The Media Room

Most rooms in this building ask you to sit still and concentrate. This one does not. It is built to move between serious two-channel listening and a film on a hundred-inch screen without asking anyone to choose between the two, which is how most people actually use a room in their own house.

The WATT/Puppy

Wilson Audio’s WATT/Puppy is the loudspeaker that put the company on the map. The WATT began as a portable monitor Dave Wilson built for his own location recording work, and the Puppy arrived as the bass module beneath it. Together they became the loudspeaker that defined what a small high-end system could sound like, and the model that established Wilson as a company rather than a one-man recording operation.

The current version carries the engineering that has come out of the WAMM and Chronosonic programs in the decades since. It remains compact enough for a room like this one and revealing enough that everything upstream of it is audible.

Why this loudspeaker suits a room like this

The WATT/Puppy is a two-part system rather than a single cabinet, which means it can be positioned with more freedom than a floorstander of similar capability. In a room that also has to accommodate a television, seating for people who are not listening critically, and the ordinary furniture of a lived-in space, that flexibility is worth more than another few hertz of extension at the bottom.

The Pendulum

Driving it is Dan D’Agostino’s Pendulum, the newest program in the D’Agostino line and the entry point to the marque. That pairing is deliberate. The WATT/Puppy is where a great many people begin with Wilson, and the Pendulum is where a great many people begin with D’Agostino, so this is the room that shows what the two houses sound like together at the point most buyers actually enter them.

It is worth hearing against the Relentless in the WAMM Room and the Momentum systems in the Reference Room — same design philosophy, three points along it.

The cable

Transparent SUPER carries the amplifier-to-loudspeaker link. Cable at this level of system is not an accessory decision; it is the last component in the signal path and the one most often left to whatever was in the box.

Two rooms in one

A hundred-inch Sony television shares the space, with a Kaleidescape Strato V handling film playback from local storage rather than streaming. The distinction matters more than it sounds: Kaleidescape downloads at bitrates well beyond Blu-ray with lossless audio intact, so the soundtrack arriving at the WATT/Puppy is the soundtrack as mixed rather than a compressed approximation of it.

A hundred inches is large enough to carry a film properly at normal seating distance without requiring a projector, a darkened room, or the architectural commitment those bring. It is the pragmatic answer for a space that has to work with the lights on as well as off, and it leaves the loudspeakers free to stand where the music wants them rather than where a screen wall dictates.

That is what makes the dual-purpose idea work here. A system good enough for critical listening is usually wasted on streamed film audio, and most rooms that try to do both end up compromising the music side to accommodate the picture. This one keeps the two-channel system intact and gives it source material worth playing.

The system in this room

• Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy loudspeakers
• Dan D’Agostino Pendulum integrated amplifier
• Transparent SUPER speaker cable
• Sony 100-inch television
• Kaleidescape Strato V movie player

Hearing it

Every other room in this showroom asks a single question well. This one asks whether a system can hold two purposes without quietly failing at both, which is the question most people are actually asking about their own house.

It is the room for anyone whose listening space has to earn its keep as a family room too, and for anyone starting with Wilson or with D’Agostino who wants to hear the entry point properly rather than assume it is a diminished version of the flagship. It is also the most realistic room in the Scottsdale showroom, in the sense that it most closely resembles a space someone actually lives in.

The Media Room is in the Scottsdale showroom. Walk in during business hours, or book ahead if you want to bring your own music and your own film.