Instead of taking a loudspeaker designed and voiced for optimal room placement (with plenty of air behind and beside the speaker) and then trying to force it into a “bookshelf” mode, Wilson’s engineers did the opposite; they designed Duette from the ground up as a “hostile environments” loudspeaker.
But what if you want to use Duette on its custom stand as a typical floor-standing system? Not a problem. Change the tweeter resistor on the external crossover (see below), change the custom speaker cables which connect the crossover to the speaker, and Duette is transformed into a compact, two-way floor standing system tuned to a far boundary room. Another possibility: you want Duette on its stands in a room too small to place speakers away from wall boundaries. Just configure Duette to it’s “near boundary” mode and place the stands against the wall. |
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In designing the Duette crossover, there were two reasons the Wilson team decided to think literally outside the box. The first is a practical consideration of weight and volume. Crossover design lies at the heart of the Wilson Audio sound. Each crossover, whether destined for Duette or Alexandria, is hand-wired using custom capacitors and even custom solder. They are, of necessity, large and heavy. To keep Duette’s size and weight appropriate for its varied applications, it was quickly apparent it made sense to house the crossover in a separate module. There was another more compelling engineering reason to do so: In an enclosure the size of Duette, the proximity of a crossover to the drivers would make the circuits susceptible to mechanical and electromechanical feedback from the drivers, introducing subtle yet audible distortion. At Wilson Audio, the size of a speaker is irrelevant to the care given to its design and manufacture. |
