It’s no surprise that the Wilson Audio rooms were buzzing. Both Sheryl Lee Wilson and her late husband Dave’s successor, son Daryl, were on hand to unveil, in passive display, the new Chronosonic XVX loudspeaker ($329,000/pair, seen to Daryl’s right). Shipping to dealers now—I hope to cover its Pacific Northwest unveiling in mid-November at Seattle’s Definitive Audio—the speaker is intended for music lovers who wish they could fit its big brother, the WAMM Master Chronosonic ($850,000/pair), in their listening spaces. (The speaker, with spikes, is close to Daryl’s 6’4” height.)
While the XVX builds on the WAMM Master Chronosonic (pictured on the left), which Dave considered his magnum opus, it also includes new Y material below some of its drivers and a new 7” Alnico QuadraMag midrange driver. That driver, originally codeveloped by Dave Wilson and Vern Credille, remained unfinished at the time of Dave’s death. The speaker also offers adjustable built-in lighting and a leveler for easier calibration. It is also available in a new pearl finish, as well as a range of colors that I find quite pleasing.
In the next room, master-engineer-cum-DJ Peter McGrath was alternating some of his priceless live recordings with other tracks designed to woo and wow. “These speakers always have a lifelike sound,” the man next to me whispered to his daughter as we heard Wilson’s Sasha DAW loudspeaker system ($37,900/pair), along with 2 Wilson Watch Dog passive subwoofers ($10,000 each) and a Watch stereo crossover controller ($4500), sing with VTL’s S-400 Series II 300-Watt stereo amplifier ($37,500 each) and TL-7.5 Series III preamplifier ($30,000). Not to be slighted were a dCS Vivaldi One DAC/transport ($79,998), Shunyata Audio power cabling and conditioning, and a Grand Prix Audio Monza 4-shelf equipment rack ($19,000—review coming).
The sound was warm, smooth, all-of-a-piece, and as musical as it gets. I felt cradled in warm embrace as I listened to McGrath’s quarter-century–old recording of clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and his Tashi Quartet perform the sublime Larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. Tashi played as though they were a single living organism. If you’re at the show (or near it), try to get to this room to hear this recording, which has been remastered with MQA. The transformation of four players into one is alchemy at its best.
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