Wolf von Langa (WVL) Chicago Speakers - Dream Speakers
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We are now set up at the California Audio Show which opens tomorrow. The combination of Wolf Von Langa, SW1X and PranaWire is truly amazing. Try to make it if you can. This will be a singular demonstration.
Still here tomorrow and Sunday. Well worth the trip. Rm 1211Good luck Colin and Joe! If I had known you would be demoing the larger WVLs I would have made the tripJoe, David B, tells me the SW1X gear is exceptional>
2024 California Audio Show – MAIN
MAIN PAGE SHOW REPORTS Lobby Gold Ballroom: Sound Lab, Dr. Vinyl and MA Recordings | CAS 2024 Dr. Vinyl joins Sound Lab in Lobby Gold Ballroom Room 1120: Audience AV And Atma-Sphere | CAS 2024 Audience AV and Atma-Sphere in Room 1120 Room 1218: True Sound to represent Audio Note UK in [...]
Images from our exhibit at the CA Audio Show
Wolf Avon Langa London Loudspeakers, SW1X Electronics and PranaWire Cables and Conditioning - a match made in heaven!
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Sunday is the last day. You do not want to miss this. Room 1211
Wolf Avon Langa London Loudspeakers, SW1X Electronics and PranaWire Cables and Conditioning - a match made in heaven!
2024 California Audio Show – MAIN
MAIN PAGE SHOW REPORTS Lobby Gold Ballroom: Sound Lab, Dr. Vinyl and MA Recordings | CAS 2024 Dr. Vinyl joins Sound Lab in Lobby Gold Ballroom Room 1120: Audience AV And Atma-Sphere | CAS 2024 Audience AV and Atma-Sphere in Room 1120 Room 1218: True Sound to represent Audio Note UK in [...]
Sunday is the last day. You do not want to miss this. Room 1211
Hello amor musicae, I’ve had the WVL Son for about a year, and received my Chicagos two months or so ago. Due to the AMT unit up top, field coil technology, and dipole typology, there are similarities of bloodline, but I have gradually discovered that in many ways, the Son and Chicago are entirely different animals. Three factors separate these speakers.
The first is that the Son, for all its amazing ability, makes use of a rearward passive radiator for its low end, and in doing so, boosts bass response to a credible 25Hz. This 25Hz has subtlety that convincingly edges even many other superlative speakers.
For the fact of its open baffle, the Chicago is only rated to a seemingly forgettable 35Hz….but they are the most unbelievable field-coil driven 35Hz you will ever hear - a place where bass is not a mere dynamically vital low frequency, but where breathtaking nuance and detail of music thrives. Bass from the Chicago makes the Son sound unrefined, which is a shocking realisation. The Son may dig a little deeper with its 25 passive radiating hertz, but it is considerably less differentiated - the shock comes through knowledge of how good the low frequency performance of the Son already is.
The second thing that is different about the Chicago is the addition of the midrange module that the AMT sits alongside. In covering the vital range of frequencies between the midrange woofer and the AMT, it delivers a level of realism with voice, piano, and every other musical instrument to astonishing levels.
On the last point of note, the Chicago is a slightly more difficult speaker to position than the Son in a nearfield set-up - minute changes to the angle of the midrange/AMT module above can drastically change the sound delivery, often to the point where i questioned if I had made a mistake procuring a speaker that could just not be matched to the specific conditions of my listening space.
The positioning of the Son is remarkably easy, as the AMT module up top is a single variable to factor. The Chicagos midrange/AMT module requires directing the inside edge of each AMT (the edge closest to the adjacent midrange woofer) to the anticipated listening position. This is at the same time the best fore/aft location of the said module is being negotiated, and after the lower and mid woofers below have been angled correctly to a point behind the listening position. Then the listening position may have to be moved either forward or backward to refine driver coherency.
It took me a week and a half of speaker and listening position adjustments to find my shangri-la, dead confident that in no way could I have made an incorrect decision, and yet hoping every step of the way that my perseverance would pay off in the end. I’m just glad it happened sooner than later.
A last note - I’ve found the Chicago to be my Goldilocks speaker less because it plays every genre of music brilliantly (even if this would be good enough reason), but for the fact it combines two of the most masterful typologies of speaker design without any of their weaknesses - where box speakers have all the power at low frequencies but lack the magical air of transparency that containment brings; and planars have all the air and open levity of realism, but lack coherency and/or refined depth and accurate percussion in the lower frequencies with difficult to match woofers/subs, the Chicago delivers all the air dipoles are known for, with its field-coil drivers making up for any shortfall in dynamic low range. The Chicago is brilliant because it puts field-coil drivers to the dipole.
It’s an amazing speaker that is priced under half of what it’s worth, with all that effort of manufacture and production going into the technology of its driver system, the heartbeat of any speaker, rather than a beautiful box with lesser drivers.
The only drawback for those unaccustomed would be the joy of self-assembly required of the speaker upon arrival, and the exposed beautiful entrails of cables, wiring, raw crossover panel, and the gorgeous stainless steel cylinder blocks of the field-coil drivers at the rear that is the speaker business end, upon completion.
I hope my writing more about how good the Chicago is didn’t kill any attempt at the comparison you asked for.
Thank you for starting this thread : )
The first is that the Son, for all its amazing ability, makes use of a rearward passive radiator for its low end, and in doing so, boosts bass response to a credible 25Hz. This 25Hz has subtlety that convincingly edges even many other superlative speakers.
For the fact of its open baffle, the Chicago is only rated to a seemingly forgettable 35Hz….but they are the most unbelievable field-coil driven 35Hz you will ever hear - a place where bass is not a mere dynamically vital low frequency, but where breathtaking nuance and detail of music thrives. Bass from the Chicago makes the Son sound unrefined, which is a shocking realisation. The Son may dig a little deeper with its 25 passive radiating hertz, but it is considerably less differentiated - the shock comes through knowledge of how good the low frequency performance of the Son already is.
The second thing that is different about the Chicago is the addition of the midrange module that the AMT sits alongside. In covering the vital range of frequencies between the midrange woofer and the AMT, it delivers a level of realism with voice, piano, and every other musical instrument to astonishing levels.
On the last point of note, the Chicago is a slightly more difficult speaker to position than the Son in a nearfield set-up - minute changes to the angle of the midrange/AMT module above can drastically change the sound delivery, often to the point where i questioned if I had made a mistake procuring a speaker that could just not be matched to the specific conditions of my listening space.
The positioning of the Son is remarkably easy, as the AMT module up top is a single variable to factor. The Chicagos midrange/AMT module requires directing the inside edge of each AMT (the edge closest to the adjacent midrange woofer) to the anticipated listening position. This is at the same time the best fore/aft location of the said module is being negotiated, and after the lower and mid woofers below have been angled correctly to a point behind the listening position. Then the listening position may have to be moved either forward or backward to refine driver coherency.
It took me a week and a half of speaker and listening position adjustments to find my shangri-la, dead confident that in no way could I have made an incorrect decision, and yet hoping every step of the way that my perseverance would pay off in the end. I’m just glad it happened sooner than later.
A last note - I’ve found the Chicago to be my Goldilocks speaker less because it plays every genre of music brilliantly (even if this would be good enough reason), but for the fact it combines two of the most masterful typologies of speaker design without any of their weaknesses - where box speakers have all the power at low frequencies but lack the magical air of transparency that containment brings; and planars have all the air and open levity of realism, but lack coherency and/or refined depth and accurate percussion in the lower frequencies with difficult to match woofers/subs, the Chicago delivers all the air dipoles are known for, with its field-coil drivers making up for any shortfall in dynamic low range. The Chicago is brilliant because it puts field-coil drivers to the dipole.
It’s an amazing speaker that is priced under half of what it’s worth, with all that effort of manufacture and production going into the technology of its driver system, the heartbeat of any speaker, rather than a beautiful box with lesser drivers.
The only drawback for those unaccustomed would be the joy of self-assembly required of the speaker upon arrival, and the exposed beautiful entrails of cables, wiring, raw crossover panel, and the gorgeous stainless steel cylinder blocks of the field-coil drivers at the rear that is the speaker business end, upon completion.
I hope my writing more about how good the Chicago is didn’t kill any attempt at the comparison you asked for.
Thank you for starting this thread : )
Totally agree. It's remarkable to hear drums sound like actual drums.
Kevn, thanks for your detailed comparison of Son and Chicago. To this day I have not heard any other WVL speakers. I got Chicago (with easy access to the speakers' stock cables and crossover boards) for the additional reasons that you can place the crossover boards externally (to free them of magnetization exposure, which exposure degrades sound) and replace the stock cables and brass spade push-on's (or fast-on's) with silver-plated pure copper push-on's) and special cables. If you have the skills, you can also "deconstruct" and "reconstruct" the crossover boards with PTP wiring, all of which will significantly improve SQ. If you have the ultimate skills, you can also design your own bar-no-cost crossover and even design another frame to hang the 2 15" woofers (optimized SQ is probably not achieved for having the midrange box or panel sit on a thin aluminum plate of the Audioframe's steel frames, which is tantamount to placing a high-quality component on a thin metal plate). This is not suggesting that Chicago is not well designed; it is very well designed, but you can turn this outstanding speaker to be your dream speaker if you have the skills to make it even greater. Some of the mods can be easily done and with clearly audible improvement. This was the reason that I called it a dream speaker. Once you have gone through the initial installation process, disassembling is a breeze (15 minutes) and reassembling is easy (30 minutes) in the future - you can handle all this by yourself alone. The ease makes moving the speakers so much easy; this is particularly pleasant (given the painful experience of moving all sealed-in speaker boxes each weighing 70+ kg). WVL's manuals can be improved significantly to make easy reading; they are unnecessarily dense and often uninformative (for inexperienced end-users who have no tech knowledge and cannot read the schematics in the manuals; e.g., no explanation about the various jumper settings on the crossover board, e.g., zero note about the mid-driver settings, not even on the crossover board).
Given your indicated difficulties in balancing TW and midrange drivers for near-field listening, I believe that it would be better to opt for the other version offered by WVL, having mid placed in its own open-back box and TW sit on top of it (where you can rotate TW to be in a different angle from mid and move TW back or forth along a 15cm range along 2 grooves; you could even have the TW freed from being screwed to the mid box and place TW anywhere on top of the mid's box). There is a widely shared view that it is more important to align TW and mid vertically for timing coherence than horizontally (as in your version; I don't have a view because I have not compared the 2 versions of Chicago).
Finally, in respect of two other commentators' asserted view that Berlin has to be better than Chicago because of Berlin's higher price, I have no intention to engage in such meaningless debate (because one is entitled to one's own belief; SQ, in the ears of the listener, is always a matter of belief rather than a hard scientific fact). Suffice to mention that horn speakers are always controversial; some people cannot stand or live with the sound of a horn speaker no matter how well it is engineered or how expensive it is (there are $1M+ horn speakers out there - surely they must be the best because they are the most expensive!). It is hard for me to imagine that the smaller horn of Berlin can be as good as the singularly remarkable and agile AMT TW (used in Son and Chicago, but I am open to changing my view if I could ever have the luxury of auditioning Berlin in my own system; I was not impressed with a touted supersensitive horn speaker I auditioned last year, but understand I cannot speak in absolute terms with one or two limited instances of experience). Berlin is more expensive simply because it is more expensive to manufacture that speaker (especially the full blown version of 3 15" woofers; Berlin has another version which does not include a third 15" woofer over the horn module; that lesser Berlin version may cost similarly to Chicago). WVL himself has pointedly stated that there is no correlation between cost and SQ among the 3 Audioframe models (London, Chicago and Berlin): each to his own and his personal taste.
Any person has experience with the new WVL WAGYU subwoofer? Especially in tandem (or used together with) any other WVL speakers?
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Thanks for all your additional information regarding modifications, amor - yes indeed, the open baffle of the audio frame makes it the perfect speaker for small adjustments with bridges over the sound character of the different drivers : ) - it is possible however, that I may never get to all that because what I’m hearing is already so profoundly good!
Regarding the AMT - I did consider both options for its location, and did in fact hear the top mounted option. However, due to my nearfield listening position, the top mounted AMT creates a less realistic soundfield, which led me to the side-mounted version - arguably more difficult to get right, but oh, so amazing when all the work finally bears its reward. It’s now better than perfect, and there was a time I did not think I could better the coherence of my SON. I have dealers who have delivered home demos for a variety of other items I’m interested in sit and listen and not want to leave : )
I think the Berlin would be simply unbelievable to listen to, for the primary effect of its combined six low/mid woofer boosting its bass frequencies to 30 field coil hertz - that would be incredible. The Chicago helped me realise base is never just bass, and I’ve heard bass from göbels and magicos to kharma enigma veyrons and avantgarde trios with subwoofer packages - while others may be more powerful, it’s an undifferentiated kind of power. The Chicagos have the sort of nuance that comes with realism. It’s breathtaking. I cannot imagine what the berlins are capable of. And sure, that horn should also sound pretty good
for my lowest frequencies, I have a four sub distributed array, arranged asymmetrically in my listening space. Tuned to crossover at 45Hz, they don’t even seem to be there and yet take the sound to an unreal place with pipe organs and the like, and being servo-assisted rythmik F12SEs, go down flat to 20Hz, and then even further to 14Hz at -3db. They’re an amazing sub.
Regarding the AMT - I did consider both options for its location, and did in fact hear the top mounted option. However, due to my nearfield listening position, the top mounted AMT creates a less realistic soundfield, which led me to the side-mounted version - arguably more difficult to get right, but oh, so amazing when all the work finally bears its reward. It’s now better than perfect, and there was a time I did not think I could better the coherence of my SON. I have dealers who have delivered home demos for a variety of other items I’m interested in sit and listen and not want to leave : )
I think the Berlin would be simply unbelievable to listen to, for the primary effect of its combined six low/mid woofer boosting its bass frequencies to 30 field coil hertz - that would be incredible. The Chicago helped me realise base is never just bass, and I’ve heard bass from göbels and magicos to kharma enigma veyrons and avantgarde trios with subwoofer packages - while others may be more powerful, it’s an undifferentiated kind of power. The Chicagos have the sort of nuance that comes with realism. It’s breathtaking. I cannot imagine what the berlins are capable of. And sure, that horn should also sound pretty good
for my lowest frequencies, I have a four sub distributed array, arranged asymmetrically in my listening space. Tuned to crossover at 45Hz, they don’t even seem to be there and yet take the sound to an unreal place with pipe organs and the like, and being servo-assisted rythmik F12SEs, go down flat to 20Hz, and then even further to 14Hz at -3db. They’re an amazing sub.
Oh, on a side note, just in case I may have unintentionally created any misrepresentation; the audio frame speakers do require assembly upon delivery, but in no way is this left to the client/buyer - the set-up would be fully and professionally handled by the appointed distributors. My earlier comment about ‘self-assembly’ had to do with the fact that I specifically made request that I do it all on my own, as I felt sufficiently capable, and desired the joy of putting it all together myself, with just a little help from a friend lifting the mid woofer into place.
Please excuse me if I gave the incorrect impression, in my attempt to explain how delightful the process was for me. ??
Please excuse me if I gave the incorrect impression, in my attempt to explain how delightful the process was for me. ??
A bit late commenting here, having just been told about this discussion.
I guess there’s little WVL user input since all will be too distracted by music to be here in front of a screen!
I’m a dealer in New Zealand & first landed Wolf von Langa’s SON in 2020 with the idea of stocking a higher efficiency speaker design in compact enclosure. You could doubt how a tweeter integrates so well with a 12" driver on first seeing the SON - Wolf certainly succeeded, no doubt due to constructing purpose-built drivers in house. SON greatly exceeded my expectations, proving flexible in placement and giving me the confidence to stock and use a demo pair myself until ordering a pair of Chicago in 2022. Those are not much bigger in footprint and in no way imposing for a dual 15” open baffle.
Speaker location isn’t betrayed in the spread of soundstage - being very wide and deep. Chicago energises air between speaker and listener, presenting realistic midrange with greater body and nuance over the SON. Combined with room voids, glass, flexing wooden floors I get no boom, but little room-bass gain in this space. Speaker placement is critical along with alignment to reduce room resonances at the listening position without excessive use of room treatments (apart from records which are of course essential). Placing the Chicago in this difficult room was a greater challenge but I worked out solutions over time. I’d ordered the top mounted AMT but just couldn’t get that to work with a low ceiling and closer listening distance for this space. The room & high tweeter position presented a phase issue only solved by installing the AMT into the mid baffle as on previous versions and adjusting the angle.
I’ve found Chicago more tolerant of lower-watt amps & despite similar looking efficiency have more drive/ higher volume capability than the SON. Individually adjustable upper and lower 15” bass on U-baffle provide delicacy and impact when needed. Audio Frame design and crossover jumpers offer a number of possibilities for mid and tweeter adjustment. My office desk is behind the speakers, where I can also enjoy music - another benefit to open baffle. To tame resonance in that alcove a small amount of Mundorf Angel Hair is placed behind the midrange frame and some other damping on bass frame walls. From delivered setting, there’s a narrow range of adjustment in field coil current for correct bass/ mid damping: useful for amplifier matching.
It may seem a stretch to call the Audio Frame series a bargain but I’d go further and call it a gift from the designer. Wolf has dedicated decades to designing field-coil motors and paper-silk drivers from a deep appreciation of vintage audio and a commitment to overcome past compromises. I can relate having been a collector and user of a wide variety of speakers from high efficiency Altec & JBL, vintage Tannoy, wideband drivers from Klangfilm to Lowther (Accustats, Quads, also many more recent speaker types both owned and traded-in). I've no interest in headphones, vintage speakers or others since using Audio Frame Chicago in my personal system.
Great review and impressions. What would you say the min amp power is for the SON, assuming a seating position 3m from the speakers?
I “only” have a WVL field coil PSU, which Wolf custom made for me. It’s not only a great product, but Wolf is a pleasure to deal with.
I “only” have a WVL field coil PSU, which Wolf custom made for me. It’s not only a great product, but Wolf is a pleasure to deal with.
Depends entirely on the capability of the amp. For example Tom Evans Linear A at 25 watts would suit (and has much more drive on the Chicago than Enleum's 25w of solid state). The Linear A sounds a power-house on less efficient speakers too, but won't drive a load under 6 ohms.
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