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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: About Wilson Audio Loudspeakers

Post Subject: New Alexandria XLF; Inching Toward the Tonal MatrixPosted by Paul S on: 1/28/2013

Looking at the drivers, and the range of adjustments, it appears that Wilson have done some things that make more sense than usual, at least to me. The MTM drivers can easily be set for "time alignment", which should help to cope with Wilson's "notorious phase issues". LF drivers are larger-than-usual, 13" and even a 15", and I hand it to Wilson here for moving in the right direction, giving the cone/air interface a bigger role, instead of laying it all on the amps with the usual small, "fast", "long-throw" garbage. They went with 7" for MF, which is also larger than many "high end" mfgs use these days but, oddly, they chose to run a 1" silk dome tweeter down to 1k Hz, to tie it into the 7". This means that the true WR driver in this stack is the 1" silk dome tweeter. Hmmm... There is another, rear-firing, 1" silk dome for HF only. I have no problem with off-axis HF like this; in fact, I applaud it.

Setting aside the proper range for its use, the "retro" step back to silk domes is a good idea, compared to where they have been. I have no idea why they stuck with the Be and Ti for so long. Back to range, 1k Hz is way too low for a 1" dome, in terms of tone, and also in terms of "dynamic balance". I am guessing that Wilson actually run the 7" up a good deal further than 1k Hz, as they should, although Fremer says Wilson says they wanted to "avoid beaming" from the 7". Since Fremer says Wilson say the 7" is "WR", I suppose this means they also run it down too low. Ideally, I would not assign lower MF solely - and certainly not upper bass - to a 7"; but I suppose this is nothing in "high end" audio. As for the "beaming", there are other ways to deal with it; but perhaps these are as yet undiscovered by Wilson, or perhaps other ways were dismissed because they compromise the "Wilson Look".

All in all, it appears that Wilson is inching toward something that may eventually get past the usual, self-imposed, high-end audio problems. With still-larger paper drivers and more reasonable X/Os, they might get there yet.

I meant to add a link to Fremer's introduction via Stereophile, but I failed to copy it properly before posting.

Paul S

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