Building a TMW similar to the Wilson Sophia

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Hi there

I wonder if anyone else would also be interested in building a TMW configuration speaker based on the Wilson Audio Sophia?See http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/619/ for the Stereophile review.

To get the ball rolling I have determined the closest commercially offered drive units to the units used in the factory speaker. The 10"woofers are the Scan Speak aluminum cone 26W/4867T00's, the midrange is the Scan Speak slit paper 18W4531G00's and for tweeters the Focal TC120TD5's can be used.

There are a couple of options in building a similar speaker eg. using 8" SS Aluminum woofers and the 5 1/4" 15w/8531 midrange drivers to build a scaled down version or posssibly building it with a side-firing woofer.

I think we can get close to the performance of the factory speakers for drive-unit cost of under $1500. Can anyone else perhaps offer some input?

W
 
Hi there Keyser

Actually I am South African and Afrikaans and Dutch is very close, so no problem there.

Salas

Some of the most interesting designs have been derived from taking hints from succesfull high-end speaker designs. I never said that I wanted to clone the Sophias, but that I am interested in using the drive units in a similar design. Wilson would not use that particular combination of drive units if they did not work together well. I don't want to build a cost-virtually-no-object design just to find that the drive units dont match well. Why would my project be of a lower order than someone else's original design? All I am using from the Sophia are the drive units. As you so rightly point out there is NO info available on crossovers or interior volume etc.

I actually find your statement somewhat offensive. Was this your reaction when the Pro Ac 2.5 clones were all the rage? That was an outright copy of the original, and yet it received a lot of interest from forum members.

At least the Dutch forum is active and as interested in the topic as I am.
 
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I cannot believe how much interest that topic got in the Netherlands, and no-one seems to have any interest in this forum.

No worries about offenses. Just my explanation for your realisation above. I saw you had more general intentions than outright copying. As for the ProAc I have seen a whole saga that continues, and its an accessible design. Imagine with a Wilson....
 
Imho there is no "magic" in David Wilson's "designs."

There is "magic" in his marketing.

He uses high quality cabinetry, which makes any given driver perform as well as it can (as compared with less optimal cabinetry).

His bass sections are usually abyssimal or worse.

His midrange is usually good, but then anyone can take similar drivers and get similar results using similar cabinets.

So, imho, if there is something to learn from the erstwhile and very wealthy Mr. Wilson it is to make ur cabinets heavy and non-resonant. Oh, and if you go commercial, advertise well and often.

My 2 cents worth on this topic - free! ;)


_-_-bear :Pawprint:
 
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