Loudspeakers

It's easy to forget Wilson Audio Specialties started out as a record label, releasing audiophile LPs and CDs during the genre's most fertile era. As founder Dave Wilson was recording live in assorted venues, he needed a portable speaker to meet his standards in soundstaging and detail retrieval. The resultant WATT (Wilson Audio Tiny Tot) had a truncated pyramid enclosure and sloped baffle that aligned the drivers' acoustic centres.

It soon emerged that friends and colleagues wanted them, too, where smaller speakers would suffice, so a commercial version was introduced at the Las Vegas CES in January 1986. The WATT bettered other small monitors, including the BBC LS3/5A, for maximum SPLs and bass, but the latter remained restricted. The first 'fix' was the now-forgotten '2pi Steradian Beard', a panel attached to the front lower edge of the WATT to augment the bass, in use with the Gibraltar stand.

In 1989, the easier-to-drive Series 2 WATT arrived, but it was swiftly followed in 1990 by the first Puppy woofer enclosure. The latter endowed the system with bass flat to a claimed 40Hz, while the top-mounted WATT, now housing mid and treble, could be tilted for improved time alignment. The WATT/Puppy Series 5 was launched in May 1994, and was graced with X-material for the Puppy baffles. ('Series 4' was skipped out of respect to Eastern cultures.)

Five years later, the System 6 (as opposed to Series 6) was introduced with the same drivers but an increase in cabinet volume and a revised crossover. System 7 featured new drivers from Scan-Speak, in place of those from Dynaudio, while the System 8 of 2006-7, with its M-material panels and inverted dome tweeter from the MAXX, evolved into the first Sasha (2009), the latter's W/P suffix acknowledging its roots.