Daryl Wilson of Wilson Audio Loudspeakers - The StereoNET Interview
Welcome to the StereoNET Channel. Today we have a very distinguished guest, Daryl Wilson, the CEO of Wilson Audio. Firstly, welcome Daryl - It's a pleasure to have you here in Australia. You've come a long way from the U.S. Congratulations on getting to almost the 50th year of Wilson Audio. That's a milestone for an audio company and most companies in the world. Is there a buzz inside Wilson Audio at present as you near this moment and are you planning to celebrate in a special way? Thank you for having me and I and I apologize if I'm a little jet-lagged and so I'll do my best during this interview.
There is a buzz and we have several fun things in the works right now - some projects that we can't quite discuss right now but you'll be hearing about before the end of the year. A lot's changed in 50 years - you think about where Wilson Audio came from. You had a husband and a wife that made the decision; the entrepreneurial leap of faith. Let's do something that will completely scare us and potentially change the course of our lives. My mom put it well when they were talking about, well should we build these loudspeakers continue recording doing these types of things and and be our own business, be our own bosses, or should we continue to work you know pharmaceutical is is what my dad was in before, and she made the comment you know if we looked when we're 50 years old if we look back do we want to think what if, and so they made the the leap and and I'm very grateful that they did and I think there are a lot of music lovers out there that also feel the same. So Wilson Audio's first product was a turntable. You've mentioned audiophile recordings, and then you went into loudspeakers. Are
there any other audio products that Wilson Audio have been interested in? Yeah, we've done we've done several things and there have been a lot of products that we've started developing that never made it to market because they didn't reach our standard of excellence. Right now we have two way small compact shelf loudspeakers, we have a variety of floor standing full range speakers, we have powered and passive subwoofers, we have center channels, we have surround products and products that can be used for Atmos systems. I think we have a really wide variety of products. One of the things that companies do that tend to diminish the brand with time is think that they should be the solution for all applications and you start losing what your culture is at that point. So we tend to be very hyper focused on what can we do in the loudspeaker realm and do it to the level of excellence that we demand from ourselves and our customers demand from our company. Every year during our annual meeting we,
of course, we throw out all kinds of ideas - should we do this? And our dealers and distributors they're asking us for this kind of product, do we want to spend or resources our time and energy which is very limited on developing or expanding into this other area? So where we are right now is the net result of you know, almost 50 years of talking about that kind of stuff. So we're very happy with the product lineup that we have right now and like I mentioned before 50th Anniversary there's some fun stuff coming. How do you characterize the improvements of Wilson Audio products in the last almost 50 years? So if you start with the Wham and you move forward to say the Alexx or the XVX, you've got 40 plus years of drive unit and materials that have improved. How does that translate into sound quality improvements? Our North Star for how we develop is live unamplified music, so having had the privilege of listening to music in Concertgebouwl and the Musikverein local halls in in Utah abravenel Hall Severance Hall and Cleveland just hearing music in in spaces and having access to those spaces during rehearsals where we could walk around the room and listen to music because when you're in a hall no two seats sound the same and people will argue well what's better going and hearing a live you know performance or listening to my system at home and frankly I I think that it's impossible to hear in the hall during the performance what the microphone's picking up because the microphone is physically in a place that no one can physically sit and so you'll never get that sound right it's just a different type of sound but using that as a reference my father and Wilson Audio in general over the decades it's always been that is the North Star and then what technologies are available to us now to get as close to that as possible and so you look at a loudspeaker the anatomy of a loudspeaker you've got the drivers and you can refine and fine-tune those and Driver technology has gotten much better over the years the enclosures how how dead and damped can you make the enclosure sound so the only thing making noise is the drive the drive units and that's come a long way with computer programming and CNC Machining and Precision there and material research the types of materials that we use back with the original wam we used aluminum baffle we we used a variety of woods including Birch and and plywood you know in the early versions and then of course we developed x-material s material now the material and those all have very specific characteristics Sonic characteristics so you have materials with the enclosures and then you look at the anatomy of a crossover and the components in the crossovers back when my father started making loudspeakers uh on in a commercial sense we didn't have a capacitor manufacturing Department inside of the building and so now we're able to experiment wind and create capacitors in in a very unique way that is exclusive to Wilson Audio so pulling back at and looking at each of the elements of a loudspeaker you can point at the Footers the enclosure the crossover the drive units our ability to measure time alignment and the accuracy within a system cable technology all those things over the last 50 years each one of those pieces has gotten better and better and it's up to us to make sure that we're refining the system that we're finding the best Solutions or creating the best Solutions in that specific area so Wilson Audio has become an aspirational brand and even considered the Pinnacle by many users or want to be users from its Inception its early days was this by Design or has it been sort of an organic growth of that's where you've come to that point now of being not the Pinnacle for many people yeah I have never heard my dad say I'm going to create this thing because I want to be the best in the world in this in egotistical sense everything that we do as a company we focus on attaining Excellence Perfection is is truly impossible right but Excellence is within our grasp is a quote that he used to say and and I love uh Perfection is kind of the vision but our everyday actions is the path and that's that's the pursuit of excellence and excellence in all things building the best and doing the best you can and especially when you have a team of craftspeople at Wilson Audio that are competitive by nature and artists in their hearts it's amazing the kinds of things that we're able to do if I were to be able to you know put on paper hey I want this product to look this way I wanted to to fit in this these materials but we couldn't manufacture it it's at that point it's just it's a thought it's a dream right so it's a combination of the quality of of the team that matches the vision of the designer to be able to create the product that can be consistent and manufacture time and time again um and and be repeatably excellent so going back to your original question as far as you know being the best I think when you put that formula together that it the net result is something that is aspirational that like a like a sword handcrafted in Japan that takes a long time to make and is state of the art for what it is a person could argue well the material cost is this but you're not taking into account the life that that person put into honing their craft and Wilson Audio is the average tenor tenure at Wilson Audio is 12 years with 60 employees um so the the knowledge the depth of knowledge within our our Crafts People is very deep and that brings a lot of value and it and it allows us as a company to to Envision products that are just beyond what we can do now and we figure out how to do it and that that there's a lot of fun and and it's challenging but a lot of fun man I've read that Wilson Audios that speak has been chosen by famous people such as Wesley's knives Lenny Kravitz and even Steve Jobs who was a an avid audio file are there any other interesting or celebrity owners that you might want to mention uh yes there's a funny story with this Steve Jobs my dad was at his house and uh they were uh setting up and listening to the X ones and uh Steve Jobs son his snake got out of his cage and they spent a lot of time on their hands and knees looking for the snake around the house and so through the years I've always appreciated hearing that side of it that it's not always about you know designing the best loudspeaker and there's such a human side of this and I think all of us as people who love music and are audiophiles or just people that you know at the end of a stressful day want to sit down and and not worry about that stuff and just leave that right at the door as you go into your Listening Room and play your favorite music right at that point it's not about the the you know what's the capacitor made out of it's about this is my release this is this is my escapism staying connected with the the human element of what we do is very important there are other people that that people know the Lenny Kravitz uh Paul McCartney Puff Daddy has them they're the people that I found that I engage with I chose or I'm introduced to that really dive in deep they're the producers they're the people behind the scenes that have to listen and do the quality control on what the mix sounds like and it's their job and and it's what makes her break the album right doesn't sound good does it is it is it representing what the recording artist really wants the listener to hear and so those people the I have very interesting conversations with those kind of people yeah listen audio has never been afraid to innovate you've mentioned here today around a bunch of Craftsmen that exist at Wilson Audio so if we look at the first Wham and then the what product totally different loudspeakers shape size and I guess even their use but both done the audio world what drives this process of innovation and is it easier with your Craftsman within Wilson Audio I have to go back to the North Star the North Star is live on Amplified music and then thinking what do I want in my system we wouldn't be developing a center channel if we didn't want to put that Center channel in our system at home and we wouldn't develop it in the way that we wouldn't be proud of going back to the original Wham the ultimate reference tool from when my dad was a a young boy inspired by an event that fooled him to think that carolers were outside of his bedroom and it was just a cliff form that was set up down the street right so so he was fascinated with that that speaker made me think that people were there speakers can transport my mind to believing something there that's not and so he studied and learned and and you know over the next uh decade and a half he and his friends would build makeshift you know Heath kits and and loudspeakers and and whatnot and then he became a recording engineer and then needed a tool to be able to hear what he was hearing in the hall and so the original Wham you know was made and um and then he had a situation where he went to a recording session spent a lot of time and effort and and money to be able to record and brought home the master tapes played it on the whams and it didn't sound like anything like he experienced and that's because he was using the studio monitors that were provided there and he was making EQ decisions based off of what he was hearing out of those and so he realized I need to build a compact system that I can carry with me with all my gear that speaks the same language as the Wham and so he put the same time and effort into developing the watt as he did the Wham the purpose wasn't to really sell it the purpose was it to be a tool for him and my mom was like people are going to want to buy it we should show it and so he showed it and after that CES they had like five new dealers that wanted to come on board and they were you know taking orders for him and my dad was really my mom wasn't surprised because she sees the genius and she sees you know what he's capable of doing but he's just doing what he loves yeah so deciding what the next product is is what do we want in our house and for instance the Alexia Alexia V is the current model of Alexia and Alexia Series 2 there was five years five years of development you think about the xvx and you think about other products the Alex v and other things that we were developing and then you look at the Alexi Series 2 after five years and it's like look at all the things that we did at a Grassroots level that we could Implement in here and have over 30 changes and they're significant you know one percent Improvement in sound here three percent here half a percent here but you add all that together and it's a substantial you know Improvement in product and so that's the way we develop when you know when I I've got a Lexi of these in my home right and so when I think about I I want this system in my house I want to make it the best I can and so I make it for me our R D team we make it for us and our craftspeople we engage them we I every time we have uh our second version of prototype I bring down the crafts people and it's like how would you make this better what do you think about this and and we get you know great conversations um and and products evolve in a very good organic way with that process so you've mentioned there that bring in new products what does Wilson Audio face in trying to create once you've introduced a new product into the market how do you see where it's going to fit as you say you design it for yourself how does the public then foresee that that that's a need or a want there are certain questions that um I got my degree in an international business with an emphasis in business and living and working side by side with my dad and with the r d team my my entire adult life and a lot of my childhood I was I was building things side by side with my dad and just helping him out because he never just gave me money he gave me opportunity to earn money and so I'd worked for him and then I'd go buy my gummy bears and play video games buy pizzas like kids do right building and developing products it's a complicated I I don't know how to answer that because it's not the the standard business model at Wilson Audio it's not hey you know here are the here are the analytics for the market this is what the market's buying and the market's saying um that they want a small compact floor standing speaker that is uh wireless and powered and it says this you know this is the percentage of the Mark we could grab that percentage of the market that's just not how we operate it's how do we in in whatever package it is for this package right here for Alexia V that's that's sitting behind us for this package how can we get the most performance and get us as close to that live unamplified music or what's on that recording how do we get as close to that as possible that's the kind of mind frame that we're in when we develop and we set course on saying hey here's a new product or here's how we better a current product so it moves slightly technical resonance control this vital part for lat speakers and the audio system and audio chain how important is resonance control compared to other aspects in loudspeaker design and what other facets of loudspeaker design do you portray as being important yes um that's we spend a lot of time making sure our cabinets are inherently damped and we develop our products especially with the V material the V series products where we've developed a product that is incredibly dead and damped and so it creates isolation between cabinets it creates isolation and vibration sinks that is very important to us an enclosure where you start turning up the volume and of course spls go up and and the woofers especially I mean they're really moving and there's a lot of pressure there if the enclosure is is singing along with the music that's technically Distortion so anything that's not coming from the drivers is distortion so we want to minimize that however if you have in the hierarchy of what's important for us if you have an enclosure that is mostly damped it it you know it creates a little bit of noise but the timing is absolutely accurate on it so the signal that is being fed from the crossover to the mid-range and the signal that's going to the woofer woofers in this case will say Alexia V and the signal going to the Tweeter if those are perfectly aligned at the listening position there's going to be a sense of scale and depth that you can't get if it's misaligned all these things are important time alignment is is the the highest element on on our hierarchy of of importance frequency response I think we've gotten to a day and age where with computer modeling and and current technologies that any loudspeaker worth its weight and salt really can get a relatively flat frequency response and I'm sure with stereonet and as you test stuff that you're you're seeing more and more it's like okay we run the sweep and yeah it's pretty flat right yeah but does does that directly translate to engagement I think it's important you never want something where a tweeter is 10 DB you know hotter than a mid-range you're going to hear that yes so I think that almost everyone can get relatively flat and so damping of enclosures is important but if if you have a a tweeter where you're hearing the information um you know 50 microsecond 100 microseconds before the mid-range your mind translates that to synthetic that it's not real that there's a that you're sensing something's disjoint did an unnatural it still sounds like a violin still sounds like a base right but it doesn't sound like it's really there when you get the time alignment right it's incredible how the recordings just Blossom and open up and when you close your eyes you can point to the the performer's mouth you know exactly the instrument they're playing and this and the hull and and you're listening to a an acoustic performance and and it's just them and then all of a sudden it's a live performance and everyone starts clapping and and you hear it all around you that's when all the time alignment is is as precise as possible that it fools your mind to to translating what's being represent or replayed to you on that recording in a very unique and satisfying way how important is it for Wilson Audio to customize and create your own Hardware drivers or capacitors and then how does that impact your product development yeah we do wind and create in-house our capacitors our crossovers are all built in-house with point-to-point connections not using any circuit board printed circuit boards we found it on the loudspeaker side when you use a printed circuit board that it's dynamically compressing to the sound for electronics is a different thing that's before it's Amplified right after it's Amplified we found that using you know thicker gauge wire point-to-point connection is the is the most authentic way we build our own enclosures in-house right all the enclosures are machined and then hand finished hand built hand assembled hand uh gel coated hand painted hand polished so all those things are made in-house are metal we work with three machine shops locally and so we support local business and we work very closely with them one of them we've worked with for uh 25 27 years so we have very deep relationships with them they understand our quality they're able to produce the best of the best so Wilson Audio is really renowned for its modular timeline that speakers that we've spoken about so there's a lot of faith put into your selected dealers to Showcase and install these very specialized products into customers homes can you provide an insight to us about how you train the selected dealers and how they learn to optimize your speaker's performance yeah it's a part of the purchase price of every Wilson Audio product that when you buy something is as high-end as a Wilson Audio loudspeaker that the dealer delivers it make sure that everything in your house is protected as it's being installed and take the time time to install it in the in the best position in your room for you to get maximum performance out of the system some people will say well that's that's overboard you don't need to do that I can install it myself and frankly if you take two speakers and one is three feet in front of the other one can't effectively argue that that's the same as someone who comes in and who's trained at hearing a room listening to a room and setting up a system in a way that all the lines at the listening position there's value in that and so all of our dealers are trained with that to become a Wilson Audio authorized dealer you have to come to Wilson Audio and we have a training program where they go through a three-day curriculum and and training them and and the Art of setting up a system the WASP Wilson Audio setup procedure is a part of that so everyone that buys a Wilson Audio product can rest assure that the technicians the dealer that comes in and sets them up have been trained are familiar with the process and and if there are any questions we we get questions all the time hey this listening position is slightly outside of the nomograph and our Engineers will actually go in and pull up the model and based off of the information from the test results that I gave them they can say okay they put in the parameters listing distance ear height and give customized settings for that particular room so there's support from Wilson Audio with professional and well-trained dealer Network because I shoot every every person's house is slightly different so that professionalism and training is is really uh valuable for the End customer yeah and and that's an important point every room is different every listening position is different every every per there are an infinite number of possibilities there so buying a loudspeaker that can't adapt to all those unique positions there's a slight disadvantage to that now I'm not saying that you're going to get horrible sound but I think it's the difference when you have Precision found in Wilson Audio products in a standard definition TV and then you go to a 4K you're like you know I I know that there was a mountain on on that video right there but with this four I can see the trees on the top right so it if a person cares about music like that like some people can stare at a piece of art and they can weep right they're so emotionally connected to it there are some of us in the world that are connected to music like that and that matters to them yeah so Wilson Audio has obviously you know very cutting-edge design Technology's performance is at the Forefront do you think that Wilson Audio's loudspeakers have also helped or assisted the quality standards of other audio manufacturers across the industry say amplifier design is all deck products yeah I I would say absolutely there there's a symbiote uh symbiotic relationship in the industry that when an amplifier manufacturer increases the performance of their gear and we use that gear it helps us with developing and hearing deeper into the music so it allows us to make better products and then cables and CDs and it kind of goes round and round there are a lot of manufacturers in the industry that use Wilson Audio products as their test gear just like with Wilson Audio we use a variety of of amplification and CD players and turntables and cables to evaluate and to make our decisions so I would say yes on that good so there's a Wilson Audio certified authentic program can you tell us a little bit more how that came about and how it received by upcoming and existing customers yes yeah I I love certified authentic I've I've bought a few things in my life I think all of us have bought a car or you know something like that how would we feel if we bought that car and then two years later we thought hey there's this new model out and this is something I really enjoy I want to spend my money on this thing and uh we bring our car back to the dealer and they say I has no value to me immediately it's like I wasted my money right I'll enjoy this thing but man it's almost like a punch to the gut we believe every Wilson Audio product has value and it continues to have value and I would even take products that are 10 15 years olds that are Legacy products of Wilson Audio and put them up against equivalently priced products of current models current day models so yes they absolutely have value and our dealers know that and people that want to want to experience Wilson Audio products in their home they are looking for Value a certified authentic Wilson Audio product is the best way to experience Wilson Audio and to get in at um at the best price and so we created a program where if you have a Wilson Audio product we have values for all of our products and so a dealer can quickly call us up if they have any questions we as Wilson Audio if a dealer doesn't feel like they can resell that we will buy it back because we know with our dealer Network that there is someone out there that would love to own a Sophia Series 2 or a what puppy 7 or you know a duet series one these are still amazing great products and we service all of our products that we've ever made it only makes sense we create a program to where a customer can say I want to upgrade and I have a Wilson Audio product let's make that easy for you and and we want to acknowledge that you still have value in in your product Wilson Audio products hold their value longer and stronger than just about any other loudspeaker products out there and I think that in large part it is because of the certified authentic program yeah you've mentioned earlier in the interview around the old father David who created the company passing in 2018 must have been challenging for yourself and for Wilson Audio so can you tell us a little bit more about that the more you personally rested the take on the task of leading Wilson Audio and how much help and support did you get I received an incredible amount of support when uh when my father passed the outpouring of concern and of love and people people stepping up that know me that know the team at Wilson Audio that have seen how we work together and they saw the mentor apprenticeship that my father and I had there's a lot of trust there and so I I feel incredibly blessed and during the most impossible time of my life I felt like there was an outpouring of love Yeah it it's still a challenging topic for me to talk about and I never want it to be easy I I love my dad deeply I miss him dearly and um I know he'd be proud of what we're doing I know that he'd be proud of the team that we have now because everyone's going through struggles everyone's going through the you know the day-to-day life and day in and day out this team comes together and we problem solve together we create Excellence together and we bring the best to the table and that's hard to find it really is hard to find I I love hearing people's stories of I first met your dad when and then they fill in the blank I love hearing those stories still and there are a lot of people that come up and say I wish I knew your father that says a lot about his integrity and the way he lived his life I hope that I'll be remembered like him so um on a personal level what's your earliest memory of Hi-Fi sound and is there a particular moment or turning point where you came to appreciate what your dad had originated and built with Wilson Audio and then perhaps realizing that significance yeah yeah um um two things come to mind the first is um there's a picture of of me in my diaper sitting in a listening chair with some prototype whams right and then there's another picture of me upside down in the chair being a kid right my mom snapped the pitcher and and she always says well this is Daryl's creative way of reversing the polarity right so sitting next to my dad not knowing exactly what he's doing I've been surrounded by music and you know hot Crow amplifiers and and and strange turntables and you know that kind of stuff and growing up I always knew that's Dad's system he taught me to be very careful around things but music was always a part of my life and uh and so I I loved sitting down next to him and he'd have his eyes closed and so I'd look you know I closed my eyes because he was closing his eyes and I didn't know he was really listening deeply I just you know maybe he's feeling the music but it was just me and my dad spending time together that was uh that that's my first you know impression of of music was just you know spending time with my dad I think my kids will share the same story when uh my wife will call me on my phone if she's in the bedroom and it's two in the morning Daryl can you turn it down the girls are trying to sleep as a kid I experienced this I would be up in my room I'd hear my dad playing you know something downstairs and being very generous with the game um yeah another memory of when I was a kid my dad like I mentioned my dad taught me you know be careful with the system and and and we'd have people coming in and out of the house dealers reviewers I didn't know who they were at the time it was just you know respect that time go out and play kind of thing and so I knew how delicate the system was and you know don't touch the turntable and the cats got to sit on the amplifiers to warm up but my dad they loved it warm uh and my dad would have to always you know spray out and you know get the cat hair out of the curls but there there was one time they went out of town and we had a babysitter over and um and she was vacuuming by the Wham and the vacuum hit the corner of the Wham and it chipped off a piece of the Lamb and as a kid you know you don't know any better right and I'm thinking my dad's gonna kill her you know as a kid would think right and he was a perfect gentleman about it and and not a big deal they had it fixed and whatnot but um yeah the the way that I experienced a sound system uh living in the Wilson home um is I recognize absolutely unique met a lot of a lot of people coming in and out of the house uh got to hear a lot of great music I got to see my dad engage with his passion and his hobby on a daily basis and get really excited about things and there are other days there's a lot of table talk a lot of talk around you know the the dinner table of things they were concerned with that I was privy to because we were all eating dinner yeah I I was just the life that I grew up in and I'm very grateful for it there's a period it's in time where Wilson Audio was known for spending whatever it takes to make the best product um do you still take that approach now to new designs and are you able to look at either more structured or calculated approach to introduce something into a product or product into the market today oh yeah there you look at any of our designs and you can say well does it really need this does it need that and and you know you can go back and forth and and um a person could nitpick a system and yeah I guess we could have a less expensive you know finish some people would care about that some people wouldn't you you could do other various things but it I don't like the idea of cheapening the product I personally think that their works of Sonic art and Industrial art and being an artist myself I like to create things that are beautiful I like it when the lines on the enclosures organically blend together and meet together we could do things less expensive and not have that but to me that's a part of the art that's a that's part of the beauty of it and and in fact these speakers do have to be in a person's room and people do have to see them When the Music's not playing you know as audio files we close our eyes we listen to music but you do have to see them and for us who are married you know we have to have something that our wives will like and so having a variety of colors and and Grill options and Hardware colors that that you can choose from I think really help with that yes we could make decisions to make it less expensive I won't make decisions that will cheapen the product based off of someone else not thinking it's beautiful if I think it's beautiful then I want to create the art that I want to create and then Sonic performance I I won't compromise on Sonic performance if a like with the V material if the material sounds better here the material goes there V material is uh 25 times more expensive than the standard material used in loudspeakers in in our markets it's more expensive yet it sounds better it performs better we will use it so our our Paradigm for making decisions is really based on Sonic art and Industrial art how do you make it sound the absolute best meaning most faithful and the truest Fidelity to the recording and then do I want to see that in my room and so you know the looks are inspired by that do you think that the voicing of the Daryl Wilson era Wilson or Airline speakers has changed in any way relative to what your father's products were and if so how did that come about once again are our North Star is live but unamplified music my father really focused on um dynamic contrast and harmonic expression as as two elements that he really needed and wanted the system to recreate to get as close to that live on Amplified music I think through the decades that as we were pursuing that that we got to a point to where there was so much refinement that we were able to what I perfectionally added on to that list is the number three thing is the micro detail so Dynamic contrast harmonic expression and now designs with materials with the Technologies we're using we're able to really listen so deep in the music that the micro Details Matter so I'd say that as far as if there is a difference that it's it's the way that I listen to music and I was trained by my dad and we listened to countless hours of of music and live performances together so I know how he listens to things and for me it's it's listening in uh deeper Beyond just the dynamic contrasting and harmonic expression those those micro details the subtleties of of how the the hall sounds um you know the the nuances around the instrument the the ictal sounds of the voice of the breath and how the breath comes out of the artist those little details we wouldn't be able to to hear that and refine the system to reproduce that if we didn't have the first two in Spades and so that I'd say that the best way of answering that is that we refine the system so much using those two parameters to get to our North Star that we did get to a point where it's like okay we there there's more we can do now yeah and that leads to an interesting next question around what's the biggest change Revolution you've seen in loudspeakers for the last decade and what do you projecting that may be changes coming up in the next 10 years the crystal ball question yeah right um man if I had a really well honed crystal ball uh I'd be making a lot of money I would have bet on bitcoin a long time ago loudspeakers so generally speaking in the market what are loudspeakers doing now I think that the industry in general and as a whole is better off that loudspeaker manufacturers are spending more time and resources making better cabinets better material research I think is benefiting the the entire industry all loudspeaker manufacturers that participate in that and actively engage that are are doing exceptionally well now they may be asking different questions than we ask and maybe have different answers than what we have I still respect it what rockport's doing is uh incredibly fascinating and I respect a lot their process and what they do to create their enclosures they're asking slightly different questions and they're and and they go down a different roads than what we do and prioritize things a little different than we do and that's okay right that's that's their art our art is focused on different things and I think that we can have and we should have respect for you know for different um designers and artists that that bring their best to the table and they're willing to dedicate their time and energy and their lives to answering the questions they feel are most important to them what I don't have a lot of respect for is uh companies that come into our industry that say hey these these other companies are selling X Y and Z for these amounts we can create a product as cheap as possible and put it into the same category because hey the the consumer won't know the difference and that creates confusion and then you have bad experiences with those type of of systems and then all of a sudden a broad you know stroke is cast across the whole industry as in well all companies are doing this and not all companies are doing this you know walking through Wilson Audio and seeing how things are are handcrafted and the attention to detail that goes into all this stuff versus someone that just all offshore or something gets an enclosure stuffs a couple things in it and slaps a label on it saying that it's made in the country that it was assembled and not really made in that's I I think a little dishonest that's not Wilson Audio we will always do uh things the way we do to once again the level of authenticity and striving for excellence and the people that know us they know that's the way that we operate and the people that don't know us I hope that they find us on on our website on Facebook on all the social medias I hope they do the research I hope they watch our YouTube channel and and really get to know us we've got a great Wilson Way book it's the the first 50 years or well it is it was right after my dad passed it's the first uh you know 47 years of Wilson Audio there's great history in there and and if people want to understand and know Wilson Audio there we've provided lots of resources moving forward the next decade what the crystal ball yeah where's the crystal ball what's it showing yeah so so to take that thought and and say what I'm seeing in the industry and areas that I really respect in areas that I think may be harming the industry I think in the future there's going to be more companies that see this industry as um as a potential place to make money and take advantage of people I hope that there's less of that I think that we're surrounded by people that care enough about this industry and and authenticity that there are enough brands that are have really brought exceptional products to the market where it will it'll push out these other you know companies that are I guess pretending so to speak but trying to trying to profit off of it I think that there's going to be more advancements in material research and application specific application of those materials I think that driver technology is going to continue to be explored to some of them will be fruitful I think some won't be fruitful but that's the nature of it and I think that's the way it's been for you know as long as the industry's been around I think the biggest area is going to be materials okay and that's a final question is mention that Wilson Audio is about the celebrator's 50th Anniversary what do you think high-end audio will look like in another 50 years and what role do you hope that Wilson Audio plays in that uh Does Elon Musk get his way that's the part of the question that's important right because if that's a part of the question then we all have neural Links at that point we're all streaming music directly to our brain and we're experiencing this augmented reality and and who knows it might be Apocalyptica 50 years from now um uh we'll be listening to Great systems on Mars how about that I yeah I I hope that I hope that that companies that have a group of people that love what they do continue to refine their craft and continue to make great products no matter if it's Electronics or loudspeakers or cables or whatever that companies continue to do that and we as people who are passionate about experiencing music at the highest level continue to be rewarded by seeing advancements in all areas yeah so on behalf of StereoNET thank you very much Daryl for your time today and sharing wonderful insights into Wilson Audio uh and with everyone it's really been my pleasure thank you for having me thank you
2023-07-10 05:49
