Reference Sounds room is actually proving this statement wrong.

Nevertheless, I have first-hand experience with the Watt/Puppy 8’s in my own listening room that was at that time plagued by multiple issues and which is why I moved to Martin Logans (with active and adjustable bass) and more recently small Magicos (with a closed cabinet), before finally fully optimizing my room very recently. Suffice to say, if your room is too small, or has acoustic issues, some speakers can actively or passively fight against this but Wilson speakers will not ignore the issues. Rather, they may make them worse.

However, as I’ve noted above, these issues are not present in the relatively small Reference Sounds room. This is because Michael has made sure to fully optimize the room using in-house expertise and a variety of techniques, calculated by Michael and his team and executed on their specification by their interior builder, obviously with excellent results.

Is there anything the Alexx V’s can’t do? Well, there’s one area where I noticed something, but that’s admittedly splitting hairs. It’s that although the Alexx V’s bass section has superb grip and authority, and it goes deeper than required by even the most insane dub-techno tracks, there seems to be a mild dip in the speaker’s low bass response, after which it happily continues at full power into the sub-bass terrain. Not being sure if I was hearing room-induced effects, I discussed this with Michael and he explained that Wilson Audio has indeed deliberately chosen to let the woofers’ direct output roll off slightly before taking over with the reflex port. Apparently, it was the slight dip at the takeover point that I noticed. This has been done to make the speaker work better in many rooms and, honestly, I much prefer it over a speaker that has an audibly raised takeover point.

This design decision was the only minor observation that I could make. I wouldn’t even call it a flaw. In fact, if these speakers had any flaws, then I could not detect them. Just as well for a speaker that commands a starting price of 160.000 euros, I hear you say? Indeed, at that price level, one expects perfection. But if I have learned anything during all my years with audio equipment, it’s that perfection is rarely what one gets, even when the cost is no object.

Indeed, unless one desires the simple purity of a two-way or point-source speaker, and provided that one has the funds to obtain something in this price class, and the room supports them, the Alexx V ranks in the stratosphere where it is joined by only a handful of top-model speakers from brands such as Magico, YG Acoustics, and a few others.

It is my personal belief that the perfect speaker does not exist. Furthermore, when you move up the product line or a given brand, the higher-tier models often offer certain improvements at the cost of a lessening of performance in other areas. I don’t want to name names, but in my opinion, one of my personal favorite brands starting with M (and ending with agico) steps in this trap where more upscale models routinely offer better bass and in many cases greater midrange clarity but also take a penalty in the fields of purity and soundstaging. The Wilson Alexx V is unique for offering all of the Wilson brand strengths, all to the max, and without taking away anything in any area. Now, the devil in me wonders what more the WAMM Master Chronosonic could possibly offer. Surely, it would be diminishing returns, right? Just as it is (not) when stepping up from Sasha DAW via Alexia 2 to Alexx V… going from my experience with Wilson Audio thus far, I think it’s probably safest not to go listen to any of their higher-tier speakers if you can’t afford them.

Would you like a listening session?

Reference Sounds is not just a distributor, but also functions as an extension of their extensive dealer network, and Michael is always happy to demonstrate the products in his Almere Listening Room by appointment.

More Reference Sounds

HFA Company Special (the old Amstelveen location)
Reference Sounds – Wilson Alexx V with Audio Research

Video on the Hifi-Advice YouTube Channel

Wilson Audio Alexx V showcase at Reference Sounds

External Links

www.referencesounds.nl
Wilson Audio

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