| Since its foundation in 1989, Wilson Benesch has consistently sought to push the boundaries of audio product design and manufacture. Notable examples include the world’s first carbon composite curved loudspeaker cabinet (A.C.T. One – 1994) and the world’s first hyperbolic carbon composite Tonearm (A.C.T. One Tonearm – 1991). Today, Wilson Benesch designs are based upon strong scientific foundations, driven by a passionate commitment to attaining a more natural sound reproduction, irrespective of accepted paradigms.
The company’s manufacturing facility is founded upon consistent re-investment and highly collaborative research and development programs. It is upon this infrastructure that the most ambitious product to date, The Cardinal Loudspeaker, was conceived, developed and manufactured, entirely by Wilson Benesch engineering and proven expertise.
From the 1960s, brands like KEF and Bowers & Wilkins pioneered the use of new materials in drive unit technology, but arguably no company pushes the envelope of materials science these days quite like Wilson Benesch ~ Alan Sircom, Editor In Chief, HiFi+, 2012
The Cardinal is the most advanced loudspeaker ever developed by Wilson Benesch. Carbon fibre based, advanced composite structures are combined to create a compact and elegant cabinet. Incredibly stiff materials and an optimized geometry afford the Cardinal a huge internal air volume, whilst giving the design a relatively low surface area. Control over these elements of loudspeaker cabinet architecture remains a strong philosophy for all Wilson Benesch designs.
The Wilson Benesch Cardinal is as impressive from a sonic perspective as it is in pure engineering terms – and that’s really saying something. Here we have a product where innovation and execution are perfectly in accord with purpose
The Cardinal’s form and geometry is instantly recognisable as a Wilson Benesch design incorporating accents that have evolved from many predecessors including the A.C.T. One, The Bishop and The Chimera. The Cardinal’s footprint is more than twice that of the Chimera, standing 12-inches (1-ft) higher, affording the Cardinal a 65% larger air volume.
Like the rest of the Geometry Series, The Cardinal is fitted with proprietary Tactic-II Drive units and the Semisphere Tweeter. Eighteen drive units in total deliver wide bandwidth sound from 25Hz to 35KHz.
I saw the Cardinal at the Moscow HiEnd Show and listened to it a little, and my first impression was very good. Excellent! It’s a sound of that kind which I love – strong, transparent and detailed. ~ Tatyana Tikhonova, Editor, What HIFI Russia, 2012.
A key design principle of The Cardinal has been to deliver extended low frequencies as well as an additional impact in the upper bass register. Notably these objectives have been realised without any compromise to the speed, agility and tonality achieved by the flagship designs that precede it. Mid-range frequencies are handled by two highly optimized upper and lower mid-range Tactic-II Drive Units. Meanwhile, the Isobaric Tactic formation makes a return in the Cardinal with four Tactic-II Drive Units deployed to achieve a new benchmark in dynamics and transient response.
TROIKA Concept
The D’Appolito configuration is well documented, but the Troika concept builds on this configuration and through completely bespoke design, combines Wilson Benesch drive unit technologies and cabinet architecture to create an electro-mechanical filter.
The mid-range and tweeter enclosure houses a set of three drive units designed to work in complete harmony, free from complex crossovers which introduce electrical phase shifts ensuring that all three units are seamlessly integrated. The newly developed Semisphere tweeter is filtered by a simple first order crossover and is located precisely between two vertically aligned Tactic-II mid drive units to create the perfect acoustic center. The Tactic-II mid drive units are mechanically filtered, no capacitors, no inductors just the cleanest possible signal path and connection to the amplifier.
“The Cardinal represents the tip of a long and perfectly mapped development path, stretching back across multiple models. But the pace of advance isn’t necessarily even and the Cardinal represents a genuine step change in both ambition and performance. It might be demanding but it can also be mightily rewarding and is, by some considerable margin and on any terms, the best speaker that Wilson Benesch has ever made” – Roy Gregory, HIFI+, 2013
Inspired by nature and natural sound, the new Wilson Benesch flagship, “The Cardinal” is the summation of decades of work in the fields of cabinet, drive unit, and material innovation. This development has been evolutionary, building upon each and every success. Out of a passionate commitment to manufacturing, innovation and an adherence to the highest standards of craftsmanship, comes a product that could only emerge from one company.
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