Martin Dew, expert in filmed entertainment technology and formerly head of international certified dealer training at Lucasfilm THX, listens to a Line Source home cinema system from Wisdom Audio, and is mightily impressed.
Wise GuysSuper-Discreet High-End Home Cinema
If you’re in the business of building high-end cinema rooms and seeking to maximize the space and the quality of the audio inside, your audition list should definitely include a set of Wisdom’s ‘Insight’ Line Source in-wall giants. And when you do get in front of them, be prepared for an epiphany, because together these high-ticket designs positively transform the relationship between the sound and the room.
Wisdom’s adherence to Line Source technology makes it unlike the great majority of its Point Source competitors. The Insight L8i LCR, for instance, is not re-configurable as a horizontal centre channel. Rather, these 4.3ft high towers are specifically designed to drive large air volumes from a vertical array, installed flush with a stud wall behind an acoustically transparent projection screen.
That’s not to say that Wisdom Audio is lacking in solutions for smaller spaces, but Managing Director Luc Guillaume, formerly of JBL Synthesis, is rightly enthusiastic about the Insight custom installation line. He’s here in the plush Basingstoke screening room of Habitech - Wisdom’s exclusive UK distributor - to talk us through the performance characteristics and design philosophy of this super-discreet, state-of-the-art 9.4.4 system.
In addition to the in-wall LCRs, the six (four sides and two rear) P4i in-wall surrounds are joined by a further four in-ceiling ICS7a speakers, which take care of height effects, and four in-wall S110 passive subwoofers to handle the rumbles. This may all sound like overkill, but the Habitech screening room is a
formidable 135 cubic metres (4,767 cubic feet) in volume.
Crossing the Line
The Insight L8i LCR, as mentioned earlier, incorporates a Line Source configuration of Planar Magnetic Drivers (PMDs) equipped with critical high-tensioned ‘thin film’ technology (an aluminium conductor bonded to a polyimide
film diaphragm) and running vertically down the left front baffle. Although this thin film is also used in Wisdom’s Point Source speakers - like the P4i deployed as surrounds in this demo – it is the very specific properties of the L8i Line Source design that the company claims runs circles around a Point Source rival for LCR speakers...
In Wisdom’s Planar Magnetic Driver (PMD) design the ‘voice coil’ is chemically bonded on to a large thin-film diaphragm and suspended between powerful bar magnets. The diaphragm is very light so is extremely responsive offering very low distortion but is also large enough to reproduce a much wider and deeper frequency range.
The super-discreet Wisdom system under review comprises four S110 in-wall subwoofers in the room corners, three L8i in-wall LCR speakers behind the screen, six P4i in-wall surround speakers flush with side and back walls, and four ICS7a in-ceiling height channel speakers.
S110 L8i P4i
ICS7a
This is because a Point Source speaker radiates its energy spherically into the room, while a Line Source speaker radiates like a cylinder, with no energy escaping above or below a designated horizontal dispersion pattern.
By drastically reducing floor and ceiling reflections in this way, the audience hears nearly all the energy from the front soundstage, allowing greater intelligibility and reduced boundary reflections (by 42% over a measured comparable point source speaker). In other words, you hear more of the speaker and less of the room: more direct than reflected sound.
The second key upside to the Line Source is the ‘power over distance’ effect, which delivers a greater ‘shared experience’ for the audience. While an average Point Source loses 6dB per doubling of distance from the baffle, a Line Source sheds only 3dB. ‘From the last row to the front row’, says Guillaume ‘you’ll (hear) very little difference.’
Then there’s the broader frequency range of the revolutionary PMDs, which on the L8i drop to 550 Hz, whereas a standard dome tweeter typically rolls-off around 1,500 kHz. This is significant because as the signal jumps from mid to high frequencies a timbral shift is audible in some speakers, while the Insight’s PMDs ‘…cover six octaves, so there is no crossover transition where your ears are most sensitive.’
If a pattern is emerging here of a company committed to challenging tried-and-tested speaker technologies, it would certainly also apply to its treatment of subwoofer design.
At nearly 5.5 feet in length, the floor, ceiling or wall-mountable S110 bass boxes use a ‘Regenerative Transmission Line’ design, in which a five-metre maze of internal passageways allows both front and back waves from the drivers to meet in phase at the output, therefore doubling the yield of direct energy. This physical architecture results in greater audible articulation, and less cone movement or distortion when compared with conventional subs...
Wisdom's Regenerative Transmission Line (RTL) subwoofer design unites the back sound wave of the drivers with the front sound wave in phase, effectively doubling the low frequency output.
Point Source - propagates in all directions (spherical expansion).
Line Source - propagates in a controlled vertical fashion (longitudinal expansion).
A Shared Experience - Line Source (blue) provides a wider sweet spot than a Point Source.
Power over Distance - Line Sources (blue) have half the propagation loss of Point Sources (yellow) for better row-to-row audio consistency.
Listening Through Walls “Not only were the in-car punches and headbutts rendered as explicit and visceral thuds, but bass response was correspondingly lightning-fast, complemented by an enveloping audio sensation - as if a rippling orb of energy were converging on the listener.”
“This demo delivered as close to an experience of ‘holographic’ audio as I have ever encountered.”
“The astoundingly realistic and immediate-sounding audience clap-along, combined with the close auditory communion with Clapton’s finger-strutting fretboard, were nothing short of awe-inspiring.”
So, how did the system sound? A series of appetite-whetting DTS:X Blu-ray demos and trailers were followed by the highway scene clip from Deadpool, where traffic hell breaks loose on the tarmac. Not only were the in-car punches and headbutts rendered as explicit and visceral thuds, but bass response was correspondingly lightning-fast, complemented by an enveloping audio sensation - as if a rippling orb of energy were converging on the listener. Dialogue was razor-sharp and beautifully intelligible. It is this focused vertical speaker dispersion (as THX had always preached), that produces precise and exquisitely accurate front soundstage placement.
Next on the agenda was the Dolby Atmos mix of Mad Max: Fury Road and the opening sequence as Max surveys the valley from a deserted, arid ridge. From the child’s voice whispering in my ear, to the tiny patter of lizard footsteps down a heat-drenched rock, no detail of the soundscape was lost. This demo delivered as close to an experience of ‘holographic’ audio as I have ever encountered.
Even though the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now maxes out at 5.1 channels, Walter Murch’s expert mix of the Vietnam epic is always a reliable litmus test. During the second village attack, accompanied by Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, the orchestra and voice separated themselves from the carnage beautifully - floating above the mix in a way that I have not experienced before.
Finally, we spun up “Layla” from the 5.1 Blu-ray of Eric Clapton’s Slowhand at 70: Live at the Royal Albert Hall. The astoundingly realistic and immediate-sounding audience clap-along, combined with the close auditory communion with Clapton’s finger-strutting fretboard, were nothing short of awe-inspiring...
Martin Dew moved to San
Francisco in 1995 to work in
marketing for the THX Division
of Lucasfilm Ltd. After heading
up the domestic and
international AV certified dealer
training programme, he became
director of international sales
for Lucasfilm's professional
cinema products and services,
concentrating mostly on market
development in Europe and
Asia. He moved to Los Angeles
in 2004 to join the new Digital
Cinema Division of NEC
Corporation as director of sales
for North and South America,
responsible for the roll-out of 2K
digital cinema projectors, as
well as targeted pre-show
advertising solutions.
Since returning to the UK last
year, he now writes as a regular
news and features writer for the
UK's Home Cinema Choice
magazine, and US-based
website Home Theater Forum.
As an expert in filmed
entertainment technology, he
also gives lectures on the
relationship between
professional and residential
cinema environments.
Wisdom of the Age
There are too few occasions in an auditioning career that give you the chance to experience home cinema audio on a level demonstrated by a speaker package such as this. To hear the Wisdom system in Habitech’s impeccably-tweaked and architecturally-robust screening room, with its perfect acoustical balance - fastidiously trading off just the right amounts of absorption and reverberation - is a wonder to behold.
For all the claims that we are subject to diminishing returns as we scale the price ladder, ultimately there is a reason why those who can, should just go for the very best.
It must be said that at no point in an hour of whizzbang of effects and commotion was I left reeling from tinnitus or feeling fatigued. Furthermore, during genuinely loud, reference-level passages I could easily converse with Habitech staff, never consciously competing with the soundstage flanking us on all sides. As well as the sheer quality of the audio, these attributes are further testament to the unique design philosophy of Wisdom’s speakers.
+44 (0)1256 638500 www.habitech.co.uk
“To hear the Wisdom system in Habitech’s impeccably-tweaked and architecturally-robust screening room, with its perfect acoustical balance - fastidiously trading off just the right amounts of absorption and reverberation – is a wonder to behold.”
