Wilson Audio has announced Autobiography, an advanced new flagship loudspeaker system that takes the company’s WAMM Master Chronosonic concept and drives it to an even higher level of sophistication and architectural complexity.
As its name suggests, Autobiography aims to encapsulate Wilson Audio’s entire history, experience, and loudspeaker engineering expertise, garnered over the company’s five-decade accumulated knowledge, and now expresses it as a new vision of the state-of-the-art in loudspeaker design. In effect, it’s a complete summation of the Wilson Audio biographical journal.
Autobiography introduces all-new drivers in a configuration employing a 7 inch (180 mm) ‘PentaMag’ midrange, 2 inch (50 mm) midrange driver, CSLS tweeter, and then the reverse mirror “structure”, effectively forming an M-MTM-M configuration. This driver array is incorporated into a steel framework that supports all the drivers and their physical alignments (more on that below). A rear-firing ambient inverted tweeter is coupled to a dedicated level control and is designed to provide enhanced spatial information with realistic ambience. The lower cabinet houses 12 inch (300 mm) and 15 inch (350 mm) bespoke woofers created to work in unison.
Looking at the drivers in more detail, the new Convergent Synergy Laser Sintered (CSLS) front-firing tweeter is the latest iteration of the highly regarded Convergent Synergy Tweeter as used in all other Wilson Audio loudspeakers. The new design features an improved rear chamber with superior energy dissipation, reduced internal reflections and is said to have a lower noise floor.
The newly developed 2 inch (50 mm) dome midrange drivers (above and below the tweeter) were engineered to seamlessly cohere with the tweeter’s own fast transients and the larger midrange drivers’ full-bodied presentation. Their placement in the array provides “symmetrical dispersion” while ensuring time alignment through their crucially important bandwidth.
The 7 inch (180 mm) PentaMag drivers are derived from the QuadraMag lineage and now feature five AlNiCo (Aluminium/Nickel/Cobalt) magnets in a precise arrangement said to improve flux stability, provide enhanced linearity and increased overall magnet strength.
The rear mounted inverted wide dispersion tweeter is designed to provide superb spatial dimensionality and realistic reproduction of ambient cues in conjunction with pure harmonic decay. The tweeter’s inverted dome features “aerospace-grade unidirectional spread carbon fibre” technology said to offer excellent rigidity, has a variable-thickness profile that provides low inertia and high structural integrity. Its level control features settings between 0 dB and minus 40 dB in a set bandwidth between 6 kHz and 22 kHz. Its maximum setting starts at minus 7 dB at 10 kHz. The adjustments and overall design of the ambience tweeter allow precise room acoustics matching and caters to a variety of listener preferences.
Working in unison, the new woofers are mounted on a large-volume enclosure in order to extend their low frequency reach. The drivers feature bespoke magnet motor systems and specifically-designed suspension geometries. As a team, they have been engineered to provide a “seamless low-frequency foundation that responds with speed, control, and scale”. The lower module, therefore, the speaker as a whole, is supported by Wilson Audio Acoustic Diode system.
A new sled system is designed to calibrate the positions of the five highs and midrange frequency driver with exceptional precision in order to ensure Wilson Audio’s strict time-focused acoustic alignment. The upper modules are fully adjustable via a system of sleds and precision gears operated by a rotating “cam grip”. This alignment system surpasses the comprehensive time domain precision of both WAMM Master Chronosonic and Chronosonic XVX.
A newly-designed port system with two quick-release buttons allows fast and effective changes in configuration (front firing and rear firing) providing control over the interaction between the loudspeakers’ bass output and room acoustics. As Wilson Audio explains, in a forward firing configuration the, “… low frequency output in the 10 Hz to 75 Hz region is reduced by approximately 1.0 to 1.5 dB, while output between 75 Hz and 130 Hz increases by 1.5 dB to 2.0 dB.” A rear firing configuration, “gives the inverse response, offering flexibility to accommodate unique room boundaries and overall listener preference.”
Autobiography’s crossover and driver cable interfaces employ bespoke cabling looms and proprietary Wilson Audio binding posts. The wiring management system neatly looms together the various cables via “clasps” that are integrated into the gantry’s architecture. The crossover employs the “finest quality resistors” which are mounted onto copper heatsinks for thermal and vibrational distortion control. As per Wilson Audio’s strategy, resistors can easily be accessed and user-replaceable with no tools required.
At this early stage, SoundStage! Australia does not have the Autobiography’s technical specifications. Watch this space for updates.
Learn more in our SoundStage! InSight! video where we go inside the thinking behind Wilson Audio’s newest flagship. Watch here.
Wilson Audio Autobiography Loudspeakers
Price: AU$1,249,995
Australian Distributor: Advance Audio Australia
+61 2 9561 0799
www.advanceaudio.com.au