Wilson Audio Specialties Launches New Autobiography Loudspeaker

the company's most advanced, time-aligned, full-range speaker ever

The photo shows the new Autobiography loudspeaker and an array or Wilson employees surrounding Daryl Wilson and his mother and company co-founder Sheryl Lee Wilson. I'm not going to identify everyone so you can get to the story! I don't think they will mind.

During a weeklong Provo, Utah event beginning April 20th, Wilson Audio Specialties launched the Autobiography, the company's most advanced and costly loudspeaker. Invited guests included international and domestic distributors and dealers, as well as select members of the press. In the hour long video you will first see the unveiling in a Provo museum setting followed by CEO Daryl Wilson's detailed discussion highlighting the speaker's technological advances that make this the most time coherent loudspeaker in the company's 50+ year history.

Sheryl Lee and Daryl Wilson with director of sales and longtime Wilson employee (and recording engineer) Peter McGrath

.....And at approximately $788,000 the Autobiography is the company's most expensive loudspeaker. Lest that number stop you in your tracks (which is a YouTube euphemism for "disgust", "outrage", "contempt" and "virtue signaling", though I'm hopeful there will be less of that here), first calm down, then consider that numerous Wilson owners (the company won't reveal the precise number, but you will see in this video multiple Autobiography speakers fully or partially manufactured) have already made the purchase and the company began working to fill the orders before the actual launch week. It's more than likely that the technological advances will "trickle down" to less cost loudspeakers in the company's lineup.

The previous top of the line WAMM speaker consisted of 900 individual parts. The new Autobiography features 1800 parts. The manufacturing tolerances and consistencies are unprecedented for the company, according to Daryl Wilson and you'll see that in the video below. The design has been years in the making. Driver physical time alignment has been at the core of the company's tech philosophy since its founding by Dave and Sheryl Lee Wilson 50+ years ago. Recent developments in CNC machining and 3D printing—as well as human ingenuity— have allowed the design team to perfect driver alignment precision in three-dimensional space while simultaneously producing unprecedented locked stability and vibration control among the speaker modules.

The driver array consists of newly developed 13" and 15" woofers, a pair of new 2" dome midrange drivers mounted in a flared housing in an MTM configuration with the company's silk dome tweeter, which features a new rear enclosure at first 3D printed but now Selective Laser Sintered to reduce or eliminate back wave interference.

To accommodate the two larger woofers the new enclosure is taller, wider and deeper than the one used in the XVX, but because the new upper array is more vertically "squeezed", the new speaker's overall height is but a few inches taller than the XVX.

I like the all black Autobiography best. Hi-Fi+'s Alan Sircom gets a closer look

You will hear mention of "V material" "X material" "S material" and "H material". There's nothing secretive or esoteric about these materials. They are various difficult to machine phenolic resins, each with a different set of damping and vibration control qualities used in various locations within the enclosures and elsewhere and used to produce the enclosures themselves, except here the tweeter housing is 3D printed.

The second part of the video is a factory tour conducted by Wilson COO Korbin Vaughan during which you will see how these loudspeakers specifically and Wilson loudspeakers generally are labor intensively constructed, painted and polished. There's a discussion of, and you will see the driver array used in the new Autobiography speaker.

Wilson purchased in 2018 REL capacitor company's assets and newly purchased capacitor manufacturing machines are a tour highlight and you will see how Wilson's crossover network capacitors are manufactured in-house not to 5% tolerances or 1% tolerances but to exact tolerances. Each capacitor is trimmed to an exact value. These are used throughout the speaker line.

Following the tour, groups were invited to the Wilson home to listen to the new Autobiography loudspeakers in the large living room space Dave Wilson created for evaluating loudspeaker performance. I have visited numerous times to hear new loudspeakers in the room. It's a big room and a great one for speaker evaluation purposes but until the Autobiography, I've never felt any of the speakers were capable of pressurizing and filling the room—at least not without subwoofers. The new Autobiography is up to that task.

The speaker's POV looking at the audience during one of the listening sessions

Minus added subwoofers, the Autobiography produced an expansive sound field, low frequency extension down to the deepest organ pedal and artificial bass limits.

Beyond that, as an XVX owner I can say with complete somewhat disappointed assurance that as great as the XVX is and how well it produces the 3D "locked in" soundstage and depth of field that in my experience only physical driver alignment can produce, the Autograph takes it to another performance level.

The quiet between the notes, the low level musical resolution, the sense of sound field space and the overall coherence produced an overall improvement of fine detail that was easy to hear. That said, going beyond those observations without more time and more music goes where I'm not willing to go. I would have liked to hear a full symphony, a classic jazz combo recording and a few dozen full albums worth but of course that's not possible in a demo situation with multiple listeners though we did get to regularly switch seats.

The new woofers also make subwoofers superfluous. The speaker is rated down to 18Hz. However Wilson will have a new one for the Autobiography for those needing to plumb the subterranean depths.

Though sensitivity is a high 89.5dB (@1W@1m), the minimum impedance dips to 2.1 ohms @293 Hz. A high current producing amplifier would seem to be the ideal ticket, but Daryl Wilson says the powerful VTL Siegfried tube amps wired at 220 per Dave’s request drove the speakers just fine in the big room and delivered deep bass. We listened on the big D'Agostino Relentless 1600s and they did as well you can be sure.

One final note about driver alignment in a multi-driver array. One big advantage of this system is that leading edge transients arrive at the ear perfectly timed and perfectly coherent. This reduces transient "smear" and "hash" to unprecedented low to nonexistent levels that crossover or slopped baffle designs, great as many are, simply don't achieve—which is not to say that other speaker technologies and other speakers using cone technology don't achieve outstanding results!

Here are Wilson's provided specs:

Measurements Nominal Impedance: 4 ohms / minimum 2.1 ohms @ 293 Hz Sensitivity: 89.5 dB @ 1W @ 1m @ 1kHz Frequency Response: 18 Hz – 36 kHz : +/- 2 dB : Room Average Response [RAR] Minimum Amplification Power Recommended: 100 watts/channel Drivers Forward Firing Tweeter: 1 inch, Dome (2.54 cm) Diaphragm Material: Doped Silk Fabric (CSLS) Upper Midrange: 2 inches (5.08 cm) Diaphragm Material: Doped Fabric (2” MID) Lower Midrange: 7 inches (17.78 cm) Diaphragm Material: Paper Pulp (PentaMag) Woofer: 12 inches (30.48 cm) Diaphragm Material: Hard Paper Pulp Woofer: 15 inches (38.10 cm) Diaphragm Material: Hard Paper Pulp Rear Firing Tweeter: 1 inch, Inverted Dome (2.54 cm) Diaphragm Material: Unidirectional Carbon Fiber (RFT) Dimensions Height: 81 3/16 inches (206 cm) w/o spikes [Variable] Width: 21 1/2 inches (55 cm) Depth: 34 7/8 inches (89 cm).