Crossovers are the electrical circuits found in most loudspeakers, and a well-designed crossover allows multiple drivers (e.g. woofers, mid-range, and tweeters) to sound like a single unit. (Only if the acoustical “seams” between drivers are inaudible will a vocalist sound real, with chest resonance, head resonance, sibilance and overtones properly presented as a coherent and timbrely correct whole.)
Most crossovers consist of capacitors and inductors. Even the highest quality capacitors and inductors on the market typically offer tolerances of plus or minus 10% of their rated value! That’s a range of deviation twenty times greater than Wilson Audio’s standard, and it’s a range that’s clearly audible. Every loudspeaker designer is faced with the same dilemma and can do one of two things about it: 1) Nothing. This is the “fact of life” approach, which argues that even though the deviations are measurable and audible, probably not many people in too many situations will notice—or complain. 2) Employ some clever engineering to get around the problem. Needless to say, this is Wilson Audio’s approach. How is it done? As much as we’d like to tell you, there are such things as trade secrets. What we can say is every crossover component (whether it be inductor, or capacitor) in every Wilson loudspeaker measures within .5% of the reference. |
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Incidentally, most other manufacturers wave-solder their crossover components to printed circuit boards, which are poor conductors of high-current music signals. Caleb Mower, meanwhile, is point-to-point hand soldering a Wilson Audio crossover. He’s using two different types of solder, too: one chosen (in listening tests) for its upper frequency purity, the other for mid-range beauty and low-frequency extension. The completed crossovers are encased in solid epoxy to eliminate any potential source of ringing or resonance, and, frankly, to preserve the proprietary nature of our crossover design. Out of Sight, Out of Mind Elements enclosed within the speaker cabinets present not only the opportunity to preserve trade secrets, but also the opportunity to cut corners. Succumbing to that temptation is entirely outside the ethos of Wilson Audio; unfortunately some manufacturers of putative "high-end" loudspeakers apparently believe that what you can’t see won’t hurt you. Hence, they choose to use inferior wire for the internal cabling of their loudspeakers. |
Even though we wouldn’t recommend tearing apart your Wilson loudspeaker to check our wiring, we wouldn’t be embarrassed if you did. That’s because every Wilson Audio product uses the highest grade of ultra pure wire (the same raw material that goes into some of the world’s best speaker cables) for all its internal wiring. Each wiring harness is unique (in terms of its length and the actual drivers to which it connects), and the corresponding wire is selected (by listening tests) for that specific cable. There are no economies of scale here (buying one type of wire in bulk to serve every function). The wire pairs are hand-twisted according to a formula (x turns per inch) derived—again by listening—as part of the overall Propagation Delay strategy to optimize time coherence. |
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