WILSON AUDIO Sophia 2
Floorstanding loudspeakers
In Wilson Audio they have been always promoting extremely strict production tolerances. They say they use two types of soldering metal depending on which frequencies should be passed through the join, and also that internal cables are twisted to a certain number of twists. Has this all been reflected in how their speakers sound?
Function and form
The Sophia 2 is a three-way speaker. A 25cm woofer is all-aluminum, with black lacquered cone, and it is supported by a rear-firing reflex port. The port is a 20cm long aluminum pipe of 75mm diameter). The upper part of the Sophia 2 is lanted towards the back to achieve better time alignment. The shapes of the speaker are not really anti-diffractional so Wilson Audio uses felt padding to minimize reflections of drivers. The tweeter (titanium dome sourced from French Focal) sits in additional flushed felt material too. The midrange driver was designed in Wilson Audio-ScanSpeak cooperation and has a 17cm paper cone. Crossovers are thermally stabilized by being encapsulated in resin, which makes them irrepairable. No need to say that the thermal stability is only one reason for hiding the topology from curious eyes.
The Sophia 2 uses Wilson's new reinforced polymer composite material for enclosures to achieve more intertness and rigidity than the previous version of the Sophia.
Bass management
The Sophia 2s were very physical sounding speakers. The sound was conveyed in its wholeness, completely seamlessly. The bass was deep and textured, with a lot of punch. It was like an accurately set-up subwoofer was connected.
Macrodynamics were where these speakers did excel - the climbs from pianissimos to fortissimos were beautifully outlined, and sonic eruptions arrived with great contrasts and articulated punch. It was the sound that was addictive - listening to "normal" speakers afterwards resulted into somewhat flat experience.
Clarity & delicacy
Lyrical parts had delicacy and fine resolution, still I felt that the titanium dome tweeter was a step down from the Focal's beryllium tweeters (which the French guys keep for themselves). The highs, though transparent and open, missed the textures that I am used to with the best tweeters available today.
Tonal accuracy
When I comparred the Sophia 2s to my resident WATT/Puppy 8 I found the ssential difference: the former was better for music, the latter was better for analysis. The WATT/Puppys, alike now legendary MAXX and Grand SLAMM models are perhaps truer to the source, yet it does not mean the truth is always more pleasure to listen to. The Sophia 2s showed a better sense for musicality than any of those speakers.
Then what are the descriptors I would use for the Sophia 2s? Hard hitting, detailed, true to music, dynamic, rock solid, tonally richer than other Wilson's speakers. Some dealers say that the Sophia 2s can play equally good with non-audiophile amplifiers - I had no opportunity to test it but see no reason why they should not.
Spatial resolution
Everything I heard from the Sophia 2s happened in real space and real time. The extremely solid sound is the natural outcome of great frequency and time coherence of the speakers as well as it owns a lot to rigidity of the enclosures - what I heard was as if the drivers were mounted directly into a massive concrete wall. The spatial focus of the Sophia 2s was very precise and it was completely independent of how loud I played. The more complex a recording was the better it sounded through the Sophia 2s.
Recommended resellers
Finale Audio, Praha, +420 605 419 162
Manufacturer's website: http://www.wilsonaudio.com
Associated components
- Sources: Sony XA9000ES
- Amplifiers: Audio Research LS17, HD220 and Reference 110 preamplifiers and power amplifiers
- Interconnects and speaker cables: Wireworld Gold Eclipse 5
- Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy 8, Verity Audio Lohengrin II
Gallery
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