“When the fundamentals of a design are overwhelmingly correct, it is possible to get improvements paying attention to the small details. From that point on, an accumulation of small improvements translates into significant overall benefits.” This is how the prestigious British specialized critic assessed, in the now distant year 2007 Martin Colloms the latest version, called System 8, of what is undoubtedly one of the High End speaker systems most iconic in history of High End audio: that formed by compact monitors WATT and its dedicated subwoofers puppy of the American Wilson Audio. Now, coinciding with the celebration of 50th anniversary of the foundation from the Utah brand, The WATT/Puppy, inspired by the unique legacy of a product that was marketed from 1986 to 2011, is presented simply and simply as the WATT/Puppy that David Wilson, its mythical creator, would have created today.
Thus, thirteen years after the “retirement” of the aforementioned System 8, Wilson Audio’s new proposal consists of two enclosures (both bass-reflex) built with the most refined versions of the exclusive Material-X, Material-S and Material-V of the American company in, respectively, the internal reinforcements/external enclosureshe coupling from the midrange speaker to the front panel of the WATT monitor and the Upper area of the Puppy subwoofer (which also acts as the WATT vibration dissipation interface). As always at Wilson Audio, each of these unique materials has been meticulously chosen for their specific characteristics in terms of benefitswhether it is vibration control or pure sound quality, in order to maximize musicality from a relatively compact format. The same philosophy is applied in the transducersincorporating The WATT/Puppy from the sophisticated rear-chambered 25mm textile dome tweeter Convergent Synergy Carbon (CSC), to the ultra-musical 178mm midrange driver with magnetic motor QuadraMag and AlNiCo (Aluminium-Nickel-Cobalt) magnet, without forgetting two woofers with 203 mm cellulose composite cone.
The management of the complex is entrusted to a elaborate crossover filter in which the presence of AudioCapX-WA multisection capacitorsmanufactured (and hand finished) by the division RelCaps from Wilson Audio in its own facilities with latest generation machinery tailor-made, in order to achieve the highest in precision, complexity, coherence and sound quality. The WATT/Puppy, which rests on sophisticated adjustable metal cones, is completed with metal tips located in the rear area of the base of the WATT monitor, whose mission is to achieve alignment in the temporal domain as accurate as possibleto which we must add a bubble level in the upper area of the Puppy subwoofer to optimize leveling of the assembly during its installation. The cherry on top of this absolute reference speaker system is an elegant metal medallion located next to the “tuning” resistors of the connection panel, which throughout 2024 will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Wilson Audio.
