![]() ![]() Hugh came out and, after chatting a bit, sat down and listened to a few seconds of the CD I had playing. If you buy a pair of Wilson speakers in the Bay Area, Hugh is the guy who will appear in your living room. It was at that point that California announced a temporary relaxation of the lockdown, which coincided with the availability of Hugh Fountain, the owner of Music Lovers in Berkeley and a master at setting up Wilsons. I had them sounding great and had just about convinced myself that I could set up Wilson speakers. Starting with the SabrinaX's in those spots, I spent three long afternoon/evening sessions moving them in increments of between a half and two inches. I did have a starting point: the spots where Wilson's Peter McGrath had located the Yvettes, which I reviewed in May 2019, Wilson's other, slightly larger one-box speaker. I've been setting up speakers for a long time, but not Wilsons. Unfortunately, the SabrinaX's showed up in the middle of COVID shutdowns here in California, so I was on my own. Wilson believes that you really do need to have an experienced dealer set up their speakers. Capacitors produced in-house could be made to achieve a custom value, allowing a single capacitor to be used in the crossover rather than several, creating a simpler circuit and shortening the signal path. The capacitors used in the SabrinaX are of the same construction as those used in the XVXwhich was the first speaker to use a capacitor produced in-house after Wilson bought Reliable Capacitor. One component that's always developed specifically for each model is the crossover. The SabrinaX's tweeter is the Mark V version of the 1" Convergent Synergy silk-dome tweeter, which is shared with the Sasha DAW, the new flagship XVX, and the WAMM Master Chronosonic. The cabinet is unique to it, of coursealthough it shares much technology with other Wilson cabinetsbut nearly everything else is shared. The SabrinaX is a product of that approach. The most expensive models use the same components as the least expensive onesjust more of those components plus additional technologies and a far more optimized design. Put another way, Wilson Audio knows how they want their speakers to sound and, to the extent possible, they want all their speakers to sound that way. The objectives, he told me, haven't changed since the company's founding. The reason it works, Daryl Wilson says, is because everything they do is based on three sonic objectives: dynamics, harmonic expression, andmore recentlymicrodetail. The majority of the development effort is focused from the start on things that will be used in all, or at least several, of their loudspeaker models. Looking at Wilson Audio's products, it is natural to assume that they use a trickle-down approach, but that's not really how it works. Subsequently, the new technologies trickle down to other models, each one incorporating a subset appropriate to its price point. Typically, it's a flagship product that functions as the impetus, target, and first deployment of the new technologies. The process begins with the development of a suite of new technologies, capabilities, components, or whatever the relevant entities might be. Many companies in high-end audio and elsewhere use a trickle-down approach to advance their products.
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