The reason I am posting this is because I think it is funny how people, like the previous poster, rely on marketing, packaging and fancy presentations insted of his ears. I have heard these speakers with a Krell FPB-600 amp, KRC-3 preamp, Krell KPS-30 cd player as transport, and a Krell 64 DAC. The sound shredded my ears to ribbons!!! Much preferred the musicality and naturalness of the B&W Signature 30 in the same system and room at only 15% of the price of the slamms!! I don't care how well they are made, and of what exotic materials!! Its how they sound that counts, and at $78K (at any price actually) they don't sound too good!!

I'va also heard these with Krell gear and hated the sound and since these speakers give you what's on the recording and in your front end and amplifier, I concluded that a Krell front end (especially) is a bad match. Conrad Johnson would surely give a more enjoyable experience. I've always found Krell digital and preamps to be distictly electronic sounding.

Met Dave Wilson personally as these were demo'd. They are simply the best of the best, period. They are not designed for bargain hunters.LOL What? Buy the radio shack models instead..LMAO People don't understand the quality and construction that goes into something like the Slamm's. They are meant to be a reference by which other products are judge, and we should all be grateful we have manufactures like Dave that will build something this extra ordinary. Never heard the Wamm's but I can picture the watt-puppy magnified by twenty. LOL Some idiots shouldn't be allowed to review products like these. I gotta go buy a lottery ticket now.

Dave Wilson seems to be on some type of crusade to convince people that his loudspeakers are not overpriced. He's even gone so far as to claim that his are marked up far, far less than what is standard, and that the companies profit margin is less than 2%. OK, dave. The truth is that the "custom" drivers in the SLAMM are based on standard drivers that would cost anyone who wanted them less than $2,500 for a pair. That means that Wilson pays around 1/2 to 2/3 that. Do they pay several times that for their custom features? Nope. As for the materials, methacrylate, phenolics, etc. Methacrylate is occasionally used for architectural work, things like electrical insulators, etc. Is it a good baffle material? Absolutely. Is it expensive? It costs the shop next to mine around 50 cents per pound, including mold costs, tooling, etc., to produce designs of industrial and artistic quality. That is not a joke.
Are the SLAMMS good speakers? They've got some attributes. I like Wilsons designs as a whole. A little thick in the upper bass (a Wilson trademark), a little colored in the upper mid (the plain-jane poly cone is probably to blame here), and a bit forward. They, of course, have virtues. But are they better than, say, the Golmund Epilogue or Avalons Sentinel, not to mention some of the unfathomably good designs being produced by custom shops like Velvet, etc. God no!
Rating, 4 stars cost no object, 2 stars price/performance, 0.5 stars for all the "they are acutally a bargain" crapola, add them up, divide by three, and you get
2 stars, sorry boys.
Dave wilson had a good racket until he started blabbing bargain talk. Who could possibly take that seriously. The Dynaudio Esotar tweeters used in the $3,000/pair Egglestons cost more, retail, than all the drivers in a pair of WITTS combined.

Construction; dynamics; bass

Coherence; hifiish tonal balance

Way overpriced but great looking cabinet. After listening to them on and off at a friend's house I can't see how they can charge $60K for sound that is worth only $6000. Sure the image is big but it is also diffuse and incoherent. Also disappointing is the sizzle and boom tonal balance that doesn't resemble live music in the least bit. I've heard $2000 speakers that sound more natural overall. Two thumbs down!

Similar Products Used:

B&W, Dunlevy, Aerial, Thiel

Not enough space in this box

You actually have to be a relatively smart person to dial them in.

First lets get a couple of things straight. Imaging, transparency, and staging have nothing to do with the speaker as it stands alone by itself. Imaging, transparency, and staging have a little to do with the equipment driving the speakers. Now when you get TWO speakers in a room, preferably a left and a right, the argument for a speakers ability to present a defined image, to be perfectly transparent, and to present a stage more than 20 feet deep, has almost EVERYTHING to do with placement of the speakers and the proper time alignment of the speakers relative to the listening position. Furthermore, tonal balance can be affected by the geometry of the crossover, driver complement, cabinet construction, and overall driver complement time coherency.

I know Dave Wilson. As a hobbyist speaker builder(30+ pairs a year)I have more respect for his design approach than anyone on earth. I have been to the factory on several occasions. When anyone sees exactly how these guys build these speakers, they always come away convinced of their superb value.

A pair of X-1 Grand Slamm takes 8 WEEKS TO BUILD!

Each driver is modified at the factory. All drivers are brought to within one percent of the original design. All drivers and components are catalogued by the serial number of each speaker. So if you blow a driver or break an electrical part, you call them up with your serial number and they rebuild the part to exacting specifications.
All crossovers are housed in cases built for them by Zero-Haliburton and filled with an epoxy like substance for no movement. All wiring is Transparent Reference.

Wilson spent over a million dollars to find a DRILL BIT that would drill through the X-1 material. It is an insulator, so when you drill through it, the heat would be focused back at the bit, there by freezing the bit in the hole.

They replicated the Mercedes Benz paint factory to paint their speakers.

I could go on for ever, but the point is that when you take in to account the flexibility of the design, the excellence of construction, and the thorough nature about which Dave Wilson thinks and executes every aspect of speaker design,
THESE THINGS ARE THE BEST VALUE ON THE PLANET!

Similar Products Used:

Avalon, Revel, Martin Logan, Thiel, ah hell I've heard 'em all.

Some people are not idiots but know when a product is $75,000 (yes, 75,000) overpriced. So will the next buyer please send me a check for $78,000 and I'll send him/her a pair of better sounding B&W's. I'll use the $70,000 leftover for something useful like college.

Great Sound, very neutral

The Look and you need a BIG room

I don't normally do this but I had to after reading the vast amount of trash that has been written to date about these fine quality speakers.

First off these speakers are without a doubt 1 of the best sounding speakers available period!!.

They have great sound all around. Great highs, good definition and transparency in the mids and solid tight bass.

They most definately are not a bargain hunters dream. They cost some real money and they also deliver some real sound.

Now here is the line for all the negative people. Notice how almost all of them focus on the price at some point in there critique?? Simple fact is that if you can't afford to buy them then your opinion is worth about as much. That statement is not meant as an insult to those that can't afford them, I know i've bin there as well.

Yes I can afford them now would I buy them?

Nope I wouldn't. Why you ask? Quite simply I feel that the Jm labs Utopia and Grand Utopia have a very similiar sound and are a better value.

Having said that those that have bought them have made an excellent purchase and will enjoy great sound for a long long time.

Similar Products Used:

JM Labs Grand Utopia

I went and auditioned the X-1's while visiting family who happened to be in the same town as a dealer. They were setup in thier own room with an Audio Research amplifier, MIT cables, and a Theta front end. I wasn't impressed with the sound. I listened for an hour or so playing discs that I knew well. I know these things have received many good reviews, but I just found myself saying "that's it." They didn't sound bad, but I found nothing engaging or musical about them. On my Roger Waters "Amused to Death" album the dog at the beginning was coming from the right speaker, not to the right of my head where it should be, where the Avalon Radian's put it, as did my Theil's. I played that intro cut a half dozen time and every time the dog was coming from the speaker. And nothing else struck me as profound, imaging, transparency,... dynamics were ok. For $70,000 some odd thousand dollars, there is no excuse for that kind of performance.

I think the people here who believe the Wilsons got bad reviews simply because they anger people who can't afford them are missing the point.

I think what people are saying is that, for $75,000, you'd damn well better have something very tangible to show for it. It isn't a matter of how much money you have. Its a matter that no one, no matter how wealthy, wants to be seen as making a foolish investment. This isn't the 1980s, and conspicuous consumption isn't what it used to be (although it may well be coming back, unfortunately).

Saying that people aren't sophisticated enough to "appreciate" the fine features or construction of the X-1s strikes me as amusing. For $75,000, the features better be so obvious that they come out and bite you on the ass -- hard. It had better NOT be a matter of subtlety.

Wilson's profit margin on these things isn't relevant -- at this extreme on the supply/demand curve, they probably don't sell nearly enough X-1s to make them a profit center for the company. And it is easy to believe that with the low production runs, the R&D has to be amortized over a rather small number of units -- resulting in a high allocated cost per unit. People screaming about a "rip off" should just stop being silly.

Does $75,000 seem like much when you compare it to the membership fees for a decent golf or country club? Certainly not. I think its much easier to understand the X-1s on that level. Buying them buys you membership to a very exclusive club with other like-minded people, and it probably buys you a very cozy relationship with Wilson himself (one would hope). Both of these things may be extremely valuable to an audiophile.

I've heard the X-1s and would agree that, on pure sonics, it is fruitless to try to justify the $65,000 price difference between the X-1s and a pair of Nautilus 801s. Yes, they are awesomely dynamic. Do they do better in terms of imaging or soundstage? No -- 99% of the soundstage depends on what's driving them! Its not sonic differences but the overall ownership experience of the X-1s that one has to try to understand. I see them as comparable to owning a Rolls Royce. Some people would be comfortable driving around a fine, hand-crafted, extremely low production vehicle, even though it really doesn't do anything better than a Mercedes S-Class. And some people would feel like everyone was laughing at them and opt for the lower-profile, somewhat less exclusive car. Its simply a matter of which group you belong to. I think anyone reading these thoughts can figure out which group I'm in.

peace,

Fallon