"Like synaesthesia, Sven can remember sound photographically. He can see its harmonic texture as colour. By storing that precise colour to memory, he can vividly recall his experience in the acoustic sound field of incredible live performances even months later. Each Boenicke speaker in its development stage is fine-tuned with his own recordings. The same holds true for our electronics, cables and power distribution solutions. Sven uses his recall of the concert hall reality as the only valid reference to ensure the tuning and sonic balance of all Boenicke products. From time to time we demonstrate this process to interested parties. In 2010 during a Vienna show exhibit for example, we performed live music and played back the recording over our system immediately afterwards. We're happy if we get somewhere in the vicinity of 90% of the original sound. That's a value which most professionals would dismiss as an abstract impossibility."
Who eight my tweaks? Like all Boenickes, the W Ate comes in good, better and best flavours. It's always a 77.6 x 11.4 x 26cm slice of tree. From bottom to top, it's kitted out with a 6.5" long-throw Tang Band woofer tuned to 28Hz without any electrical crossover; a 4" custom Tang Band paper cone mid/woofer on a 1st-order low pass without a high pass but an apple-tree phase plug and maple wood cone; a 3" Fountek F85 widebander with unique 8cm electromechanical parallel spiral resonator from Dr. Volker Bajorat of Clockword Audio on a 1st-order high pass; then orientation-optimized silk-wrapped stranded Litz hookup wiring, WBT NextGen binding posts and a 1" Monacor DT-25N ambient rear tweeter. The lot weighs a happy ~10 kg/ea. depending on version and wood type.
Ingredients for one W8 SE+.
To break down 'depending', there's ash, oak, maple and cherry, with oak alone in four different stains. The SE version adds a 6cm parallel resonator on the widebander, a 16cm parallel resonator on the mid/woofer, latest-gen Bybee Quantum Purifiers, a proprietary phase linearization network, a Duelund tinned copper foil 0.01µF bypass capacitor then includes the Swing Base shown above. Atop that, the SE+ adds a 16cm spiral resonator to both widebander and mid/woofer in parallel and series, a Steinmusic Speaker Match Signature, Harmonix Tuning Bases on the widebander, a Mundorf silver/gold oil-filled main capacitor on the widebander with a Duelund tinned copper foil 0.01µF bypass capacitor plus a Mundorf silver/gold oil-filled capacitor on the rear tweeter.
With Boenicke, the customer has options. It's probably as close as standard production can come to one-up custom. To get properly fancy, the word we're looking for is bespoke. Add Swiss manufacture. We're clearly not in Kansas anymore. If all the talk of purist concert recordings had you feel proper artsy if perhaps also a bit fartsy, the above photo shows how Sven is just as at home in a club where high SPL liquefy the brains of rave crowds as he is in an actual home.
From the Image Hifi review.
For the current W13 range topper—drivers and bass amplifier above—that means two force-cancelling 13" long-throw woofers with ultra-hard injection-moulded diaphragms in a sealed chamber; per side. That's the combined surface area of one 26" mega woofer; or two 18" woofers. Spread out across four 13" units instead, those JL Audio car-audio bass pumps are driven by 2 x 350W class D modules with programmable DSP and 4 user-selectable presets for optimal integration in any listening room. So Boenickes and parties do live on the same block. It needn't be all high-brow civility. Getting down is with the program as well. Because some Boenicke models aren't the easiest to drive, Sven's first amplifier—CHF 2'428 sold direct only—dishes out 300wpc/8Ω as the positively puny P1, a heavily tweaked class D Powersoft affair. DAC, preamp and integrated to follow, cables and power distributor available already. Soon Boenicke clients will be able to assembly a complete one-brand system minus the source.
