Wilson Audio of Provo, Utah, has plenty of previous when it comes to turning out uniquely designed products. It's no stranger to the sky-high price-tag either. But it has probably surpassed itself, on both counts, with its new WAMM Master Chronosonic loudspeakers.
WAMM stands for Wilson Audio Modular Monitor and, as the acronym suggests, the Master Chronosonic is a multi-module loudspeaker. Each module is physically adjustable in relation to its partners, in a quest to perfect their alignment in the time domain.
(Wilson Audio is, it's safe to say, obsessed with the time domain. It contends that even tiny discrepancies in the alignment of the drivers in relation to the listener causes sound-quality degradation.)
Consequently, the Master Chronosonic's adjustable speaker array features a 'Micrometer System' that offers module adjustment in increments of just five microseconds. Align the drivers correctly to the listening position, contends Wilson Audio, and the result is far more lifelike sound.
And the reality of the WAMM Master Chronosonic is every bit as startling as the theory.
Each speaker is a touch over 214cm tall, 53 cm wide and 95 cm deep. They're constructed from aerospace-grade aluminium, along with proprietary materials Wilson Audio refers to as S-, X- and W-material.
The open architecture of the upper section of the speaker is designed to minimise stored energy. Beneath, the port can be moved to either the front or the rear of the bass enclosure to make the Master Chronosonic compatible with as wide a range of listening environments as possible.
Both the front- and rear-firing tweeters are 25mm doped silk fabric designs. There are three midrange drivers - the two forward-firing items are of 5in and 7in diameter respectively, the smaller of a paper pulp composite and the larger of doped paper pulp. The rear-firing driver is a 5in paper pulp composite design.
There are two woofers, the first a 10.5in hard paper pulp design and the second a 12.5in version of the same material.
As you might imagine (or as you know if you started reading this story from the headline), all of this deep thinking, all these mysterious composite materials and all of this attention to detail does not come cheap. Each pair of WAMM Master Chronosonics takes approximately 10 weeks to construct and will cost £700,000.
Wilson Audio is limiting production to 70 pairs.
MORE: Read all our Wilson Audio reviews
