LATEST ADDITIONS

The 800 Dynasty Continues

The world is full of B&Ws. Former and current users of the acronym include Bra & Wessels, the Swedish department store chain; Burmeister & Wain, the Danish shipyard; Boeing & Westervelt, the predecessor of Boeing; and the Black & White Audiovisual Festival of Portugal. The most notorious B&W would be Brown & Williamson, depraved tobacco pushers. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that B&W, the formidable British loudspeaker maker, has reverted to its original name—Bowers & Wilkins—even though John Bowers and Roy Wilkins are no longer in the picture.

Jaw-Dropping Home Cinema Somewhere on the audio quality scale, a home theater system crosses an imaginary line and becomes a home cinema system, one that’s capable of truly extraordinary music and film sound reproduction. I’m not exactly sure where that line is, or at what price, but I know it when I hear it. A true home cinema system delivers music that rivals a live event and a movie experience that surpasses even some of the finest commercial cinemas. In this rarefied universe of ultra-high-end audio systems, I tested a no-holds-barred home theater speaker system from Wisdom Audio based on the company’s L100i and C150i in-wall speakers and Suitcase Sub. As you’ll read, the in-wall speakers are just the beginning with this unique system.

Not Your Father’s In-Wall Speakers
In addition to the Suitcase Sub, this review system featured two L100i speakers for the left and right channels and a C150i for the center channel (although you can use either model for the left, center, right, or surround channels). The L100i and C150i are sized for placement behind an acoustically transparent video projection screen measuring at least 50 inches in height and of adequate width. The L100i and C150i are designed to deliver high-performance audio from speakers that disappear from the audience’s view behind the screen. The L100i is a two-part speaker system that consists of a 48-by-8-inch planar magnetic line-source array for the mid and high frequencies (above 275 hertz) and a separate enclosure of the same size that contains eight 6-inch woofers for bass/midbass. The three-part C150i features the same planar magnetic driver array combined with two bass enclosures that each house eight 6-inch woofers. The additional eight bass drivers in the C150i signal the importance of the center channel for dialogue information, onscreen action, and overall system dynamics.