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The upshot: Boenicke's Model W20SE with the new Ennemoser drivers is the first speaker I've come across in Chardonne which I consider the Tango R's equal. This involves obvious bi-directionality. The French 5-driver 3-way really does equal the coherence of a superior widebander. And, this widebander truly is as non-spotty, subjectively linear and broad-shouldered of bandwidth as the big multi-way. Aleksandar Radisavljevic's Raal ribbon with Serge Schmidlin transformer competes directly against Franck Tchang's Esotar clone enhanced by his installed trios of custom Platinum, gold and silver resonators. On paper predictions, the ribbon's 100kHz extension should demolish anything made of pedestrian cloth. Alas, my 47-year old ears either can no longer correlate that with an audible advantage; or, the resonators offset the ribbon's theoretical gain in speed and transparency. Either way, you simply do not hear this ribbon tweeter. It disappears entirely like pure air. That's the finest of compliments - literally.

Where the W20SE and Tango diverge is in the bass. With triple front-firing eights, the Tango's artillery is heavier, its transient bass impact more tactile. But there's a shadow side. Even as sizable a space as mine can approach occasional overload conditions with truly endowed fare where low bass gets too heavy. Then it starts to impinge on the mid band. Sven Boenicke uses two eights but the upfiring one interact first and primarily with the ceiling rather than rear wall. This likely diffuses certain room interactions. That's applying the same kind of thinking which proposes that two asymmetrically placed smaller subwoofers are superior to one single large one by producing more even room coverage. With the W20SE, I got into the bottom octave without overload conflict.

Like the Tango, the W20SE needs no tubes to 'make' tone. A superior transistor chain like Esoteric's UX-1 into the Yamamoto YDA-01 converter into the Esoteric C-03 and FirstWatt F5 all wired up with LiveLine arguably shows more true finesse in the recorded harmonic domain than many additive tubes. Dynamically, neither of these speakers has quite the accelerated spunk and feistiness of Zu's Essence. Conversely, the American operates on a clearly lower rung of resolving power and is far more colored. Considering price discrepancies, no shame is involved.


Aiming high: Specific strengths of Boenicke's design choices are soundstaging and separation. Those qualities support and educate each other. Separation also involves being able to tell, instantaneously, whenever two or more instruments play in sly unison to deliberately mix their harmonics into a new hybrid timbre. Be it octave-doubled bassoon and clarinet, crafty whistling with accordeon, a shepherd's flute with violin whose vibrato matches the woodwind's, there's no confusion on what's what. This demands high-level harmonic fidelity which the W20SE is expertly tuned for.

Localization cues for image placement are very acute but not sharp because this tweeter isn't. Nothing wavers or fluctuates in size. There are no phantom images around the performers. Apparent size tracks the instruments properly. A piano is obviously larger than a guitar, a guitar broader than a trumpet bell. The speakers truly dissolve as apparent sound sources and the stage wraps behind them to make the sidewalls the limiting factor. In this disappearance act of a good-sized speaker, the now discontinued Green Mountain Audio Continuum 3 also ranked highly.


Continuity or coherence; it's another virtue and mostly relevant by what it doesn't do. It's not a spectacular foreground quality but rather, a quiet background affair, an undercurrent or context. A pianist for example who traverses the entire breadth of the keyboard up and down encounters no texture transitions. Of course there shouldn't be any but simply being truthful is plain and ordinary. It takes forsaking ordinariness for something spectacular by way of a disturbed design before the virtue of coherence is underscored and finds itself more consciously validated. (Those suspicious of blending a ribbon with an 8-incher might have a point were it not for the very shallow and hence broad transition zone.)
The upshot's reverberations: It's easy to get suckered into buying philosophies hook, line and sinker. Every designer has a philosophy and needs it to set firm goals and determine a particular way to achieve them. To Sven Boenicke, solid wood is religion. He must handle the challenges and hand labor involved, his customers should contemplate the faint chance that solid wood could develop minor cosmetic* cracks over time. As somebody clearly newer to the business who at present likely builds to order, I cannot predict what kind of lead times a W20SE from Sven Boenicke might involve. One of his first tasks will be to source a reliable supply of his new champion widebander. He assures us that whatever his final choice of builder, it'll be something at least as good as what I tested if not better. Prospective European customers would probably do well to book a personal audition in Basel to gather confidence and insure satisfaction for what ideally should become a heirloom-type acquisition.

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* The splicing of multiple staves into planks which are then stacked and bonded to build up a block of the necessary cross section as determined by baffle and depth makes for such thick walls that functional (sound-leaking) cracks should never develop. According to the designer, the hairline cracks documented on the previous page were the first and only such incident on present record.
Different means can arrive at very similar destinations. It's an oft-quoted audio truism which nonetheless wears thin on most who lack the requisite opportunities to practice this insight. In today's comparison against the French Acoustic System Int. Tango R, what the curved MDF carcass braced and plinthed in solid Walnut
accomplished vs. the scalloped-out solid body of softer wood was a case in point. Ditto for how the first mated to its 3-way 1st-order network with five dynamic drivers breathing through the spine versus how the 'zero-order' paralleled widebanders and auxiliary ribbon tweeter on a 1st-order hi-pass came together. Whether you ultimately prefer the high-gloss premium-veneer boat hull look with the rakish black spine or the artisanal oiled soft Spruce Fir enclosure is a matter of vanilla and strawberry, black coffee versus cream and sugar. Electrically, the French is a perfectly linear 6-ohm load below 1kHz while the Swiss operates at 3 ohms. The voltage sensitivity spec of the Boenicke is 3dB higher.
In either case you'll get spectacularly refined treble absentee of any artifice; soundstaging of the they're-gone sort without any apparent acoustical sources; utter coherence; superb but organic resolution aka intelligibility; and very extended though quantitatively not exactly identical bass. Both speakers are highly tweaked specimens of refined reference caliber whose designers are advanced listeners. Through trial and error, they have learned how to translate what's important to them into products that demonstrate the desired attributes. Neither speaker is for small or even medium spaces. As real estate shrinks, the Tango's even more substantial bass will become problematic sooner than the W20SE.


The final but far from least matter -- the back-breaking camel's straw perhaps -- is wallet squeak. The young Swiss man will charge you twice what the already accomplished Vietnamese now living in Paris does. Given my speakers and an eyes-closed assessment alone, this part of the equation naturally had no pull. It could dilute once your eyes open and you consider the entire Boenicke Audio concept. Does it resonate? Are you happy to buy into the entire philosophy plus subsidizing a very small cottage-industry player? If so, I honestly haven't come across anything in my audiophile career which combined these particular ingredients at this level of execution. X then marks the spot. And some will sign their Wilhelm Tell right next to it...

Quality of packing: Intended wooden crates weren't ready yet and loaners were dispatched in car wrapped in blankets.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: Not known but size and weight clearly make this a two-person job.
Condition of component received: Flawed finish.
Completeness of delivery: There are no grills. Ball-bearing footers (5 per speaker) were included.
Quality of owner's manual: None was provided.
Ease of assembly: None required but setting up the speakers on their intended 5-point bearings could require leveling which the design presently does not account for.
Website comments: Sparse but stylish.
Human interactions: Prompt communications, multiple delays in producing the loaners which then weren't cosmetically perfect.
Pricing: Twice what the performance demands elsewhere.
Final comments & suggestions: Perfectionist concept meets what still seem early manufacturing days. Unique but very persuasive implementation of the widebander + tweeter ideal that's truly wide bandwidth and subjectively linear. Minimalist high-pass network uses the most expensive parts extant. This design demands a large space and will perform best well removed from boundaries. Designer has them set up in a very large room with enormous sidewall clearances.
Boenicke Audio website