Wilson Audio Specialties Factory Tour
by Marc Mickelson

Begun as an audiophile recording label, Wilson Audio Specialties migrated into making speakers because of founder David Wilson's innate interest in designing audio products. His very first, the SM.AR.T turntable, debuted in 1973, but the transition from recordings to speakers was not a direct one. David Wilson was an audio journalist and recording engineer who made his first speakers, the original WAMM and WATT, as monitoring tools. Audiophiles heard of them, then heard them, and the road to the current Wilson Audio was paved.

The area in the Wilson Audio factory that houses the company's collection of artifacts from its history and its table of awards is adjacent to a listening area that features WATT/Puppy 6 speakers, Wilson Audio's best-selling product and the current SoundStage! Network Edge of the Art award winner. It's hard to overlook the connection between the past and present in this room, but beyond it, Wilson Audio proved to be a thoroughly forward-looking company that seemingly never rests or loses sight of its goal: making only the best loudspeakers it can.

"But why are your speakers so expensive?"

Wilson Audio speakers are luxury products, and not just because of their cost. Their finish is impeccable, as is the company's support of its customers. This diamond-studded reputation also makes Wilson Audio speakers the brunt of ridicule from audiophiles who think they cost too much. After all, you can buy speakers that are cheaper, even much cheaper, and people seem to be happy with these too. But what consumers don't know about are the careful manufacturing practices and advanced materials that go into Wilson Audio products -- the things obscured by the glossy finish.

The main criticism of Wilson Audio products is the "It's just an MDF box" argument. Wilson speakers are made from three different materials, and MDF is not one of them. M material looks like MDF, but when you run your hand over it, you'll quickly know it's not. M material is harder, more dense and less resonant than MDF. It also costs eight times what MDF does. The black X material was first used in the Grand SLAMM and costs 16 times what MDF does. It's used in the front baffles and bottom plates of various models as well as wherever two surfaces meet, like with the WATT sitting on top of the Puppy. X material requires no threaded inserts when drivers or spikes are affixed to it because it's harder than steel -- harder to mill too. Finally, WATT material is white and more like ceramic than any kind of wood. It actually cracks when stressed beyond its very high strength. Wilson Audio uses it for the WATT as well as in the head piece of the X-1 Grand SLAMM.

Wilson Audio has found that no one material is ideal for all uses, so a major part of the design process is determining which material to use for each element of a speaker. This requires a great deal of experimentation and the construction of mock-ups of the speakers with combinations of the various materials.

The next knock against Wilson Audio speakers is the "I can buy the same drivers off the shelf" contention. While it's true that Wilson sources its drivers from manufacturers like Dynaudio, ScanSpeak and Focal, most of the drivers are designed by Wilson Audio and manufactured to their specifications. This arrangement includes a three-year moratorium on the sale of the drivers to anybody other than Wilson Audio. But what about after the three years are up? You can then buy the same drivers used in Wilson Audio speakers, right? Well, not exactly. Each driver is substantially modified at the factory. Why is this done? Because it's the only way Wilson Audio can get exactly the performance they want from the drivers. I doubt the driver manufacturers would undertake such hand work anyway -- their business is mass producing drivers.

DIYers in particular like to think "There's nothing special about the crossover." Each crossover for a Wilson Audio speaker is potted in a Zero Halliburton aluminum case, which provides some damping and hides the crossover elements. The crossovers are "of various slopes, depending on the application," and this is the extent of the information that Wilson Audio would convey. They wouldn't even let me see the areas in which the crossovers are designed or built. Yes, they definitely have something to hide.

Finally, the finish of Wilson speakers is universally praised, but "Do you want to pay all that money for a nice paint job?" First, there are a few steps that take place before painting to make the speakers look so crisp and attractive. The cabinets are gel-coated and then hand sanded prior to painting, which itself is a 12-step process. Wilson Audio will mix custom colors too, often at no charge to their customers. The day of my visit, a peach-colored WATCH Dog subwoofer was making its way through the factory. Even the standard WilsonGloss color palette is stunning, especially the relatively new gun-metal blue that I saw on a pair of MAXXes. Note to the owner: you have the best-looking speakers I've ever seen.

Manufacturing

A Wilson speaker begins life as sheets of the various materials that are cut out on the company's four-head CNC router. The materials used are very hard, and this takes a toll on the CNC's cutting blades, which wear out quickly. The pieces of the cabinet are joined with advanced adhesives (another area that Wilson Audio has researched extensively), and then the cabinet is cured for seven days, part of which is spent in a large oven. Once the cabinet is properly cured, the bonded joints are said to be stronger than the materials themselves. There are no fasteners used in Wilson Audio speaker cabinets.

While the cabinet is being built, the crossover is also under construction and the drivers are burned in. Wilson has accelerated the process of burning in the drivers by hitting them with a series of tones for 12 hours, which equals a week of heavy playing. Wilson also measures the drivers so precisely that if one in a pair of speakers blows, they don't have to send you a pair of drivers to replace. You will receive an exact match to the blown driver.

After the cabinet has cured, its surface is gel-coated, which produces a cabinet with a seamless appearance. It is this fiberglass outer shell to which the paint will adhere. The gel coat also has to cure, after which it is sanded to remove any abnormalities and meet Wilson Audio's tolerances for their cabinets.

Next comes the painting, followed by more curing, after which the finish is buffed, inspected and buffed some more if required. Customers can still order custom wood-veneer finishes at additional cost, but such orders are rare nowadays. Wilson Audio's visual standards are higher than those in the automotive industry, and the rationale for this made sense to me: cars move and speakers don't, so it's much easier to see any imperfections on speakers. Near the end of my tour, I was shown a few rejected cabinets, and the blemishes were far more slight than you will see on finished products from other manufacturers. But a blemish is a blemish, and Wilson Audio doesn't tolerate them -- or pass them on to customers. If the blemish can't be sanded or buffed out, the cabinet is repainted completely -- or scrapped.

Once the cabinet has passed all inspection, it is frisked -- covered with a cellophane-like film for transit. Some buyers may be tempted to leave this film on their speakers indefinitely, but they shouldn't as it doesn't allow the finish to cure completely and will ruin the paint if not removed.

The next step is for the cabinet to become a loudspeaker. The drivers are affixed, the crossover wired in, and the binding posts added. In the assembly area are exploded drawings of each speaker model, and the sheer number of parts that go into each is staggering. I'm sure these drawings would be prized by DIYers, but they also serve as a reminder that you just can't build a Wilson speaker at home.

The completed speakers are tested, and their measurements are plotted against those of control speakers of each model. If the measurements don't match, the problems are rooted out and corrected. Wilson Audio keeps paperwork on every speaker they've made, so if you need a driver at some point, you'll only have to supply a serial number to get a perfectly matched replacement.

After testing, the speakers are visually inspected again. They are then packed in foam-lined wooden crates for shipping. A pair of WATT/Puppy 6es weighs over 400 pounds in their four crates, but that's nothing compared to the MAXX, which weighs 1100 pounds in five crates, and the Grand SLAMM, which tips the scales at almost a ton in seven crates. But the product that's the greatest headache is the XS subwoofer -- one 700-pound piece that itself is the size of a very large shipping crate. Wilson Audio doesn't promote or advertise the XS at all because of how unwieldy it is to build, pack, ship and install. Yet, the company still sells a fair number of them, to the great misfortune of the folks on the loading dock.

Listening

During my stay in Utah, I was able to hear two Wilson speaker systems I'd never heard before, the MAXX and WAMM. The MAXX resided in the living room of John Giolas, Wilson Audio's marketing director, and was driven by Atma-Sphere MA-1 Mk II mono amps. Other equipment included an Aesthetix Callisto tube preamp, Ayre V-1 CD/DVD player and Transparent Reference XL cables.

John's living room is completely open to his kitchen -- or perhaps it's the kitchen that's open to the living room. The MAXXes dominate the space, which is roughly 16 feet wide and 18 feet deep. The listening seat is 12 feet or so from the speakers, which are over five feet tall. I was expecting to feel like the guy in the Maxell ad -- blown backwards by the force of the sound from such large speakers. But from the first notes of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice. It's All Right" to the jazz and classical pieces John played, the big MAXXes simply disappeared -- and it was startling. I'm used to bookshelf monitors and thinner floorstanders being able to pull off this trick, but never a speaker the size of the Wilson MAXX, which floated images in a immense arc-shaped soundstage that extended well beyond the speaker positions and walls. Tonality was spot-on, and although the speakers taxed the Atma-Sphere OTL amps down low, the bass had more than respectable oomph. John attributed the disappearing act to the time and phase alignment of the MAXX, which is adjustable in 39 increments. No matter what the reason, this system was one of the very best I've heard anywhere.

I was also treated to more music at David and Sheryl Lee Wilson's home. A demonstration of the new Sophia preceded listening to Wilson Audio's flagship, the $225,000 dynamic/electrostatic WAMM system, 53 of which are in existence. The Wilsons' listening room is immense -- nearly 30' x 40' -- and has a cathedral ceiling with absorbers built in to further improve acoustics. On one end of the room is a Yamaha grand piano, which was used as a reference for the Sophia demo, and on the other the WAMM towers -- two for each channel -- driven by Mark Levinson No.33 amplifiers that are housed in their own room with separate ventilation and 220V power lines. Other equipment included an Audio Research preamp and Krell CD player, and cables from Transparent. Equipment is one thing, but the extent to which the Wilsons have gone to make a home for their audio system is another -- and unprecedented in my experience.

Describing the sound of the WAMM system in the Wilsons' big room in the terms we reviewers use is fruitless -- it exceeds all benchmarks by wide margins. Think you've encountered a HUGE soundstage? You haven't. Think you've heard scads of detail? You haven't. Think you've heard tremendous bass depth, power, and slam? Erase that thought. The WAMM is high-end audio on the very most exalted level. It melts away walls, reveals all character of upstream equipment, conveys the beauty of a recording and the nature of its venue, and completely involves listeners in the music. Its sound in the Wilsons' room is better than any reproduction I've heard regardless of technology or software. A fitting end to the day was listening to Guy Clark sing "Stuff that Works" on the WAMM system. Clark was as large as life and standing, it seemed, on the balcony outside the Wilsons' listening room. It worked for me.

It was a treat to listen to both the WAMM and MAXX, but no more so than getting an inside look at how Wilson Audio makes its speakers. High-end audio is about pushing the envelope, but it seems clear that Wilson Audio has its sights set beyond this -- to perfect the art and science of making high-performance loudspeakers.