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…how do not spread Ketchup to all food you eat.

The regular readers of my site know that I very seldom pay compliment to the audio reviewers. I do it because they are mostly unspeakably Morons and their writing/thinking is mostly primitive and brainless garbage. So, considering my very low expectations I was surprised to come across to a very rational, thoughtful and reasonable audio review. British Roy Gregory published in Hi-Fi+ (#46) his article about Wilson Audio MAXX loudspeakers. The review had completely different feel, much different then the typical waste that the audio writers staff audio publications.

In fact, the Roy’s article was not a review but rather a description of his experiences. It is not exactly what I would anticipate from an industry QA but if he has chosen this style then it is what it is. The important part is that whatever he expressed had very high level accuracy and it is very commendable.

Interesting that wherever Roy described his observation he was spot on but when he brought his assessments he was less correct from my point of view. However his is perfectly in his constitutional rights in his incorrectness as his incorrectness do not sound foolish in context of that writing.

The reviewers are in a tough spot. They initially write for very dummy public who has very primitive understanding and none-noble interest in the subjects of reviews. Also, in order to make their dummy readers to comprehend what they red the reviewers obliged to use language and stylistic of adjectives that the dummy readers are accustomed. Roy Gregory in his review generally did not go for this BS and did not try to implant into the consumers brain how the Wilson MAXX sound. Those few moments where he did, he did slip and lost his high accuracy mode (the comments about bass for instance). But I feel that he did it exactly because he needed to fulfill the expectation of the industry dummy readers.

Still, the biggest problem with the review is that the review was not about the Big Wilsons (Grand Slam or Alexandria) but about the small Wilsons. The MAXX sonically is not mini version of Grand Slam but the maxi version of Wilson Watt Puppy. In the end the MAXX and Big Wilsons sound very different and delivery different results but how a reviewers writing a review about MAXX can mention it? Here is when the reviewer’s tough spot come to the game: they must to use adjectives. A reviewer uses phrase “sounds good” for instance but this “sounds good” is applicable only in the scope of the restricted horizon of the given products. The very same is with Roy’s few positive comments about the MAXX: if he was familiar with Grand Slam’s performance then the MAXX would be completely out of game. Nope, the big Wilsons have own problems as well but they demonstrate what the big Wilsons can do, and they can do very interesting things for the box loudspeakers.  The MAXX are in the different scale: they are juts a half-ass compromise with substantial amount of not interesting aspects of performance.

However, the Roy Gregory write up about the Wilsons is highly advisable. It is good for Wilsons that such an inelegant writing about their product took place: it was much different then the pathological lack of common sense that American Mike Farmer did in his doodles about MAXX. It is good that Roy Gregory had in his disposal a dealer who actually knew what he was doing no mater how difficult to get the Wilsons dealership but there ARE very many incapable dealers among the Wilsons resellers (still a day for the total setup sounds too implausible to me). In the end it was a pleasure to read the Roy’s review, agree I or not with the review conclusions. Our American writers should learn.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

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