Jason Victor Serinus wrote about the Alexia 2 in August 2018 (Vol.41 No.8):
After two-and-a-half years with Wilson Audio's Alexia serving as my reference loudspeaker ($52,000/pair), I was eager to hear the differences between it and its successor, the Alexia Series 2 ($57,900/pair). My first serious listen to the Alexia 2 speakers took place at Definitive Audio Bellevue, before my review samples arrived. That system's dCS Rossini DAC and clock, D'Agostino Progression stereo amp, and Transparent Audio cables and interconnects were sonic familiars, but Definitive's music collection was mostly unknown to me. At last I found an old friend—a mono recording of contralto Kathleen Ferrier singing "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" (I Am Lost to the World), from Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, included in Ferrier's Centenary Edition: The Complete Decca Recordings (15 CDs, Decca 001654200).
Ferrier recorded this heart-rending lied in 1952, when the diagnosis of the breast cancer that took her life the following year was already known. As she sang "I am lost to the world . . . / It has heard nothing from me for so long / that it may very well believe that I am dead!," the Alexia 2's resolution was so fine that, for the first time, I was able to feel in Ferrier's voice the tears flowing beneath the notes. As I sat in stunned silence, I realized that I had never heard such clarity from my Alexias.
Given the Alexia 2's somewhat amp-friendlier impedance dip in the bass, better cabinet damping and internal bracing, and woofer and midrange enclosures of larger internal volume, I expected it to sound significantly more robust and better controlled in the midrange and bass. In fact, Definitive Audio's sales associate reported that they could never get the original Alexias to produce much deep bass in their showroom. But, as I could plainly hear in that large room, the Alexia 2s' bass was tight and ample.
Since the arrival of the dCS front end, Pass Laboratories XA 200.8 monoblock power amplifiers (footnote 1), Nordost Odin 2 cabling, Grand Prix Audio racks, and Resolution Acoustics room treatment have remained consistent in my system; the only major changes have been the addition of Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Progression monoblocks and different power treatments: Audience (for amps), Isotek, and then Tweek Geek (front end), and a second Nordost QX4 (whole system).
The Alexia 2s were optimally set up in our dedicated listening room by the same people who'd installed the Alexias: Peter McGrath, Director of Sales for Wilson Audio, and Gary Breustle and Craig Abplanalp of Definitive Audio, of Seattle, Bellevue, and Tacoma, Washington. After they'd gone, I played one reference recording after another, mouth agape, with frequent interruptions to run back to our main house to tell the spouse how fabulous they sounded.
As much as I loved the organic, liquid sound of the original Alexia, I was frustrated by the effect of its notorious impedance dip in the bass with the Pass Labs XA 200.8s, whose grip on the Alexias' bass was loose. Nor could the pair of Margules Audio U280-SC Black tubed monoblocks I'd reviewed last November even begin to cope with the Alexias' bass demands.
But not only did the Alexia 2s produce more bass in my room, that bass was better integrated with the midrange. For example, at the start of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Symphony 2 (SACD/CD, Channel Classics CCS SA 23506), when the basses double the cellos an octave lower, what through the Alexias had been a moderately focused low rumble was now, with the Alexia 2s powered by the Pass XA 200.8s, a stronger, better-defined bass line. Full reproduction of the bass foundation of this music is essential, the deep growl of the double basses conveying the gravity of Mahler's despair. The tighter and stronger this foundation, and the clearer the lines above it, the more you can feel the pain the composer wrote into this music.
The Alexia 2s' bass also sounded more true. When, through the original Alexias, I played recordings in which pianists used the instrument's entire 88 keys, the sound quality changed as their fingers moved up and down the keyboard. I never heard a crossover bump per se, but the overall timbre of the bottom octave sounded different from that of the notes above it. With the Alexia 2s, I heard no such discontinuity. Whether it was pianist Murray Perahia playing Handel's Harpsichord Suite in E, HWV 430 (CD, Sony Classical 62785), or Ron Carter's double bass on his and Rosa Passos's Entre Amigos (CD, Chesky JD247), every sound, from top to bottom of each instrument's range, was recognizably produced by the same instrument.
In addition, not only was the midrange fuller and warmer, but the sound seemed more of a piece. With Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony's recording of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (24-bit/96kHz WAV, Seattle Symphony Media SSM1005), the soundstage was more continuous and open than before—with some recordings, it extended well above the speakers, and beyond their outer side panels. Soundstages were also set behind the plane of the speakers' front baffles, and were seamless. There was no break, and no frequency consistently stood out from the rest.
With Terry Riley's In C, performed by the Ragazze Quartet and Slagwerk den Haag (DSD128, Channel Classics 37816/Native DSD), not only did the timbre of a wooden drumstick striking a wood block sound truer, but the Alexia 2's new Mark V Convergent Synergy tweeter trumped its predecessor's tweeter by better fleshing out this recording's remarkable range of tonal colors. It was also easier to appreciate that this performance was recorded in a performance space—a concert hall—whose size and boundaries were audible.
One of my favorite high-resolution test tracks for the reproduction of voices is mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's transcendent performance of "As with rosy steps the Morn advancing," from Handel's oratorio Theodora, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Harry Bicket (SACD/CD, Avie AV0030). As, toward the end of this da capo aria's bridge, Hunt Lieberson expands into the soundstage as she increases her volume, through the Alexia 2s this passage sounded, for the first time, remarkably real.
Four months after the Alexia 2s' arrival, and with the D'Agostino Progression monoblocks in place, a dozen members of the Pacific Northwest Audio Society sat transfixed by the fantastic range of percussion audible in Utopias, a superb hi-rez recording by percussionist Kjell Tore Innervik (DSD128, DXD, 2L 2L-141). Through a dCS front end of Vivaldi, Network Bridge, and Scarlatti Clock, it was easy to hear the depths of the instruments relative to each other on an exceptionally wide, coherent soundstage. Timbral contrasts were reproduced with maximal authenticity—each instrument had a distinctly different color, with clear differences between the textures and dynamic impacts of instruments struck with sticks and mallets in Xenakis's Psappha, and of those played only with fingers, hands, or parts of the arm in Morton Feldman's The King of Denmark.
I brought along to Axpona 2017 a CD of Lou Harrison's rhythmically complex, percussion-rich Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra, with soloist Tim Fain and Angel Gil-Ordóñez conducting the PostClassical Ensemble (24/48 WAV, Naxos 8.559825/HDtracks), and played it in MBL's huge room. At home, when I played the hi-rez files of the Harrison through the Alexia 2s, I not only heard the same deep, unmuffled resonance of the drum that I'd heard through the MBL 101E Mk.II speakers, I could also feel greater dynamic impact. The sound of rapidly struck drums was clear, and there was more depth to the violin's undertones. Higher up, the subtle sounds of chimes had more body and sustain, and a more convincing sense of decay. Through the Alexia 2s, this recording supplied one thrilling ride.
Days before turning in this review, I added to my system a second Nordost QX4 power purifier. At first, when I plugged it into the wall with a stock power cord, I didn't think the second QX4 did much at all. But when I replaced that cord with a Nordost Odin 2 AC cable, I could hear more of the air surrounding instruments and voices, and had a better sense of the boundaries of the recording venues. That the Alexia 2s were so highly resolving that a simple change of power cord was clearly audible—more so than with the original Alexias.
I've just played "Electrified II," from Yello's Toy (24/48 WAV, Polydor 4782160/HDtracks), as well as tracks from the recent stereo remix of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (24/96 WAV, Apple/Parlophone B0026524-02/HDtracks). The greater sense of air and space through the Alexia 2s, their ability to reproduce music as if completely independent of its source, continues to astound me. The Alexia Series 2's excellence has not only increased my listening pleasure; it has become essential to the accuracy of my evaluations of other components I review. John Atkinson concluded his full review of it last month, "I . . . let the Wilson Alexia Series 2s take me far, far away. That is what great speakers do." Wilson's Alexia 2 is a great speaker.—Jason Victor Serinus
Footnote 1: See my review elsewhere in this issue.
Footnote 1: See my review elsewhere in this issue.
