Everything Wilson Audio knows about loudspeaker design is now contained in our flagship product, the Alexandria.

Adjustable Propagation Delay

A musical waveform is a complex overlay of frequencies, amplitudes, and phase relationships. With current technology, no single transducer can reproduce the full range of music at realistic sound pressure levels and maintain consistent dispersion. The only practical solution to this problem is a multiple driver array, but multiple drivers introduce their own set of problems, chief among them the challenge of preserving the precise time relationships of the musical waveform.

In conventional systems, drivers are mounted in a flat baffle such that each driver is positioned at a different distance in relation to the listener. Thus, energy from the tweeter arrives at the listening position in advance of the midrange, which in turn arrives before bass generated by the woofer. This problem of achieving both time-domain coherence and optimal driver dispersion is only exacerbated by larger speaker systems. The fact is, misalignment of the drivers by small fractions of an inch will audibly degrade transient performance, soundstage height, width, and depth, as well as introduce tonal anomalies that destroy the otherwise convincing “presence” of an instrument or a singer’s voice.

The key to solving this problem lies in the vertical alignment of the various drivers in an adjustable modular array so that each driver’s waveform propagation “matches up” with its neighbors’ in such a way as to create the sonic equivalent of a single point source. Wilson’s patented Adjustable Propagation Delay has long set the standard for precise driver positioning in order to ensure correct propagation alignment for a wide range of listening locations. Alexandria takes the technology a step further with its Aspherical Propagation Delay. Alexandria’s driver modules not only adjust forward and back (in the time domain), but also rotate on their vertical axis in order to achieve optimal driver dispersion for nearly any size room and for multiple listening positions. Alexandria is the only loudspeaker to utilize this unique innovation.