Wilson Audio Specialties Alexx V
The Wilson Audio Specialties Alexx V ($135,000– $151,000/pair) is the biggest, heaviest, most expensive loudspeaker I’ve had in my listening room. It replaces the original Alexx in Wilson’s lineup; Michael Fremer reviewed the earlier Alexx,1 bought it, and owned it until replacing it recently with the Wilson Chronosonic XVX.
The V in the name—Alexx V—isn’t the Roman number five; rather, it’s a reference to Wilson’s most recent proprietary composite material, “V.” But more is new here than a new material. Wilson has recast its second-largest regular-production speaker along the lines of its largest, the Chronosonic XVX.2 The similarity is most obvious in the opengantry design that the new Alexx inherited from the XVX. Wilson claims—and I believe—that this improves the sound because pressure waves were trapped by the semi-enclosed areas enfolded by the original Alexx’s solid-sided gantry. The new design also allows for somewhat finer adjustment of the higher-frequency drivers: The tweeter can now be adjusted to within1/16 ", which corresponds to less than 5μs of travel time for sound—surely below the ear’s time-resolution.
Wilson has long put much stock in the composite materials they make their cabinets from. X-Material, the primary material used in Wilson cabinets, is “extremely monotonic and damped in its response,” according to Wilson marketing materials. I’m not sure what “monotonic” means in this context—perhaps that the energy it absorbs is broadband, so it doesn’t impose specific colorations on the sound. (Stereophile’s measurements over the years have found Wilson’s X-Material cabinets to be admirably free from resonant energy.) The S-Material, which is used for the company’s front baffles, “provides a neutral and natural surface from which music can launch,” according to Wilson literature. Why does a front baffle need to have different properties than the rest of the speaker cabinet? I’m not sure; it could be as simple as being easier to machine, or engineered to hold screws better for easier, more permanent driver-mounting.3
The new V-Material, which is used where two parts of the cabinet come together, “behaves like a vibration absorber,” according to Wilson. It is used in the top panel of the woofer cabinet, where the objective, clearly, is to keep vibrations from the woofer cabinet from reaching the gantry and the lowest gantry-mounted driver. Wilson also uses the V-Material in
