[dB Cooper]

Operator error

[Wind Chaser]

All he said was he didn't like the product(s) very much. He didn't piss on the guy's grave, or 'trash' him IMO. Some perspective please.

+1

[S Clark]

It's really simple.  This is a RIP thread.  Show some restraint and respect. 

[ctsooner]

All he said was he didn't like the product(s) very much. He didn't piss on the guy's grave, or 'trash' him IMO. Some perspective please.

db, it's a RIP thread about a good man.  It's not about liking, not liking or disliking marketing etc... Start a thread if you want about whatever, but this thread has jumped the shark because someone wanted to trash a company.  David was a great guy and a great marketer.  He built a great company.  He built a strong business.  Can't fault a man for wanting to do something he believed in.  Many of us don't own or would never own his speakers, but this wasn't the thread for that.  It's pretty simple and was classless to make a post like he did.  He may even be a good guy, just made a bad post.  Simple as that.

[Wind Chaser]

...this thread has jumped the shark because someone wanted to trash a company.

No, this thread "jumped the shark" as you put it because you and a few other people couldn't ignore that *one* comment. That *one* comment was retracted two weeks ago and yet here you are still carrying on about it. 

 

[macrojack]

I never met Dave Wilson. Never tried. His products did not interest me. Never have. The entire Wilson mythos, to me, was a marketing accomplishment. For reasons we may never know, Harry Pearson chose Wilson (and a few dozen other vendors) to be lionized on a monthly basis while ignoring, or occasionally denigrating most others. It looked like collusion to me. Just a typical insider cabal.

There have been many threads, here and elsewhere, which have debated the merits vs. pricing of Wilson speakers. Usually they broke down along elitist lines. Wilson was defended for its pricing by commenters citing the R&D and material costs involved in bringing such elite product to the market place. Someone pointed out that a brand new, fully loaded Toyota Camry cost about the same as a stock pair of WATT speakers. Try to imagine which of those two options sported more R&D and material cost. Then consider the advertising, labor, and transportation costs and the facilities needed for each enterprise. How can you conclude from that comparison that the WATT was realistically priced?

Maybe Dave Wilson was a saint. The evidence supporting that allegation continues to elude me but I am steadfastly confident that his products were a very poor value when sonic performance/dollar required is the applied metric. So, while I will never miss him, I'm sure that many do.

In my opinion all of this hand-wringing over JLM's comment is preposterous. Like me, he did not find the Wilson products interesting. So what? This isn't the first or most glaring example of manufactured sanctity. It reflects the activities of the "star making machinery" that Joni mentioned in her lyrics. To the hysterically practical audiophile like me and JLM, there is no allure emanating from the Wilson oeuvre. I sold the products for a time as a Listen Up employee. We also had Vandersteen, Magnaplanar, Apogee, B&W, Klipsch and others that eclipsed Wilson on my value scale. So I don't see the big loss to our industry at all. Of course, that consideration must be ignored in the face of what he meant to his family --- and I guess that is the gist of why JLM is catching flak. He did not couch his observations in such a way as to avoid any possibility of conflation between Dave as a person and his rightful place in audio history.

Like all of us, he will be forgotten soon enough. Ashes to ashes  ........... and all that. The industry in which he lived is dying too. Turn, turn, turn. Wilson speakers worked. Signal in - sound out. Aside from taste in sonic results, that's all that any brand offers. Pricing is a much more tangible value system than acoustics --- or so I have heard.

[Tyson]

Agree, Tyson. His tone, content and grammar all point toward a learning disability. I didn't quite get his point. Is he actually promoting Trump? Why is he shaking his damn head? Are you one of the two-faced ones? Am I?

I have no idea.   But, back on topic - I do think that RIP threads are a good place to discuss someone's impact on the industry.  And that it can be done in a respectful manner.  For Wilson, I agree with you, his products were not my cuppa.  But I respect what he was trying to do from an engineering standpoint (go to extreme lengths to deal with cabinet resonances and develop perfectly aligned leading edge time arrival).

The other place his company had a large impact (along with companies like Krell, Levinson, a few others) is that they really ran with the idea of audio as a luxury product, and all that entailed.  Which touches on the things brought up in your post.  Which mostly comes down to the idea of "I want (and I am) the best and I'm willing to pay for it".  And in fact, the absurd prices were partly implemented as a mechanism to drive elitism.  "Buy Wilson, it's the very, very, very best, which only a very few people can afford."  For certain types of people, that's catnip. 

In the end, I see them more like BMW - high performance, high price, creates a niche within the upper middle (and lower upper) class clientele, all who wanted something that would look beautiful or was visually stunning to go along with the raw performance.  Very low value, I agree.  But I don't think Wilson was ever actually interested in the "high value" market. 

[Wind Chaser]

The other place his company had a large impact (along with companies like Krell, Levinson, a few others) is that they really ran with the idea of audio as a luxury product, and all that entailed.

In the end, I see them more like BMW - high performance, high price, creates a niche within the upper middle (and lower upper) class clientele, all who wanted something that would look beautiful or was visually stunning to go along with the raw performance.  Very low value, I agree.  But I don't think Wilson was ever actually interested in the "high value" market.

Bang on. I had a friend - he died about 20 years ago - who bought the Levinson 33 reference amps back in the day. He knew there were better sounding amps for less money, but that did not matter to him.

When Wilson went after the uber expensive market there were few players, so he was one of the first in the industry to capitalize on the vanity of the wealthy, which turned out to be very lucrative. Now there are many players all seeking a slice of that pie, which as you indicated is, very low value, very expensive and visually compelling. IMO, they add nothing to the market or even the industry for that matter.

Harry Pierson wasn’t doing anyone a favour (but those particular manufacturers) much less the industry by his promotion of this over priced nonsense.

[RDavidson]

It's really simple.  This is a RIP thread.  Show some restraint and respect.

+1 We're talking about a human being with a family. It shouldn't be so hard to show some decency if not restraint. Regardless of how you feel about him or his products, anything negative or critical really should be talked about in other threads where there's plenty of open space.

[geowak]

I don’t think some people can understand RIP or respecting a human beings life, his family. Maybe they don’t want to do so. My understanding is that some people just like to make noise so that others will notice them. Some people want others to see how brilliant they are, in pointing out some marketing thing, something technical that makes a product inferior. Something they teach all of us dummies. Are we supposed to believe that some of these peolple are smarter that Mr Wilson himself? That they are more successsful in much better or significant ways? Should anybody need to point out that one can put those conceited types of self boasting ideas aside for a moment and just “see” something positive another person has done in their life? I feel this type of sharing is just a waste of time spent on people who don’t deserve the effort...

[RDavidson]

I'm not for censorship.
I'm simply for at least acting like decent human beings online or not. I think most people here are intelligent and at least comprehend the idea of respect. This isn't a funeral, but I think the general concept is that we conduct ourselves accordingly. There is plenty of space elsewhere, including on AC, for critical and/or negative discussion. That's cool. Differing points of view are important, but there's always a time and place. If it's really that important to you, start a thread here on AC on the topic of how terrible Wilson speakers are. It's easy and I'm sure others will participate openly.