Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

Why not? Wilson for many years each 2-3 years updates own flagman. They had Grand Slamm’s number of revisions where they constantly change tweeters, other driver and resistors in crossovers, introducing new rounds of opportunities for the customers… and dealers. Ten they renamed Grand Slamm into Alexandria and it had own I believe 4 or 5 revisions. The new Alexandria XLF is a normal transaction for Wilson. I think in 2013-14 then will introduce Wilson Cleopatra and then will be Cleopatra MK2, MK2.1A and then Cleopatra Supreme. I do not see anything wrong with it; this is how they pay their mortgages and how they feed the consumption beast. 

So, Alexandria XLF has in some way larger box, a new tweeter (that is Wilson signature update) and reconfigurable port. The larger box is fine; the new tweeter is also great. The reconfigurable port is laughable for an acoustic system that pretends to be good. The Wilson’s signature 4th Order bandpass design is of cause the biggest liability of the speaker, not to mention that any civilized acoustic system that pretend to be ultimate must have a separate LF section and separate ULF section. It is not surprise that the owners of large Wilson frequently use their Wilsons with subwoofers.

Still, I understand that Wilson most likely will not go for separate dedicated LF section, in the way how he did 20 year ago in WAMM as to get “pushy” sound from Alexandria is not the Wilson’s objective. They keep the Alexandria line in order to let the idiots to sell for them smaller Wilsons. All those Framers and Mikelsons keep promoting the MAXX and other crappie smaller models that are being sold from under the protection of the Alexandria performance. The larger Wilsons always did fine and that fineness is presume to the small Wilsons (including MAXX) that always were garbage. I can absolutely assure you that in year or two you will see the new Alexandria XLF fabric tweeter be employed in MAXX and Watt Poppy, Sasha, Dasha … or whatever names they will come up with.

One more moment. The price of the Alexandria XLF looks a bit conspicuous. They want $200K, and it is very insignificant jump from $178K they wanted from Alexandria-regulara.  In audio industry nowadays two way MDF-made monitors cost $100K. Typically Wilson set the aggressive [price for the new flagman and then raise priced for the whole line as the winning technologies of the flagman get filtered down to the subsequence models. In this case Wilson decided virtually to hold the price. Does it mean that the Wilson feels that $200K is some kind of price of market saturation? If so then it would be an interesting message.  The Street price for the new Alexandria XLF will be let say $160K, it still give a good room for MAXX to hang around $70K-$80K….

Anyhow, will we see the 4 section Wilsons loudspeakers from $250K-$300K with near 100dB sensitivity? That would make even person like myself willing to hear it. David, how about Wilson Prostokvasha model with sealed boxes and 2 separate LF modules? For sure your can put in there new tweeters….

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site