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Alexandria XLF joins the Alexandria family, not as a replacement for the Series 2, but as its measurably
more ambitious sibling.
While maintaining the recognizable Alexandria form factor, it is physically larger, with 14% greater bass
volume. Thicker cabinet walls and added bracing for an even more inert enclosure.It introduces passive
bass management technology unique in the audio world.
It introduces a new Convergent Synergy tweeter, a new crossover, and a host of parts all chosen through
sedulous listening trials.
From the time he started building loudspeakers in his garage, Dave Wilson had one motivating passion: to
make the reproduction of music sound as much like the real thing as possible. Although he is acutely aware
of the limitations imposed on his dream by available driver technology, cabinet materials and the laws of
physics, the goal remains the same. Dave is an idealist.
Wilson Audio has always rejected the notion of "perceived value." Our only metric is intrinsic
value. In a market increasingly crowded with over $100k loudspeakers, how does the discerning audiophile
distinguish authentic value from products merely wrapped in the mystique of exclusivity and high
price?
If one's goal is to reproduce the sound of live music, logic suggests that at some point the designer must
listen to his creation in order to understand how much (or how little) it sounds like the live event. Some
designers in the industry maintain that making judgments on the success of one's design through listening
is subjective and unscientific. They believe that only through the application of the right theories, or
the strict adherence to a certain set of measurements can one reliably approach the ideal.
Yet the history of high-end audio is littered with electronics and loudspeakers that achieve sterling
performance on the test bench, and yet, to the ears of even the average listener, fail to produce life-like
sound. They lack the ineffable sense of rightness that momentarily suspends disbelief.
Dave is unapologetic about using his ears as a design tool because while fidelity of the live event may be
difficult to measure, it is not difficult for even the casual listener to hear. But when listening becomes
rigorous and disciplined - that is to say, empirical - it can bear even greater benefits.
Dave makes an annual pilgrimage to the great concert halls of Europe, particularly Vienna's Musikverein, as he
puts it, "to recalibrate his ears." It is more than personal taste that justifies live classical music as the summum
bonum of his musical reference. Besides the sophisticated interplay of tonal and harmonic color and wide dynamics
typical of the orchestral repertoire, classical music performed in a hall such as the Musikverein takes on
the quality of the venue itself. By luck or design, the builders of this concert hall created a space that enlivens
the sound of musical instruments in a particularly beguiling manner.
Dave spent a great deal of time analyzing the Musikverein's acoustics. He discovered its sonic signature was
largely defined by the length of time between the orchestra's initial sound and the earliest reflections
in the hall. He then set out to build a new midrange driver that was capable of resolving these subtle timedomain
cues. The result was the Wilson midrange driver, first deployed in Alexandria Series 2. Since then, a modified
version has been designed into every other Wilson floorstanding loudspeaker.
Regardless of the type of music played through it, Wilson's midrange driver reveals new layers of detail and subtlety
that the ear recognizes as qualities of live music. It was the direct result of meticulous scientific research and
experimentation followed by comparative listening on the macro scale.
Years of design experience taught Dave Wilson that practically no detail is too trivial to examine. What about the
twist ratios in the internal wiring? Or the metallurgy of the resistor heat sinks, since eddy currents in the mount
can induce currents in neighboring resistors. He's meticulously tested capacitors and inductors.and even the solder
used to bind all these parts together. After all these tests, he listens to each part in a controlled and repeatable
environment.
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