Wilson Benesch Eminence Loudspeaker

[Mr Spock]

The ten-driver Eminence is a two-and-a-half-way design. You can see in Fig.1 that the lower two “backward-facing” drivers in the baffle are mated to two identical 7" drivers inside the cabinet in an isobaric configuration (we’ll address this design element in more detail later). The next two drivers up the baffle handle the lower bass. Just above the upper-most backward-facing woofer is a 7" midrange, and then the tweeter. The top two 7" drivers handle the upper bass. As you can see in Fig.1, each driver array is mounted in its own sub-enclosure within the cabinet. All the sub-enclosures are sealed, except for the one housing the isobaric woofer array, which is ported out the bottom of the cabinet. Two pairs of binding posts are provided for bi-wiring.

The cabinet has been made as small as possible so that its sonic contribution is minimized. The smaller the cabinet, the easier it is to damp, and any resonances that remain will produce less unwanted cabinet sound. The narrow baffle and its curved shape also reduce diffraction. Despite the cabinet’s relatively modest size, the internal volume is considerable, owing to the thinness of the carbon-fiber composite structure. The speaker has a very small visual presence when viewed from the listening position. I can’t think of another flagship-level loudspeaker with this small an enclosure or footprint.

Listening to music through the Eminence was a startling experience. It reproduced certain aspects of the music in a way that I’ve never heard from any loudspeaker—dynamic, planar, or horn-loaded. First, the Eminence exhibits astonishing transient speed and dynamic agility. This speaker fosters the impression of removing a dynamic-compression filter between you and the music. That is, the Eminence doesn’t slow down transient attacks or compress their peaks. The speaker doesn’t do this by exaggerating leading-edge transients, but rather by getting out of the way and allowing the music’s transient nature and dynamic contrasts to be rendered without alteration. It’s not just that initial transients are lightning fast, or that the decays are equally quick—which they are. That alone would have been noteworthy for a dynamic loudspeaker (this quality comes naturally to planar designs). But what puts the Eminence’s dynamic performance in a class of its own is the total and utter coherence of this transient fidelity from the lowest bass to the treble. The Eminence speaks with one voice dynamically, with exactly zero discontinuity along the frequency spectrum. Frankly, the Eminence makes most other speakers sound slow and thick in the bass.

Specs
Two-and-a-half-way, ten-driver, floorstanding loudspeaker
Frequency response: 24Hz–30kHz +/-2dB on-axis
Impedance: 4.5 ohms nominal
Sensitivity: 89dB at 1m, 2.83V input
Minimum amplifier power: 100Wpc
Driver array: 1x 1" WB Fibonacci Hybrid Silk-Carbon tweeter; 2x 7" WB Tactic 3.0 bass high; 1x 7" WB Tactic 3.0 midrange; 2x 7" WB Tactic 3.0 bass low; 4x 7" WB Isobaric Drive System bass low
Enclosure: Carbon composite A.C.T. 3ZERO monocoque
Loading: Sealed (isobaric drive system is ported)
Dimensions: 11" x 78" x 27"
Weight: 320 pounds each, net

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