On March 3, Bill Peugh, a sales director at Wilson Audio, showed up at my house to install a pair of Sabrina V loudspeakers that had arrived beforehand. Four weeks later, SoundStage! chief videographer Chris Chitaroni and I flew down to Wilson Audio’s factory in Provo, Utah—not to learn about the Sabrina V, which, at $28,000 per pair in the US, is the company’s least-expensive floorstanding loudspeaker, but for a preview of its newest flagship model, the Autobiography, which clocks in at almost US$800,000 per pair. There’s a video that we shot at the factory on our YouTube channel right now, focusing on the Autobiography’s design details, and there will soon be another about how the speaker is made.
Bill Peugh explaining how the Wilson Audio setup procedure works
For those who don’t know, Wilson Audio’s thing is producing ultra-high-end loudspeakers for those who can afford them. The company has been in business for 54 years, but it didn’t start out as a loudspeaker maker. Founder David Wilson, who passed away in 2018, created it as a recording company; that pursuit eventually morphed into him creating speakers to help him with tasks like monitoring and mixing. Those speakers grew popular with consumers and became the company’s sole focus. After doing some learning over the four weeks spanning Bill’s arrival to my visit to Provo, it’s now apparent to me why Wilson Audio is probably the best in the world when it comes to serving its specific clientele.
Sabrina V setup
I didn’t ask Bill to come to my home. In fact, I rarely like having someone from a company set up gear in my listening space. I’m usually capable of doing this myself, especially with a modest-sized speaker like the Sabrina V. But the crew at Wilson Audio insisted, and I relented.
As I got to watch Bill set up the speakers and talk to him, I quickly realized why it was a good idea to accede to their request. His setup process was exhaustive, with the express purpose of optimizing the speakers in the room I chose for this project: my living room, not my main listening room. I chose that space because I wanted the Sabrina V for both aesthetics and sonics, something I’ll detail on this site in an upcoming System One column. Bill’s goal was simple: make sure the speakers sounded the way Wilson Audio intended in that room.
Bill Peugh fine-tuning
He told me that if I chose to move them afterward, that was fine. But by setting them up himself, he established a baseline—sound that met his approval and, by extension, Wilson Audio’s, because the process he followed was developed by David Wilson himself. Their setting them up would also eliminate the easy out of someone coming back at me later and saying, “You must’ve set them up wrong.”
I was aware that Wilson Audio has long emphasized proper setup through its dealer network—particularly for its larger and more-expensive models—but seeing that same level of care applied to its least-expensive floorstanding speaker drove the point home in a different way. Every Wilson Audio customer, regardless of the speaker they purchase, is supposed to receive this level of setup service through an authorized dealer—it’s a contracted requirement—who in turn has been trained by Wilson Audio.
That stood out to me because, on the whole, customer service in the hi‑fi industry can be abysmal. Not always—but often enough. Customers are frequently handed products and left to fend for themselves.
In fact, there’s a well-known speaker company that, under its previous leadership, wanted to send me a pair of large, heavy loudspeakers that I knew I’d have trouble not only setting up, but also getting into my main listening room in the first place. This was a time when I actually needed help. When I raised my concerns, the owner didn’t care. It was only when I said, “There’s a big difference between a couple of crates being forklifted out of your factory’s shipping-dock door—where you don’t care what gets broken—and me trying to get them into my house and installed safely,” that it landed. Suffice it to say that the speakers never arrived, because the owner wasn’t prepared to deal with that reality for me or, more importantly, for the company’s customers—and it’s no wonder he’s not the owner anymore.
The Sabrina Vs installed
Size is one thing, but the fact that Wilson does this for all its speakers—not just the big ones—is not just good; it’s great. As I said, the Sabrina V isn’t that large, but that’s beside the point. What stuck with me was something Bill said when I expressed surprise about their setup service: “These are $28,000; that’s not cheap. Customers should expect service.” I agree—but they should also expect great sound, which is something you’ll be able to read about in my System One column toward summertime.
Autobiography introduction
Wilson Audio’s CEO is David Wilson’s son Daryl Wilson. When Daryl took over the company—including taking a leadership role in product development—there were questions swirling around the industry as to whether he could maintain the success his father had achieved. Today, it’s clear that he has; in some ways, I think he’s improved things.
Daryl Wilson with the Autobiography loudspeaker
I won’t get into the nuts and bolts of how Wilson Audio runs, but I’d visited the company twice pre-2010 and have visited three times now post-2022. As far as I can tell, the company is larger than it’s ever been, yet it still has a good number of staff members who were there during those earlier visits. Daryl Wilson told me that the average employee tenure is 12 years and that a large number of employees—particularly in manufacturing—are family members, not unlike him. Staff I’ve talked to praise his management style.
For the customer, it goes beyond that. One thing that stood out—both on this visit and previous ones, as well as with the Sabrina Vs now gracing my living room—was the level of finish of the products. Wilson Audio speakers don’t just sound like high-end products; they look like luxury products. The cabinetry—which can range from the simple, elegant look of the Sabrina V to the otherworldly look of the flagship models, which will undoubtedly have admirers and detractors—paintwork, and overall presentation are handled with a level of care that’s more in line with luxury goods than typical audio equipment, and that’s clearly intentional.
Furthermore, new products have been coming out consistently in recent years. The Sabrina V, whose design Daryl Wilson oversaw, is the latest iteration of the original Sabrina, which David Wilson released in 2015. Last year’s 50th-anniversary version of the WATT/Puppy floorstander, again with Daryl leading the design process, is a modern recreation of what many—including me—consider to be David Wilson’s most iconic design, which dates back to the 1980s. There have been other recent product introductions, but for the purposes of this article, the Autobiography, which launched on April 24, is the one of note. Its list price in the US is $788,000 per pair, which is an astonishing amount of money to ask for any hi‑fi product. But Wilson Audio has, over the years, attracted the appropriate clientele.
Autobiography up close
The Autobiography is a new model, though it harks back to David Wilson’s final flagship design, the WAMM Master Chronosonic. Daryl, however, wanted to respect not only his father but also the customers who bought that speaker by not updating it. For him, that model had a time and place at Wilson Audio that will remain.
This new Autobiography builds from that foundation by incorporating design cues from it and the one-step-down Chronosonic XVX, whose design Daryl also oversaw, as well as from speakers throughout the company’s history—hence the name, which reflects the company’s legacy—while introducing new design elements that will undoubtedly trickle down into future models.
All the drivers are said to be new, but most notable are the two dome upper-midrange drivers—dome midranges have never previously been used in Wilson Audio speakers—each 2″ in diameter, designed to provide a better acoustic transition from the Autobiography’s 1″ tweeter than the WAMM Master Chronosonic’s configuration, which used 4″ cone drivers above and below its 1″ tweeter. The layout now includes the one tweeter flanked vertically by the two domes, which are in turn flanked by two 7″ drivers, the latter being the same diameter as the WAMM Master Chronosonic’s two lower-midrange drivers. But the two bass drivers have grown—from 10.5″ and 12.5″ in the WAMM Master Chronosonic to 12″ and 15″ for this new model.
Like the WAMM Master Chronosonic, there’s also a 1″ rear-firing tweeter mounted on the top-rear of the midrange enclosure to splay high frequencies backward, helping balance the top end—particularly in large rooms.
Less obvious—but impossible to ignore once you know they’re there—are the gears and toothed rails in what Wilson calls the gantry section, which is what holds the midranges and tweeter. These gears and rails replace the threaded spikes and indented markers of previous designs and allow for more precise positioning of the drivers relative to the listening position. This kind of time-alignment adjustability has long been a hallmark of Wilson Audio’s larger speaker models, and it’s something Daryl clearly set out to refine. In time, I suspect these new mechanisms will trickle into other designs and become hallmarks as well.
Chief videographer Chris Chitaroni preparing the interview location
If you want to know how the Autobiography sounds, that I unfortunately can’t tell you—at least not yet. When we arrived at Wilson Audio in early April, multiple pairs were in production for dealers that had already ordered them, but Daryl was still doing final voicing and wasn’t going to let us hear the result until it was finished. There was an official launch for other press members a few weeks later, but since our work was done by then, we didn’t attend. I suspect I’ll hear a pair eventually, whether at an event or on a future visit, since product development at Wilson Audio never really stops.
One thing is certain, though: any prospective buyer will appreciate Wilson Audio’s setup service. Each Autobiography weighs almost half a ton, arrives in multiple crates, and must be assembled before it can even be positioned. This is not a speaker you’d want to tackle alone—or without knowing what you’re doing.
Service, sound, and experience
After more than 30 years of reviewing and more than 45 years in hi‑fi, I’ve heard a vast range of sound from designers with many different philosophies and priorities. There may be a “right” sound, at least for me—neutrality—but in practice, what you hear across this industry varies widely. Loudspeakers, more than any other component, make those differences obvious. Move from one brand—or even one model—to another, and the sonic changes can be significant, even with speakers whose designers strive for neutrality. That’s simply the nature of loudspeakers. There’s no guarantee, then, that you’ll like every (or even any) Wilson Audio model. And that’s not unique to this speaker company—it’s true of them all.
What this experience reinforced for me, however, is something else. Wilson Audio isn’t just selling sound—it’s delivering a complete experience. That’s something I hadn’t fully appreciated until the Sabrina Vs were set up for me and I made this most recent trip with that firsthand experience fresh in my mind.
Daryl Wilson with engineers Jarome Lance (left) and Blake Schmutz
From the design, build, and finish, to the engineering details, to the way the products are delivered and set up, everything is clearly thought through and consistently executed. And that consistency is what stands out and makes Wilson Audio a good brand that customers can identify with.
In an industry where many companies are quick to position themselves as “luxury,” Wilson Audio doesn’t have to say it—it demonstrates it. And whether or not their sound is ultimately the one you prefer, the way they follow through from start to finish sets a benchmark that few others serving this clientele meet.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstage.com
