Wilson Alexandria XLF—Further Thoughts

I agree. You'd think they'd work on the production techniques / process, and lower the price over time, while improving the quality. However, there is only a certain number of people who are happy to purchase a speaker as large and imposing as an Alexandria, even if it were $8,000 a pair today, new.

I'd be one jumping on the bandwagon, provided there weren't much better options (perhaps there are...), but $2000-$2800 used is sort of where I'd value a pair like this, being in my my great party speakers, and a conversation hub.

When I see a great speaker (visually), or in terms of construction quality / parts, I can put the value much, much higher.

Certainly, you'd think a Chinese manufacturer could put out a speaker like this easily for $27,000 a pair, given reverse-engineering and no real development costs, and make a great profiit, if people would buy in volume, which I doubt they will. (Size... etc.) I'm a bit suprised that they don't but I'm sure they know the market will bear.

If  a company in India (Tata) can produce a Nano car for $2500 USD, we can imagine lower hi-fi prices for less costly to develop and manufacture products like amplifiers and speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxWq9bKRmc0

At least we can expect more exotic (or simply costly) materials to be used on hi-fi / hi-end equipment to accord with the price, but this will natually lower profits.

Go into a traditional store like Cartier and Tiffany, and you will see quite a bit of "jewelry" and  fashion accessories in non-precious metals, and yet priced at the same or higher than handcrafted items in precious metals, make in the second or third world. There's the profit margin, and the cost of the real estate and advertising to show in boutique and attract paying clientelle.

I got a Salvatore Feragamo money clip for Christmas for myself, which was around $200 after tax in a nice place here, and do you think I could find a Sterling Silver marking? :) Ha. Just made in Italty, and nickel / aluminum, and maybe a $2-$5 value, or $20 if it was to be a good profit made ($15 for the store).

I imagine the same logic is at work at a higher level in the hi-fi world. People want something neat and exclusive - something to "have". :)

Maybe that next model $500,000 Wilson will include $100,000 of internal hookup wire, and $400,000 of amplifcation, and include the cabinet and drivers for free? :)

I'm more excited to see active speakers come for the likes of Wilson & B&W than from other players, but it seems that the economy of the hi-fi world relies of constant upgrade necessity.

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The cost to make the best floorstanding  home speakers does never need to be over us$ 10k a pair. Adding distribution and retail margin 400 %, that means whatever speaker retails for more than us$ 50k, is overpriced. 

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Wilson Audio and "engineering". Hand in hand they do not go.
If you need a tweeter to go down to 1kHz you have a midrange driver that is breaking up significantly, just above 1kHz. This means that the cone of the mid driver is spectacularely poorly designed or is designed to satisfiy some other objective, such as super low cost.
To build a tweeter that goes down to 1 kHz you need a large suspension (roll) to cope with the larger excursions which adds mass. You need a lot of power handling capacity because lower frequencies draw a lot more current. Power handling doesn't come for free, you need to use larger gauge wire for the voicecoil, which adds mass. The gap has to be longer, to cope with the longer excursion, which means you will need a longer coil as well, which adds mass.
Mass is the enemy because it adds inertia - the resistance to a change of direction. The heavier a speaker diaphragm is, the less easily and accurately it will follow the input signal.
You can be sure that a little more genuine engineering and a little less "marketneering" would really improve what ammounts to a very, very average sounding speaker, with a very big price tag.
A J Conti is right, it's much easier to design a tweeter that breaks up really early but is so well damped that you can't hear it, but that's hardly high fidelity is it? What do you lose along with all that damped distortion?
A far more noble approach is to make a tweeter out of a super stiff and lightweight metal that sure, resonates in a big way, but at 40kHz where it is way, way, way out of band. That way you lose nothing in the 3-18kHz band that we all can actually hear.
Perfect Pistons for everything, difficult to achieve but the result is TRUE.
Actually, there's so much sloppy "engineering" in all of Wilson's product lineup, thank goodness they have a stellar marketing department and there's loads of gullibleAmerican or nothing customers out there to suck up all the techno-drivel.
 
 

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