Loudspeakers

Daryl Wilson, CEO of Wilson Audio Specialties, was tight-lipped about his plans to celebrate the brand's 50th anniversary in 2024, though we can expect an announcement of some sort by the end of 2023. For now, the evolution of the Wilson range into this latest 'V' series continues at a respectable pace, the fruits of Daryl and his engineers drilling into the minutiae of cabinet, driver and component design.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Wilson's acquisition, from retiring owner Bas Lin, of Reliable Capacitor's winding machinery and associated technology. Wilson had sourced its capacitors from RelCap for 25 years, so the opportunity to bring the process in-house was snapped up.

'We discovered through our R&D and listening evaluations that the ideal capacitor construction differs from application to application', says Daryl. 'For instance, a capacitor that works well in an electronic component may not necessarily suit a loudspeaker crossover. If you want to extract the best performance from your speaker it's vitally important to develop a capacitor that is specific for that application. We have spent a lot of time defining and refining the materials, construction, power-handling, etc, for all the capacitors used in our networks.'

'As we move from development to production phase the breadboard crossover is replicated and used, along with the components, as a reference standard. All the capacitor and inductor values are within a 0.2% variance of the original value(s) that we signed off during the R&D and listening phases of each project.' PM