Product Description

This Wilson video addresses how Dave Wilson refined the art and science of speaker design by using the reliable principles of the scientific method.

Wilson has always taken a purist approach to bass management, focusing on designs that inherently sound right in a wide range of rooms. Critical room placement by trained salespeople and installers has proved to be the most successful and efficient way to overcome most room-induced colorations. But sometimes careful placement is not enough. This is often true for rooms with a lot of glass, and where the desired listening position is close to the center of the room—where a natural null zone exists for low frequency sound waves.

Dave conceived of the Cross Load Firing Port as an effective remedy for room artifacts in the bass. An elegantly simple idea, the (patent pending) Cross Load system allows the user to choose either a front or rear firing port configuration. On the front of the XLF, below the woofers, is a distinctive brushed aluminum plate with the Alexandria XLF logo. In rooms where the rear-firing option will tend to overload the bass, it is simply a matter of removing the front plate and port plug, switching those items to the rear, and attaching the low-turbulence trim to the front, moving the port exit to the front of the Alexandria XLF.

The Cross Load Firing port system (XLF) dictated a larger bass enclosure. It is 14% larger than the Series 2. The increased volume enabled the engineers to carefully shape the XLF’s bass response to be even more linear and room-friendly. Using the latest analysis technology, Wilson’s mechanical engineers reworked the woofer cabinet, thickening the enclosure walls and redesigning the internal bracing geometry. Cabinet contribution in the bass region is extremely low in the Alexandria X-2. The Alexandria XLF is even more inert.

Wilson has a long tradition of cross populating advancements from one design to the rest of the line. This sometimes means that a more expensive model benefits from technology introduced in a less expensive loudspeaker. First introduced in Wilson’s venerable WATT/Puppy replacement, the Sasha W/P, S-material is a highly rigid, critically damped, epoxy-based composite. It was developed specifically for midrange beauty and ultra-low resonance. In combination with X-material, S- material reduces measurable and audible noise and coloration in the midrange.

Dave’s frustration with off-the-shelf drivers led to the decision to design his own tweeter. The result of that effort is the Convergent Synergy tweeter. It maintains all the strengths Wilson’s previous tweeter designs: great dynamic contrast, harmonic expression, exceptional power handling, and low distortion. The Convergent Synergy is extremely flat in its frequency response and has exemplary off-axis dispersion characteristics. With very low moving mass, it adds frequency extension to 37 kHz. As the name implies, these qualities converge with the advantages of the ultra-wide-bandwidth designs, with none of their sonic or technical disadvantages. It is an extremely synergistic companion to the Wilson midrange driver.

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.