The Shape of the Watt / Puppy and Others

I have heard the Sophia 2 but I still preferred the Watt/Puppy 8.

Me, too...and me, too.

Please post your impressions of anything you get to hear.

I have heard the WP8, WP7 and WP6. The WP 8 are clearly better than the WP7 and WP6. More coherent, organic sound, and better, more refined highs with less bite. It's a slippery slope to make a WP7 buying decision based on hearing WP8, IMO.

My gut tells me anyone considering any iteration of Watt/Puppy loudspeakers will not be satisfied buying Von Schweikert loudspeakers; not because Von Schweikert wouldn't be satisfactory in every regard, but because the buyer will always be aware of the nagging "what if".

Are you going to be able to compare WP7 with VR4 SR loudspeakers? Unlikely.

So, what to do?

Pick one, and buy used. I'd suggest starting with WP7. If you have any objection to their sound, then sell them and buy used VR4 Sr.

What Tvad said...ditto in my book.

Ozzy, exactly how much are you willing to spend?

Getting back to the configuration used in the Watt/Puppy and others, it's a very intelligent way to meet several design goals.

One thing designers often try to do is minimze the baffle width. Midranges are narrower than woofers, and tweeters narrower than midranges, so this configuration is an elegant way of keeping baffle width to a reasonable minimum for the various drivers.

Another consideration is ease of construction - it's hard to build a cabinet that's straight-sided for the lower half and then has a kink and tapers for the upper half. Two separate enclosures, with differently-angled sides, are much easier to build.

Building two separate enclosures allows optimizing each cabinet's construction for its frequency range.

And finally, two admittedly fairly heavy enclosures are easier to ship and move around than one bigger and even heavier enclosure.

It's not surprising that several manufacturers converged towards very similar configurations. I don't think it means that anyone is copying anyone else. My own limited experience leads me to believe that speaker designers do not aspire to copy - they aspire to be original, and will do something that resembles a competitor's product only if they have very good reason to believe that that's the best approach.

Duke

Don't forget about the Genesis V and 501's (currently GAT 502's) which are nearly identical in appearance to the WP's. These have their own bass amps which means that amp selection is easier. They can be dialed in for similar upper bass emphasis as the Wilsons.