CES 2019 • Hot Product

The first public showing in the US of Wilson Audio's Sasha DAW ($37,900 per pair) occurred in Las Vegas. This speaker commemorates Dave Wilson and perhaps his greatest and most enduring audio creation: the original WATT/Puppy and its two-cabinets configuration, one for the midrange/treble and one for the bass, along with a sloped baffle to maintain time alignment. The latest Sasha has many enhancements, chief among them a pair of new 8" woofers and a bass enclosure whose volume is 13.3% greater. The midrange/tweeter module is also larger by 10.2%, and the drivers are the same as used for the WAMM Master Chronosonic, with a new crossover to blend them.

It was interesting to hear the Sasha DAWs in two different systems. VTL and Nordost played mostly analog, perhaps to show off the new VTL TP-6.5 II phono stage. This system sounded authoritative, with great midrange presence and transient snap. The soundstage had wide lateral spread and notable front-to-back layering, which was shown off by some of the top-shelf recordings Bea Lam of VTL played.

In a system with Nagra electronics, including the new HD DAC X, the sonic outcome was different, perhaps due to the analog tape and digital files played. Here, overall resolution dominated, the system laying out a smaller soundstage but one seeming to overflow with air. The bottom end was less powerful, again perhaps due to the demo music, but also more detailed and dynamically varied. The speakers weren't spaced as wide as in the VTL system, and, as the picture shows, there were two fully loaded equipment racks in between.

The conclusion to draw, aside from the electronics in the two systems sounding very different, was that the Sasha DAWs were sonic chameleons, faithfully revealing whatever happened before them in the playback chain. Roy Gregory will test this further when he reviews the speakers later in the year.