#authenticexcellence

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 Wilson 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.

Special Applications projects have a long and illustrious history at Wilson Audio. In 1983, Dave Wilson needed a small location monitor for the series of audiophile-acclaimed classical music recordings he was doing at the time. Finding nothing suitable on the market, he went into his garage and built the original WATT®. Its truncated pyramid shape, constructed from mineral-filled methacrylic, broke the mold of then-current loudspeaker design and has been widely copied since for one reason: it worked extremely well. Mated to its dedicated woofer enclosure, the WATT/Puppy, now called Sasha W/P, continues to be Wilson Audio’s longest running and best-selling loudspeaker.

Alida is the latest Special Applications product from Wilson Audio. It was designed to offer the timbral neutrality, dynamic response, soundstage depth, and transparency of floor-standing Wilson loudspeakers, but to do so in the extremely adverse conditions of wall-mounted applications. The Alida is a perfect example of performance disproportionate to size.

Unlike most wall-mount speakers, Alida possesses all the salient attributes of Wilson loudspeakers: dynamic agility, tonal expression, and musical beauty. The Alida incorporates the same anti-jitter crossover technology that underlies the astonishingly grain-free transparency and musicality of full-size Wilson loudspeakers. With strong power handling capacity and low-end frequency response reaching 40 Hz, this speaker will forever change the perception of just how good a wall-mounted speaker can sound.

The WATCH® system [Wilson Audio Theater Comes Home] was born out of the recognition that the same factors that greatly enhance the emotional impact of music reproduction are applicable to motion picture soundtracks. Some interesting trials validate a counter-intuitive thesis: when viewers were asked to rate the impact of two different home theater systems—one with larger, better quality video, but with a middling sound system, and the second with a smaller screen but a state-of-the-art audio system—they invariably chose the latter system as the more emotionally involving.

The result would hardly surprise people who make movies. Since the advent of the “talkies,” filmmakers have realized that dialogue, music, and sound effects carry a disproportionate weight of the emotion in a motion picture.

Introducing the newest iteration of Wilson’s venerated center channel loudspeaker: the Convergent Synergy edition.

Mezzo is only the latest product from the Wilson Special Applications Engineering Team ™. This group of products recognizes there are situations where the typical floorstanding loudspeaker fails to adequately meet needs that fall outside the typical listening room/home theater environments.

Wilson has a long and storied history of developing products for specific applications. The first product to fit that definition was the Wilson Audio Tiny Tot, or WATT©. Long before it became the mid and upper range part of the venerable WATT/Puppy© combo (the best selling over $10k loudspeaker in audio history), it was originally designed as a portable location monitor. The WATT played a significant role in the series of audiophile-quality records Dave engineered in the mid-nineteen-eighties. The WATT's original heritage was thereafter evident by the machined aluminum handle that traversed the rear blades, a safe and convenient way for Dave to carry the monitor to and from recording locales.

When used as a center channel, Mezzo seamlessly matches the acoustic signature of Wilson's remarkable Sasha. Indeed, the Mezzo features a driver complement nearly identical to the Sasha, the exception being the midrange driver, which is borrowed from the legendary Alexandria X-2©. The Mezzo also provides an unprecedented level of musical accuracy in music systems and home theaters where its low-profile form solves architectural challenges, such as in those installations where a tall loudspeaker would block wall-to-wall cinema screens, the view afforded by large windows, or would obstruct wall-hanging artwork. Whether it is used as a center channel in conjunction with Sasha, MAXX, or Alexandria, or as a main loudspeaker, Mezzo matches the tonal beauty, dynamic speed, tonal sophistication, resolution, and sense of "thereness" that are hallmarks of Sasha W/P.