Last night we had the honor and pleasure of hosting Peter Mc Grath at our Jenkintown location. Peter is a well known and well respected recording engineer that has been involved in the Hifi community for many years; currently Peter is the Director of Sales for Wilson Audio. The purpose of Peter’s visit was to give us a deep and detailed listen to the Wilson Alexandria X2 loud speakers. We had around twenty guests stop in to listen to Peter give detailed explanations as to what makes Wilson Audio loud speakers so amazing and to share with us his thoughts on speaker design and recording. In today’s blog I thought I would give you an overview of the three hour event and try to give you a sense of just how incredible the listening experience was!
In previous blogs I have talked about the importance of a loud speaker being able to reproduce an audio event with a sense of the vertical, horizontal and depth of space of the original audio event. In the hobby this ability is typically thought of as “imaging” or “soundstage”. Speaker manufacturers have gone to great lengths to master this and Wilson has gone further than most. Peter explained that one of the things that make Wilson loud speakers stand out versus other speaker in their price tier is the fact that the top models offer adjustable baffles. Most speakers have a fixed baffle. In other words the cabinet is one solid “box” with the speakers mounted in it. You can change the “rake” or vertical angle of the entire loud speaker but you can’t adjust the mid driver/s and tweeters separately. Many of Wilson Audio’s loudspeakers give you this capability, and when properly set up you can focus the soundstage very precisely. The analogy that Peter used was to compare a high end fixed baffle loudspeaker to an expensive camera that you can’t focus. Who would buy a camera that you can’t focus? Of course the down side to being able to adjust those baffles is that it is more expensive to build but the payoff is that you have a loud speaker that isn’t held back by the environment that it is in and that can recreate the true depth and sonic environment of a recording.
As many of you know I came to our hobby as a musician first. I was frustrated that recordings didn’t sound like what I KNEW a guitar or drum kit sounded like in “real” life. Peter shared with us that Dave Wilson started building speakers for the same reason. As a recording engineer Dave Wilson became frustrated with the fact that he would put a great deal of energy into capturing a performance only to have it sound nothing like the original performance when played back. While listening to Peter tell the story of how he and Dave Wilson meet in the 1970’s I jotted the note, “Dave Wilson is a recording engineer that builds speakers….awesome!” The story that Peter related had to do with Dave coming into a hifi store that Peter worked at and after many hours of careful listening buying an Audio Research SP1A preamp. Sometime later Dave came back to the store holding the preamp, which if you are a Hifi sales person is almost never a good sign! However Dave was smiling. You see Dave had purchased the preamp so that he could fix a problem that he saw and no one else had considered let alone addressed. Microphone preamps sounded terrible, so Dave went way out of the box and modified the preamp so that he could defeat the built in RIAA EQ and use the Audio Research Preamp as a microphone preamp. A moment of true genius! Peter went on to tell us how Dave is gifted at finding solutions for problems that no one even knew existed. This talent is the driving force behind the remarkable performance of the entire line of Wilson Audio loud speakers.
After Peter gave us some details about the new Wilson loud speaker that is coming out and shared with us some info about the new XLF loud speaker we got down to some serious listening. Peter started us out with a rare and wonderful treat; we got the pleasure of listening to some of Peter’s recordings directly from the device he recorded them on.
All told Peter played us eight or nine cuts that covered the spectrum from full blown opera to an a cappella vocal group. I thought I would share a few that I found to be particularly remarkable. First a word about the system, Peter ran his digital recorder to an Audio Research DAC8 via a coaxial cable, and his Mac Book via firewire to a Weiss INT202 which sent the digital feed via USB to the DAC8, the DAC8 is connected to an Audio Research REF5SE preamp which is running to a pair of Dan D’Agostino Momentum monoblocks. All interconnects and speaker wires are from Transparent.
A cut that I found stunning was a section of Carmen that Peter recorded at the Opera Hall in Miami Florida. Of course the music and chorus where amazing but what put my jaw on the floor was being able to see people walk around the stage and the sheer thunder of the feet stomps of the chorus. It was simply unreal, or rather so real that it took my mind a moment to accept it. The stage had width and depth that defied the space that the Alexandria’s occupy. Peter then played a flute and piano duet for us that was so intimate and so close that I was stunned. To clearly hear the difference between the sound of the flute and the breath of the flutist passing over the flute’s mouth piece was breathtaking, no pun intended! You could clearly “see” how wide the flute was and how high off the floor it was! The piano’s overtones and size were clearly defined and I would have sworn there was a piano in the room. I love the sound of a piano in person and I am nearly always disappointed when I hear one through a hifi system, but every single piano I heard last night was in the room with all the space, size and beautiful cascade of overtones that drew me to the instrument in the first place!
After a short break Peter switched to some pop/rock style recordings off of his Mac Book where once again he played some rare and spectacular pieces for us. Hearing a cut off of Keith Richard’s Main Offender it was clear that not only can the Wilson Alexandria X2s gracefully and effortlessly handle vocal and acoustic music from the classical world but that they can also rock out, or in this case reggae out. I couldn’t tear my attention from the drum kit, the snare alone was amazing, every detail, every impact was real!
Then Peter played a Kris Kristofferson cut that has never been released and was recently recorded in Kris’s home. It was just Kris and an acoustic guitar. Kris’s presence in the room singing just for us was undeniable. The detail and emotion in his voice, the reality of the acoustic guitars wood body and metal strings resonating, I keep coming back to the fact that it was real. It was so real that you could feel the emotional shift as the people in room reacted to the raw energy of Kris’s performance.
The piece I can’t get out of my head was a drum solo by Manu Katche. Once again the realness of it is beyond my ability to impart to you in words. As I have been writing this my mind keeps coming back to a phrase that Peter used last night that I think succinctly and elegantly describes the experience that I had last night, “Inherently beautiful and transparent.”
I can think of no better way to communicate the experience of hearing music on a pair of Wilson Speakers. If you love music and you have not taken the time to listen to a pair of Wilson Audio loud speakers, do yourself a favor and give a pair a serious listen. I promise you that you won’t regret it.
Many thanks to Peter for sharing such great recordings and his wonderful insights with us! I can’t wait for the next event!
And always remember; the proof is in the listening!
Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com