wilson wp8 v. maxx2

Thanks Kevin.

I really was having trouble relating Dave Wilson's choice of transportation with the sound of his products. By the way, Usher runs full page color ads. Wilson's are in black and white.

I own the WP7 and have heard the WP8 and the Maxx 2. The WP8 is better sounding, but not woth the extra $10K+ in my opinion. The Maxx 2 is a great speaker. I would save up for that purchase.

Steve

I've owned the Sophias, Watt 7's/WatchDog, and now own the Maxx 2's. There are demostrable improvements in dynamic scale and dimensionality in sound with the Maxx 2's, even over the W7/WatchDog. I've heard great comments on the new W8, but I'd highly recommend going for a pair of Maxx 2's if you can find a pair. Even buying new, I'd say they're well worth the difference in cost.

I had the same idea as you have, but I went for the WP8s

I've tried Maxx 2s in my house and they did sound slighty more at ease than the WP7s with my Audio Note amps. Yet, the Maxxs were just too large looking for my listening evrioment, our living room. I felt they dominated the aethetics of thge room. IMHO, if you have the room and like the Maxxs aesthetics then go for it.

I have about 200 hours on my WP8s now and they do sound much better than than my previous WP 7s.

enjoy the music, cheers,
GerryM5

Gerrym5,

So what you are really saying is the Maxx 2's didn't pass the WAF? ;)

I hope to have a pair of Maxx 2's hopefully next year. What differences have you heard between the 7's and 8's? I couldn't pass up the price on the WP 7's especially right now!

I started this thread because I had not fully heard these speakers. I still have not heard the wp8 but have now heard the maxx2 in two different listening rooms at two different dealers using very different equipment.

Let me begin by saying that I thought and still think that the wp7 is a great speaker. Natural curosity is what made me consider an upgrade.

I had heard the accolades and also the wilson bashers trash the maxx2

Well the first time I heard the maxx2 at dealer A with my own source material (radiohead ok computer), I thought it was a little better than the wp7 but certainly not worth the significant cost differential. The dealer ran the maxx2 with a wadia cd player and krell 750mcx so certainly the other equipment employed was real good. I had some doubts as to the quality of the listening room though.

So I then tried a different dealer who had a much better listening room in terms of acoustics. This dealer also had a more subtle yet powerful amp than the krell. This dealer used the VTL s-400 and used the well-regarded ayre cd player. I listened to Roxy Music Avalon which is even better recorded than Radiohead Ok Computer. It was not the super audio version but still. Again, I found the maxx2 was better than the wp7 sound I got at home. But again, the difference was more than small but not substantial. I would say the very low end of moderate.

I have to wonder then whether the maxx2 is really only a good upgrade for a wp7 owner unless the owner has a lot of disposable cash or listens to mostly audiophile recordings (not mainstream rock or pop). I found a significant improvement when I went from the Wilson Sophias to the Wilson WP7 but luckily do not feel the maxx2 justify double the price. In reality, I was offered a great deal on a maxx2 and use the wp7 as a down payment but felt even then that the sound improvement did not warrant the upgrade.

Instead, I chose to upgrade the emmlabs preamp/dac to the signature edition and upgrade my transport too (which was the old edition whose software was not updatable). I found the improvement with this upgrade was on par with the improvement the maxx2 would have made at a third of the cost.

Now that I have settled on keeping the speaker and upgrading the preamp/dac/transport, I am now migrating to the dart amplifier from the lamm 2.2 amplifier.

Mike