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A brief review of 15 high-end speakers on home demo including B&W, Boenicke, Magico,Wilson
This is an article documenting my 15 month search for the
perfect speaker. I had published this review to a UK site, but it was suggested to me that Audiogon members, being mainly American, may find it of interest too.
I had previously bought a wonderful sounding Vitus amp (100W) and DAC/CD player. These were playing through my B&W 804D speakers. I wanted to upgrade the speakers. Worth noting is that the room has nasty bass issues around 48 Hz and 96 Hz. Some music produced in the last 20 years with prominent bass tends to activate these room modes and a resulting bass boom can occur.
My room is around 11 feet by 15 feet, mostly open plan at one of the long end of the room. The speakers fire across the room. There is no ability to reconfigure the room due to it being a family lounge. Speakers are located with the front end around 2 feet from the wall and 4 feet from side walls.
These are the 15 speakers. Most came through my room over the period, with two being heard only at a dealer.
Following this list is a short review of each.
Audio Physic Codex
Avalon Idea
Avalon Transcendent
B&W 804D
Boenicke W8
Boenicke W13
Magico S1
Magico S3
ProAc K6
Sonus Faber Amati Tradition
Sonus Faber Guarneri Tradition
Tidal Piano
Wilson Sabrina
Wilson Benesch Discovery
Wilson Benesch Endeavour
B&W 804 Diamond (2012 model, so not the most recent 2016 iteration).
These floor-standers were the present incumbents, bought to match my old Naim 552 system. They provide a clean, easy sound with the diamond tweeters producing a good deal of top-end detail. There is no harshness. With the provided bungs in the ports the bass is light enough not to bother my room modes. With the bungs removed a small bass boom exist on some music in my room. By placing the speakers on granite chopping boards (the cheapest hifi upgrade I have ever done) and replacing the spikes with IsoAcoustic Gaia feet I found a noticeable improvement in the bass.
The mid-range is neutral. They don’t provide a great deal of depth or space although the IsoAcoustic Gaia feet definitely improved this aspect. The resolution, whilst OK, is improvable. Overall they do everything well. They are perhaps a little clinical and lacking a character. But for the money I would say they are an exceptional speaker. They also look fantastic and have a small footprint.
The reason I was looking to change them was to get more out of the Vitus source and amp. I had changed from Naim to Vitus amplification to obtain a more neutral performance, and I could tell that there was more to get out of the Vitus and that the B&W speakers were holding them back.
The criteria for the new speakers were:
- Neutral
- Detailed yet not clinical
- No listening fatigue from extended listening – for work I have to listen for long periods and so fatigue can become an issue
- A spacious, holographic sound with good depth and width
- Minimal bass boom
- Good looking and not too large – they are sited in the lounge shared with a TV and the family.
- Sound good at low volumes which is often the volume I am playing at.
Avalon Idea (home demo)
First in the room were these smallish floor standers from the US company Avalon. The sound was fabulous with a real enveloping warmth. Acoustic music and the female vocal in particular sounded wonderful. Much better than the B&Ws in this department. They look good too. The downside was a looseness in the bass, which really affected my bass modes and I got an unpleasant boom, even in older music from pre-digital days.
Avalon Transcendent (home demo)
The bigger brother to the Ideal and these sounded ‘big’. Interestingly they did not trigger the boom like their smaller brother. The top end was a little overbearing, but overall they had a very natural sound. Size-wise they were too large for the room and whilst the sound was good, it didn’t ‘wow’ me and it felt that the sound was just too much for a 3.5m wide room.
Magico S1 mark ii/ Wilson Sabrina / Sonus Faber Amati Tradition (demoed at dealer, Wilson Sabrina also at home)
At a dealer I demoed these three speakers. I will briefly compare them as I heard all three together.
The Magico S1 sounded fabulous on the Daft Punk album, "Random Access Memories". It was taut and fast and yet completely disciplined. This track had never sounded so good. However on most other music it was disappointingly thin and clinical sounding.
The Wilson Sabrina impressed enormously and were the opposite of the Magico: here the music was rich and warm. A little toppy perhaps but it had real substance and weight. At best on Miles Davis and female vocals where the richness enveloped you. But it managed rock with ease too.
The Sonus Faber Amati would have walked home with me if I only played classical music. My word, this speaker made classical music incredible. It wasn’t just the timbre of the instrument but also the depth of the sound – instruments could be placed precisely in the 3D soundscape. Whilst it was also excellent on jazz and acoustic, compared to the Wilson and especially the Magico, it sounded confused on rock and much amplified music, confused and a bit muddy in the bass department.
I was so impressed by the Wilson that they came home for a home demo. Whilst it maintained the depth and resonant sound, unfortunately the weight of the sound in the bass area really bothered my room’s bass sensitivities and an unpleasant boom existed on a lot of music. Also they did have a slight tendency to be a little unrefined in the top end on some recordings. They look cute too, a lovely small floor stander which melt into the background. It’s a shame as in the shop demo I loved the sound dearly.
ProAc K6 (home demo)
Wow. The ribbon tweeter on this speaker captivated me the moment I switched the system on. Music was oh-so-smooth, and in a good way. This isn’t veiled smoothness but delightful, smile-inducing sweetness. The combination of the Vitus sound with the ProAc meant on a blind listen I am sure I would have sworn it was an LP playing through a valve amp. I fell in love with the top-end and the mid-range of the K6. Some may find the top too smooth perhaps, but I loved it. Even Alison Krauss, who on her early bluegrass recordings can sound a bit shrill, even she sounded sweet and golden through these. Yes the detail wasn’t as precise as the Wilson’s, and not at all like the Magicos, but I actually preferred the sweeter sound. This was less hi-fi and more a natural phenomenon. I could listen to this speaker for hours and hours without tiring.
Unfortunately the speaker has a substantial bass output and on bass-heavy modern productions the bass overwhelmed my small room with its sensitive room modes. And they are physically a little large for a small room. But that ribbon tweeter, oh my word it’s a thing of aural beauty. If the bass had been more contained I would have tried to persuade my wife that these rather large, and fairly ugly, beasts were a compromise worth making.
Sonus Faber Guarneri Tradition (home demo)
The first stand-mounted speaker makes an entry. In the red wood these look amazing. Very beautiful speakers indeed. The sound had the airiness I had experienced in the Sonus Faber floorstanders (see shop demo above). They had the same articulated sound on classical and acoustic as the floorstanding Sonus Faber. Two things let them down: firstly compared to the B&Ws resident in the room the smaller cabinet made them sound a little light in substance. Not in the bass department, in fact the bass was bigger than on the floorstanding B&Ws and actually triggered a bass boom in the room, but the overall weight of the mids was light. That’s the nature of the smaller box I guess. This, and the fact that the boom agitated the bass modes, meant they were not staying.
Tidal Piano (dealer demo)
The Tidal Piano had a clean clean sound. This was music transmitted totally transparently. They sounded closest to the Magico S1 in texture and detail. More musical though. They were too large for me to request a home demo, I knew the size would be an issue. But I liked what I heard and I liked that the bass can be toned down, or up, so that may have helped my room’s bass issues.
Audio Physic Codex (Home demo)
I had heard the Audio Physic Structure and Codex at the HiFi show in Munich and been mighty impressed. The speakers have a really interesting way with the woofer: it is enclosed entirely within the cabinet facing the side internal closed wall of the speaker unit. Sounds crazy but it works a treat. When the Codex hit my room I was optimistic. Sadly it didn’t work out for me, the speaker was not bad in any way, but it failed to excite me. It all sounded a bit bland. The bass was contained, it boomed a bit but not as much as some speakers, and the highs were tame and controlled. The detail was there. Everything was good. But when it all hung together it just didn’t sound great. There were high points – "Dark Side of The Moon" by Pink Floyd sounded fantastic. It had weight and balance. But it lacked depth, the music was coming from a flat plane. Maybe they need to be away from the wall more, something I can’t do in the physical limitations of my room.
Wilson Benesch Discovery (home demo)
These stand-mounters were brought out of a car by the dealer on a frosty morning after a long drive. I don’t believe they fully warmed up before they left later that day. They sounded good, and actually not dissimilar to the B&W 804 D which is my current speaker and which these potentially replace. But they didn’t raise the sound quality much above the B&W, if at all, though as they were cold I wonder what they would do warmed up. The fact that the Endeavours (see below) changed a lot when warmed up suggests I didn’t hear the best of these.
Wilson Benesch Endeavour (home demo)
The people from Wilson Benesch brought these stand-mounters down too. I was immediately impressed and so I was left them for the weekend for me to try out. If there was one speaker which was jaw-droppingly good on certain types of music it was his one. I find it hard to explain what these did as they were often both extraordinary and difficult in the same song. With smooth acoustic music they were a revelation. The detail they drew out exposed subtle rhythms in the music that I had never heard before, they found parts of songs that came from nowhere, they dug deep into the music and brought everything out to hear. So at times they would just leave you speechless. But...but…but the problem was at other times they were so harsh as to be unpleasant. Take the aforementioned Alison Krauss early bluegrass recordings or the Dixie Chicks Home album, on both of these the mandolins, the guitars, the subliminal percussive rhythms created were mind-blowing, but the vocals would sometimes tear at your ears. It was weird. Rock music didn’t work as the speakers made too much noise in the top end and it had to be turned down. Over the weekend the bass drivers warmed up and they started to activate my bass boom, which they had not done when cold.
Maybe they need valve amplification, or maybe they need a higher powered amp, I don’t know. They did struggle at low volumes too. What I do know is that they were both sublime and problematic, often simultaneously.
The other downside was that they were too big for the room, even on their slender stands. But anyone in the market for a high-end speaker should hear these babies as they have something incredible about them, and if your system does not expose the harsh side of them they could be outstanding.
Magico S3 (home demo)
The S3 was bigger than I was expecting in the room, a little overwhelming. The sound was impressive. Like the S1s I had heard at the dealers a few months before these had detail and speed in buckets, but this time they had weight too. Unfortunately too much weight as they really excited my room modes and boomed badly. I enjoyed them a great deal. They are certainly immediately very impressive. My reservation is that I fear they would be tiring after a long extended listen, I just had them for a couple of hours and was beginning to suffer fatigue by the end, reaching to turn them down. They were a little dry sounding too, and I felt the heart of the music was often missing. That, and with a sound and size that was a bit too much for my small room too (and the bass boom), meant they did not stay. They are impressive for sure, very impressive, but not for this room right now, and ultimately a little too clinical.
Boenicke W8 (home demo)
A hifi industry insider heard my system with the B&Ws and recommended I try Boenicke speakers as he felt I would like them. Man was he right! These are little beauties, to look at and to listen to. They are the smallest floor standers I have come across and yet have a sound that bares no relation to the diminutive size of the cabinet. Close your eyes and you’d think you had a regular sized floor-stander in your room. And the sound? Oh my word, nothing prepared me for the sound of these. The space in the sound, the airiness in the sound, was quite magical. The detail is all present, the timing is spot-on, and yet they remained calm and so easy to listen to. And that space in the music…it is just incredible. There was no fatigue from extended hours of listening. Being small I could bring them further into the room for listening sessions and when there they shone even more. What’s more my wife loved them as they just look gorgeous.
They were the cheapest speaker I demoed and cost considerably less than the B&W 804D, which to me represents relatively terrific value. So why did they not stay? I chatted to the dealer and to Sven, the chap who makes these in Switzerland, and said how I really loved them. They sounded like bigger floor standers but my only issue was on big orchestral numbers or in driving rock I would like a bit more weight in the sound. We discussed this as well as my booming bass, which actually these W8s didn’t affect, and Sven had a suggestion. He said I should try the Boenicke W13 which has an active bass unit which has DSP, so he said he could easily program it to be in tune with my room modes and therefore would be a big speaker with a big bass but should overcome that boom I get when a bass driver over a certain size comes into the room.
And so in came the Boenicke W13…
Boenicke W13 (home demo, and purchase)
Well, I finally found speaker nirvana with this speaker. Everything I had been searching for over the past 18 months came together in this one speaker. It had the best of all the speakers I had tried with none of the negatives. The speed of the Magicos, the weight of the Wilsons, the smoothness of the ProAcs, the acoustic instrument timbre of the Sonus Faber, the detail of the Wilson Benesch and to top it all there is a space and holographic nature to the sound that no other speaker got anywhere close to (with the exception of Boenicke’s own W8). I don’t know how they do it but the W13s allow music to have space around it and within it. Instruments are placed precisely in 3D space, whilst the air surrounding the music is extraordinary. This combination make music sound like it is in the room, live and there in front of you. It is a beguiling thing, a haunting thing, and an intangible thing to articulate in words well.
The top-end is silky smooth and the mids are rendered perfectly and transparently. As the bass amplification duties have been taken away from the Vitus amp I wonder if the amp is working more efficiently and effectively on everything over 120kHz? They also sound excellent at low volumes, again this may be because of the separate bass amplification? Fatigue is non-existent. They are very musical and less “hi-fi” sounding which to me is a very good thing.
The DSP software within the active bass amps in the speakers tunes down the exact bass frequencies that affect my room thereby eliminating any bass boom, so for the first time I can hear a big bass sound in music from a big speaker in my room but with no boom. I am in aural heaven. The bass, which the active bass amps deliver, is well-balanced and lean.
All types of music seem to shine. Acoustic music and vocal, female or male, has a real wow-factor with the voice sounding so natural and hanging in all that space. Symphonic classical music is rich and deep with instruments easy to locate and place, whilst chamber music is delicate and the timbres, even the troublesome violins, accurate and natural. Full blown rock sounds amazing. Neil Young’s "Ragged Glory", recorded raw and lean and often sounding a bit thin on some hifi, sounds literally like he is playing live in front of you. The rock rhythms pump, the vocals sit out front, the guitar up and behind the speaker.
The icing on the cake is that they look beautiful. No taller than the B&W 804s, and smaller than most other speakers which have been in the room, and just outstanding to look at.
Downsides? I really can’t think of any. If I clutch at straws then I guess if you love the characteristic extremes of the Hi-Fi sound you get from a sealed aluminium cabinet you may prefer that to the more organic natural sound which a W13 produces, but the way these still have that speed and accuracy AND the rest, and that space and air in the sound, it is a revelation.
It has been an interesting year, and toward the end I really felt I would never find the speaker I was looking for. I began to feel that the B&W 804D which are good at everything but not brilliant at anything, would be kept on as the option committing no offence. The Boenicke W13s saved the day.
66 responses Add your response
Brilliant write up! I'd never heard of the Boenicke W13 but a quick look on their website reveals that they use a wood cone midrange unit. Wow! Can't say I'm surprised that you liked the Sonus Faber's (at least for Classical!) and the Proacs. Or that the Magico's didn't impress as highly. Some very revealing findings there. Does makes you wonder whether ribbon tweeters are the coming future and the need for spikes. Thanks for that, and congratulations for not giving in to a compromise option. It rarely affords long term satisfaction. Many of us would have been long worn down before then. Anyway, here's wishing you many years of satisfaction ahead with them. |
Fantastic report! Thank you very much duckworp. I love threads like this! (Which is why I did one too). What a spectacular list of speakers. I felt the Magico A3s that I auditioned were ultimately a bit fatiguing to listen to over time, so it's not hard for me to see why you felt the same of their other models. I auditioned some Wilson Benesch speakers too for the first time a while back (not as expensive as the ones you heard) and found them very competent...but a tad boring. I have not been as impressed with the Proac ribbon-tweeter based speakers as you, as I found the ribbon tweeter had a character that was just to identifiable vs the cones. Which brings me to Boenicke. I was so excited to see you could tell us about auditioning the Boenicke speakers as they have been on my radar for a while now. There is just something intriguing about them: I like them aesthetically, the wood woofer is like WTF? And yet completely intriguging as in "I've got to hear that thing." Plus there seem to be an ever growing number of comments on the Boenicke sound that echo your description, which is very much a sound that attracts me. It's just too bad there are no dealers around (very few in USA, as far as I know, none in Canada where I live). Congrats on finding your perfect speaker. I'll have your words in back of my mind if Boenicke speakers ever show up anywhere near me to audition. |
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@boenicke-audio I really like those W-13's. Looks like I need to go to Park Avenue Audio for a listen. BTW- your link doesn't work, but http://boenicke-audio.ch does. (You should get a HTTPS certificate for your site, too). Bob |
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@duckworp Thank you for your informative review and congratulations on your purchase. We are based in the U.K. and have on demonstration the Boenicke W5’s and W11’s. The W11’s are W13’s basically without the active bass. The balance and natural, open sound is found across the range from the small stand mounted W5’s to the W11/13. A very important feature of the designs is their decoupled swing suspension system which is unique. We have tried with and without and with the swing base the focus and openness is much improved. The cabinets are CNC machined from solid timber and form a clam shell construction which contributes to the natural balance of these speakers. There is great attention to detail in the design and they use extremely high quality network components. @ duckworp, your Vitus 100W class A should work well with these speakers. We have found high quality class D application also to be very compatible and use Mola Mola Makua/Kaluga’s in our best system. Btw there are some good videos by Audioprana on YouTube which are worth checking out. |
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Glad you found something you liked and I will try and hear the Boenicke speakers. It looks like the Proac and Wilson Benesch dealer brought you the wrong speaker models for your demo given your room limitations. I wonder how your choices would have been effected if your system had DSP available for all of the speakers you heard. |
Thanks for sharing. The Boenicke line has been interesting to read about, particularly the woodcone bass-midrange driver. I would really like to hear a pair. In looking over the line-up, it seems for some the W11 may be a sweet spot since you get the same mid/top drivers as their flagship plus you get pretty low bass down to below 30Hz. That may be all the bass many need but some may prefer to add two or more subs which, depending on the room and other gear, may (or may not) work even better than the on-board subs in the W13. The adjustable bass response should make the speaker easier to integrate with some good subs. BTW, what are those big-ass speakers shown in the picture on the Boenicke home page!? Which model is that? |
I wonder how your choices would have been effected if your system had DSP available for all of the speakers you heard. I did not want to get anything in the way of the wonderful Vitus - and the DSP boxes seem to work as pre-amps. The boom on the bass only affected certain recordings (a minority of recordings) and the Boenicke was my favourite sound on music with no bass boom too. In a way I am glad I had the boomy bass problem as if I had not I would have settled on the Wilson, Avalon or ProAc and never got to the Boenicke, which would have been my loss. |
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@boenicke_audio I wish I had looked into your company more closely, I was just in Basel yesterday - beautiful city. I would have enjoyed hearing those big speakers in the showroom photo as well as the W11 and W13 models. Although I am happy with the speakers I have now, based on what I have read about Boenicke speakers I hope I can hear them at a show someday. |
@duckworp You should have tried the Ensemble Audio Ondiva.. These sound phenomenal in most rooms and image like omnis, with no booming bass problems.... Chario Sovrans and the Sonnets would play phenomenally as well in your room... As well as the Eminent Tech 8bs... All of these are much less money, less than half price (in case of the ET 8bs, 1/10th) of the price of the Boenicke, and are in a different league (much higher) than the Boenickes, from my aural memory from the Munich show....... Also the new B&W 803D3 should have worked great in your room ( one of mine listening rooms is similar in size to yours) and I almost pulled the trigger on them after a lengthy audition, but decided to save up for the 800D3s.... But we all hear differently I guess :) |
@kot - thanks for your post. We may have different tastes as the Boenicke room in Munich was my best all-round room (though there was a room with 300k euro horn speakers which blew my mind - but I’m not counting that!). Eminent Tech 8bs are electromagnetic/planer hybrid panels which don’t work in my room as the speakers are close to the rear walls and in alcoves. Charios I heard at a show and I thought were OK, nothing special. Ensemble I don’t know, in Munich they were located in a hotel some way away from the main show. I like my B&W 804s and so I listened to the 803D3 and 802D3 at a dealer but I knew instantly that the bigger bass output compared to the 804 would not work in my room. Sound-wise they were more similar to the 804 than I was expecting. The old 800 Diamond (equivalent toe the 800D3) I know very well as a recording studio I use has them in many of the mastering rooms - they are fantastic, no question, though a little on the large side! |
I have to say the most surprising-to-me description was for the Audio Physic Codex speaker: " But it lacked depth, the music was coming from a flat plane." Something had to be wrong with the set up. If there is a singular feature running through pretty much all Audio Physic speakers since the 90’s onward (including the slightly smaller new Avanti I demoed last year), it is an amazing "disappearing" act with a vast, wide, deep soundstage. They pretty much built a reputation on soundstaging. The design of the Boenicke speakers certainly look optimized for a similar type of imaging/soundstaging effect. |
@prof - yes I was surprised as I heard an Audio Physic speaker in Munich and they impressed me with their soundstaging. It must be that they were not optimized in my room, as they were placed close to the rear wall, which for whatever reason the Boenicke does not mind at all. Actually in Munich I heard the model called the Structure, which in size and shape and format is identical to the Codex but costs 4x the price, it costs £41k instead of £10k for the Codex. The speaker I heard in my room sounded nowhere near the speaker I heard in Munich. |
It would be nice if you could give the amount in Sterling how much each of the speakers cost. Thanks. @gawdbless - from memory, and rounded a little they are as follows: Audio Physic Codex £10,000 Avalon Idea £9000 Avalon Transcendent £18,000 B&W 804D £7000 Boenicke W8 £5000 Boenicke W13 £20,000 Magico S1 £23,000 Magico S3 £36,000 ProAc K6 £14,000 Sonus Faber Amati Tradition £23,000 Sonus Faber Guarneri Tradition £12,000 Tidal Piano £22,000 Wilson Sabrina £20,000 Wilson Benesch Discovery £11,000 Wilson Benesch Endeavour £24,000 |
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Great review of Boenicke W11’s http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews2/boenicke6/1.html If if you are in the U.K. and interested in hearing them, we would be delighted to demonstrate. www.toetapaudio.com |
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The DSP software within the active bass amps in the speakers tunes down the exact bass frequencies that affect my room thereby eliminating any bass boom, so for the first time I can hear a big bass sound in music from a big speaker in my room but with no boom. I am in aural heaven. The bass, which the active bass amps deliver, is well-balanced and lean. I absolutely believe this. There is so much that people ascribe incorrectly, when their basic problem is poor bass integration with the room. I have measured it, I have heard it, and it is such a nightmare for most. |
Would you mind letting us know what cables you are using and if you have any mains conditioning? I did a lot of cable testing. The two speaker cables that made a big positive difference were High Fidelity CT-1E and Townshend Fractal F1 cable. I started with the former then moved onto the latter as the improvements were even greater. The bass amps in the active speakers are connected to the pre-out by Vovox Vocalis IC xlr cable. With interconnects there was less difference between most I sampled except the Townshend F1 RCA, which was noticeably better. I tried a Shunyata Denali mains conditioner but it didn’t change the sound so much, in fact it actually slightly smoothed the sound which was not always good to my ears. I do use an MCRU mains block for the CD player, that has some filtration. Mains cabling is Shunyata Alpha EF which on the CDP really brought some extra vigour and detail to the music. |