Wilson Audio, the American high-end speaker company, recently unveiled its latest flagship reference-class loudspeaker called the Autobiography, a nod to the company’s storied 52-year history.
If you aren’t familiar with Wilson Audio, one look at this thing might make you question what you’re looking at. If you are familiar, you might think it looks awfully similar to the company’s previous flagship, the WAMM Master Chronosonic.
Well, in the company’s words, “Autobiography is not a compilation of prior solutions. It is the result of understanding why those solutions succeeded, and how they could be refined, reimagined, and elevated.”
Are you sure that’s a speaker?
In case you aren’t embedded in the audiophile world, part of Wilson Audio’s whole shtick is its unwavering approach to time alignment between drivers. You can dive into that here, but it essentially boils down to the precise placement of the drivers so that all their soundwaves hit your ear at exactly the same time. Not, like, 0.01ms apart, at exactly the same time.
Like some of its previous speakers, the Autobiography’s construction consists of a lower bass section, which houses dual woofers (one 15in driver, and another 12in driver) and a baffle, which is reinforced with a thick layer of damping material. Above that, the open-air gantry supports the midrange and tweeter modules, which have, along with the time-alignment mechanism, been ‘rethought from first principles’. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, the Autobiography also uses something called “V-Material” at all the points where driver enclosures meet their supporting structure.
All of the drivers have been developed specifically for this speaker, of course. In total, there are eight drivers, including one 1in forward-firing tweeter, two 2in upper midrange units, two 7in lower midrange units, the two aforementioned woofers, and a single 1in rear-firing tweeter. All of these units can have their position adjusted, down to the millimetre, to achieve the excellence in time-alignment that Wilson Audio is famous for.
If this sounds like something you’d be keen on, you’ll need to get on the horn with Wilson Audio. At over 2m tall, a total system shipping weight of 1,059.14 kg, and a US MSRP of $788,000 (around R13.2 million), you won’t be popping down to any local audio store to pick up a pair.
