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More tech. Part of the W5's grown-up act is due to its sidefiring mid/woofer. That deliberately involves the room higher up than a frontal orientation would. Unlike full Duevel-type omnis with their upfiring tweeters, Boenicke's front-fire 'tweeter' with thrice the bandwidth of most maintains classic image specificity. The sound is ultra spacious but also focused in even cinerama-wide setups. Unlike my fully omnipolar German Physiks HRS-120 or Sven's own 'V twin' B10, the W5's option to run its woofers inward avoids the nearer sidewall. That makes for exceptionally unfussy placement. Plunk 'em down, hit play, beam up.* The low crossover point at the audible range's midpoint
keeps the critical presence region free of filter phase shift and dispersion differentials. This eliminates patchwork reminders in our hearing's most sensitive window. That window is squeaky clean to support the vast gushing gestalt. To unleash it fully does require slightly higher levels than speakers with significantly higher sensitivity. 45dB whisper levels aren't as keen early risers as they are over my soundkaos Wave 40 for example. Above 50dB however the W5 gets going fully.
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* Those curious to learn more about this topic might read Siegfried Linkwitz as one of our most famous loudspeaker theoreticians. His DIY Pluto design was recently licensed to Chinese LzAudio for a turnkey version [above]. It combines a front-firing tweeter with an upfiring mid/woofer for a similar combination of directional tweeter + omni rest.
Chasing flavor. Tone. Musicians labor hard to develop their own. David Sanborn's sax sounds recognizably different from Kenny G's or Jan Garbarek's. David Oistrakh's violin wasn't Anne-Sophie Mutter's. But what do we mean when a speaker 'has tone'? Is it its own instrument? If so, what happened to its role as neutral messenger? Didn't it turn interpreter whose own personality overlays the report? In ultimate absolute terms, indeed. Back on terra firma meanwhile it's a fact that playback sounds tonally bleached, thin and bereft of the fleshiness and color against what one hears in a live venue. So though it's true that a speaker with tone will diminish the full scope of recorded tonal differences—where most albums sound from poor to mediocre—it also creates better more substantial tone for each and every recording. We're down to the perennial argument. It pits truth against beauty whilst the opposition insists that beauty is truth. To bypass all of the concomitant abstractions, let's ask the really relevant question. Would you rather be right by owning the more honest system that 'tells all' to sound too lean most of the time; or feel good because your system is the more enjoyable?
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The 3 elements. The W5 doesn't require exotic electronics to be enjoyable. At $1.695 delivered, the Swiss Goldmund Job 225 amp is too advanced—transparent, fast and honest—to compensate for price-matched speaker shortcomings. Its DC-coupled 200kHz circuit suffers no fools. By not injecting deliberate harmonic distortion as we'd do with most valve amps, the 225 was very good 'laboratory' gear for this assessment. Not turning Kate Moss into Sophia Loren would isolate the W5's built-in tonefulness. The best way to verbally capture it is talking of steel, wood and air. Steel represents the leading edge. It is sharpest with plucked strings, percussion and staccato brass. Undue emphasis on that aspect gets needly like hail on a tin roof. Wood represents what happens right after a transient. A string activates its resonant body, a compressed drum skin energizes its container, a cymbal oscillates. Undue emphasis on that aspect dulls our time-keeping beats with cotton wadding. The related polarities are hard/soft, thin/thick and fast/slow.
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with Goldmund Job 225
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Whilst over the Crayon CFA-1.2 the Job 225 shifted this balance forward —more steel, less wood—it still didn't dry out a concert piano to have it degrade into a tinkly hollow synth facsimile. Not only was there sufficient woodiness, the exceptionally spacious presentation (alert: gastro image coming) folded in virtual beaten egg whites. Even on percussion madness tracks where four darbukas invoke machine gun splatter without any melodic instrument, this aerated fluffiness had space illuminated by halos of recorded reflections that decayed around individual tones. That's how the W5 remained entertaining and enjoyable even with amplifiers on the metallic dry side. It didn't blunt PRaT by overdoing wood like a vintage Sonus faber might have. It resolved an unusually high degree of decays to add our vital third element of air which like an afterburner kicks in at the end of a note. With the 225's very low self noise for heightened micro recovery, the W5 laid bare a plethora of spatial cues against truly enormous depth. It was this element of space/air which counteracted any potential steeliness from leaner highly accelerated preceding electronics.
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Space is the place where the W5 hangs its shingle.
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The W5's built-in tonefulness thus isn't overdone woodiness or resonant action from box talk. It's a combo of deliberate very benign room involvement and far-above-average retrieval of recorded ambiance. Where big speakers stir up <200Hz mud which clouds over midband transparency and loads the room, the W5's micro detail recovery clearly benefited from not loading the room. This really should have normal home dwellers question the wisdom of big boxes. The W5's refusal to do fussy is a breath of fresh air and a big part of its guaranteed satisfaction appeal. I don't see how you could possibly screw up with these. On paper they could seem priced steeply for a small box but then a Magico Q1 would make you faint. Once you hear a W5, the very grown-up performance more than justifies the sticker.
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Vis-à-vis my other favorite small not silly-priced speaker and to these eyes, the W5 on its stand looks rather better than the Strada2 whose vertical mounting requires a quite taller stilt to get its tweeter on ear level. Both designs are brilliant super airy soundstagers of high precision. On flavor the Gallo is more electrostatic and transient optimized. The Boenicke has the more robust fleshy tone. In a big system both want a subwoofer but the Swiss needs it less or later (i.e. contingent on room size and how bass heavy your music gets). High power from AURALiC's Merak monos increased grippiness on the mid/woofer loaded into such tight quarters. Here the shift potential isn't primarily about extension (~60Hz in room) but power region impact. |
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Matching force-cancelling twin woofer Boenicke sub with PowerSoft electronics module
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Some of my favorite party music has Andy Narell's calypso steel drums work it out with piano, bass and drums. That type fare enjoys a boost of vigor from muscle amps because the octave right above the subwoofer increases in kick impact. On raw SPL and color even the feisty $629 Clones Audio 25i integrated had me fully covered. I'm repeating myself but the W5 really is the antithesis of high maintenance. For hi-rez whose increased data density usually equates to more audible space and richer timbres, the W5 really cottoned to the added information. It drew the massed strings of Rachel Podger's Vivaldi with beautiful body and the kind of warmth that derives not from hooded treble, blunted transients or high THD but recovered venue acoustics mixed with our own and lower than usual electronic grit and grain.
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W5 = 5-way winning. On price/performance ratio, interior decorator approval, ease of setup on both desktop and in free space, unfussy embrace of affordable class D amplification and advanced sonics—and despite its very civilized Swiss manners—Sven Boenicke's smallest has a fierce Napoleon complex. It exhibits the same sonic core values and virtues as the bigger stable mates, eclipses them on soundstaging and especially in short-wall setups of average width can give better performance if supplemented by a subwoofer. The W5 is a shockingly successful distillation of signature Boenicke traits which include solid-wood construction, minimalist crossovers and ultra-narrow baffles with sidefiring mid/woofers.
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No more monkey business. Its compact size and driver artillery pass right under macho radars of course. As anyone visiting Sven's Basel showroom would see, these things can flood a huge space at solid levels without flinching. But few will have faith without such proof. Here dealers won't exactly do themselves favors either. Playing these will risk having far pricier fare look and sound antiquated. Not that this review will make much of a dent. Preconceptions about loudspeakers and what's actually required are too deeply engrained.
The W5 is ahead of that curve. Prospective owners thus must take a leap of faith. Even auditions can bring up reflexive doubts when accumulated audiophile knowledge refutes the naked evidence staring it smack in the face. Those into monkey coffins must continue their sad ways then. Happy trails. But to appropriate from a famous Zen koan about a goose in a bottle, with the W5 now the monkey is simply out. And like it says on the terminal plate above, that leaves us with Swiss Happiness in a—tiny—Box. Why put the monkey back in? |
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