Wilson Audio Sabrina V

Wilson Audio’s flagship production model, the Chronosonic XVX, introduced more innovations than any other single product in the company’s history. Since its launch in 2019, Wilson Audio has continued to trickle down those innovations to lower-priced models. The latest loudspeaker to receive what I call the “V treatment” is Wilson’s entry-level floorstander, the popular Sabrina. 

Priced at $28,500 per pair, the Sabrina V replaces the outgoing SabrinaX. The new Sabrina incorporates several key parts and technologies pioneered in the XVX, most notably the QuadraMag midrange driver. This is significant because, after listening to the Chronosonic XVX nearly daily for the past five years, I have come to believe that the QuadraMag driver is the heart and soul of the Chronosonic. This driver has a harmonic beauty, a density of tone color, and lack of “hi-fi” edge that simply sound right. To find this exceptional driver developed for Wilson’s $400k flagship in the $28,500 Sabrina V is indeed promising.

The Sabrina V is packed with many other innovations that I’ll describe, but first the basics. The speaker is 39″ tall with a sloped baffle and an enclosure that narrows toward the top. It is a three-way design with an 8″ woofer, the aforementioned 7″ QuadraMag midrange driver, and a 1″ doped silk-fabric tweeter. The woofer and midrange drivers both feature pulp-paper cones. The specified bass extension is 27Hz, 4Hz lower than its predecessor, the SabrinaX, thanks to the slightly larger cabinet dimensions and reworking of the enclosure interior. Sensitivity is specified at 87dB, with a 4-ohm nominal impedance.

Wilson has long used different baffle materials for different drivers, made possible by its use of separate enclosures for each driver. Specifically, the cabinets are typically made from very stiff “X-Material,” with the midrange baffle made from slightly softer “S-Material.” That’s not possible with the single-baffle Sabrina, so Wilson developed an entirely new material, called “H-Material,” used for the first time in the Sabrina V. This new material is reportedly engineered to have ideal properties for all the drivers. The sides, rear, top, and bottom of the enclosure are made from “X-Material,” and the front baffle from “H-Material.” 

The Sabrina V now benefits from the in-house designed and built crossover capacitors first used in the XVX. Wilson Audio bought its longtime supplier, Reliable Capacitors (known in the industry as RelCap), and moved all production in-house. This enabled Wilson to design capacitors to its own specifications, build them to a higher standard, and tighten tolerances in the manufacturing process. In fact, the crossover capacitors in the Sabrina V are even more advanced than those in the XVX because Wilson has had an additional seven years to refine the process.

About three years ago Wilson introduced the Acoustic Diode, a sophisticated spike that was a direct replacement for the stock spikes that were shipped with its speakers. I replaced the stock spikes on the XVX with the Acoustic Diodes and heard a marked improvements in clarity, noise reduction, transient attack, and decay, among other qualities. The Acoustic Diodes incorporate Wilson’s “V-Material” that is particularly good at suppressing vibration. A set of eight costs $3400. This “V-Material” had proved itself in the XVX, and later in Wilson’s latest models. The “V” in “Sabrina V” reflects the use of “V-Material.” 

In a clever and extremely cost-effective example of thoughtful engineering, the Sabrina V has machined into the enclosure bottom four discs of “V-Material” at the interface between the spike and the speaker bottom panel. This brings much of the advantage of the Acoustic Diodes to the Sabrina V without the additional cost of the optional Acoustic Diodes.

It goes without saying these days that the build and finish quality of Wilson speakers are absolutely flawless. The Sabrina V is built and finished to the same standard as Wilson’s more expensive speakers. The Sabrina V is scaled down in size but not in quality. A variety of finishes are available, all of them exceeding the finish quality of a luxury automobile. 

Peter McGrath and Tyler Hall of Wilson Audio visited to set up the Sabrina V in my music room, as well as in a separate small theater room as part of a full Wilson multichannel theater system. I cover the Sabrina V in theater context in a feature article elsewhere in this issue. The Sabrina V was very easy to dial in, with a moderate amount of toe-in. You can see the speaker placement in my video interview with Peter in my listening room, available on The Absolute Sound’s YouTube channel. 

First, the Sabrina V plays much larger than its size suggests—tonally, dynamically, and spatially. Starting with the bass, the Sabrina V delivers a solid tonal foundation for the music, with a real sense of heft and power. Bass guitar is fully formed, with a solidity and physicality that are satisfying. I was amazed that the Sabrina V could reach down into organ pedal-tone territory and create the feeling of the room being pressurized. Try the album L’Orgue Spirituel: Organ Music by César Franck and Charles Tournemire. This superbly recorded album captures the power, scale, and rich timbre of the pipe organ. It contains some of the most powerful bottom-octave energy I’ve heard, and the Sabrina V not only reproduced the lower-most pitches but did so without a sense or strain, port noise, or artifacts. Moreover, during passages of simultaneously played 16Hz and 32Hz pedal points, it was easy to hear each pitch as a distinct entity rather than a confused blur. I heard this same clarity of pitch in the bottom end on organ, bass guitar, acoustic bass, and other lower-register instruments. Of course, the Sabrina V doesn’t deliver the bass power of Wilson’s larger Sasha V with its dual 8″ woofers, but I found the Sabrina V’s bass tuneful and musically expressive. Keep in mind that additional bass output could be a detriment in smaller rooms. The Sabrina V’s bass is perfectly suited to smaller spaces, delivering a solid tonal foundation without overloading the listening room. Nonetheless, the Sabrina V’s bass was adequate for my large 18′ x 27′ x 11′ music room yet didn’t overload the 11′ x 16.5′ x 9′ theater room in which it was also auditioned. 

A little higher in frequency, the Sabrina V had good resolution of instrumental detail and color. Yo-Yo Ma’s gorgeously recorded (by the great Shawn Murphy) cello on Shostakovich: The Cello Concertos with the Boston Symphony had a textural density, body, and tone color that were satisfying. No thinness or bleached timbre here. This sense of tonal warmth and rich color extended up the frequency spectrum, giving the sound a harmonic richness through the critical midrange. I attribute this to the QuadraMag driver, which I’ve heard over countless hours in the Chronosonic XVX. In fact, as I noted, I think of the QuadraMag driver as the soul of the XVX, and what gives that reference speaker its remarkable combination of tonal warmth and resolution. Its resolution comes not from presenting hi-fi details, but rather from a subtle rendering of harmonic density and color. The result is a more natural and musical sound, rather than a “hi-fi” sound. That’s the XVX’s defining characteristic, and one that I also hear in the Sabrina V. You can hear this quality on vocals; the Sabrina V presents a warm and rich tonal balance that infuses vocals with presence and believability. Moreover, sibilance is kept to an absolute minimum, thanks to the tweeter’s smoothness. A good example is Holly Cole’s sultry voice on her excellent new album Dark Moon (Qobuz 96/24). 

Another characteristic of the XVX that I’ve long admired and enjoyed is the smoothness of the treble, a quality that carries over into the Sabrina V. The Sabrina V uses a simplified version of the Carbon Synergy tweeter found in the XVX and is the same unit in the $164,800 Alexx V. Significantly, the tweeter has a doped silk-fabric diaphragm rather than one made from one of the newer high-tech diaphragm materials. The Convergent Synergy Carbon was first developed for David Wilson’s magnum opus, the Wilson Audio Modular Monitor (WAMM), a $970k statement product. When the modern version of the WAMM was introduced in 2017, I visited the factory where David gave me a tour and talked about the speaker’s development. We came to an area that had perhaps 20 different tweeters on a table—all designs he had considered and rejected—many of them with diaphragms of exotic materials. I asked him about the decision to use a soft dome rather than beryllium, diamond, or one of the other hard materials. He told me that in developing the WAMM, cost was obviously not an object, and that the soft dome delivered the smoothest and more natural treble. The Sabrina V’s tweeter can trace its lineage to the WAMM and embodies the similar aesthetic of valuing smoothness and ease over hyped hi-fi “detail.”

In the XVX, and now in the Sabrina V, the treble lacks the metallic patina that you so often hear in reproduced music. There’s an ease and relaxation that draw you into the music and encourage long listening sessions without listening fatigue. Yet, the top end doesn’t lack detail. The presentation of treble detail is subtle, refined, and sophisticated rather than in-your-face. For a beautiful example of how the Sabrina V manages to sound at once detailed and smooth, listen to Jimmy Cobb’s delicate brush work on the SACD version of Jazz in the Key of Blue with Roy Hargrove, Russell Malone, and John Webber on the Chesky label. The Sabrina V resolves the fine microstructure of the brushes and snare in exquisite detail, yet without a hint of etch. Incidentally, the album has the most realistic trumpet sound I’ve heard on any recording. The Sabrina V reproduced Hargrove’s trumpet with a full measure of top-octave energy yet without hardness or glare.

The Sabrina V, to my ears, has more upper-midrange and lower-treble energy than the Alexia V or Chronosonic XVX. This gives it a somewhat more forward and illuminated perspective than the more relaxed-sounding Alexia V and Chronosonic. 

Although the Sabrina V’s sensitivity is rated at a moderate 87dB, I was astonished to discover that I could drive it to fully satisfying playback levels with the 20W Berning/Hi-Fi One Reference SET. Granted, the Berning is no garden-variety SET, but 20W is 20W. When Peter McGrath and Tyler Hall were here for the setup, we measured undistorted peaks of 105dB from the Sabrina V/Berning combination. That sounds impossible from looking at the respective specs of each product, but we heard and measured what we heard and measured. The Sabrina V played at fully satisfying playback levels when driven by the 20W Berning. What’s more, the fabulous bass performance I’ve described was fully realized when the Sabrina V was matched with the Berning.

Dynamic performance has always been a Wilson hallmark, a tradition carried on in the Sabrina V. This moderately sized speaker delivers the bass impact and overall dynamic contrasts of a much larger model. The track “Moanin’” by Monty Alexander on the Telarc SACD sampler has huge dynamic impact along with a powerful and propulsive bass line. I’ve listened to this track on a variety of much larger speakers and can say that the Sabrina V delivered a muscularity in the bass and a dynamic impact far above what its size and price suggest. 

Just as the Sabrina V plays like a bigger speaker in bass extension and dynamics, it also sounds spatially like a larger speaker. There’s a coherence that translates to the speakers disappearing and presenting tangible images between and behind them. The Sabrina V’s clarity presents each instrument as a separate entity rather than congealing images in a blur. This made it easier to follow individual instrumental lines, particularly with complex music. 

Of course, the Sabrina V isn’t the equal of the Alexia V or Chronosonic XVX. Those speakers have a bit more ease, wider dynamics, deliver deeper and more powerful bass, and have higher resolution. The Sabrina V is also voiced a bit differently, with a bit more upper-midrange energy resulting in a slightly more forward perspective. And yet…and yet, the Sabrina V retains the essential character of those much more expensive models but simply scaled down in magnitude.

Conclusion

Dollar for dollar, I think that the Sabrina V delivers the best value in the Wilson line. The heart of any speaker is the midrange driver, and this entry-level floorstander employs the same QuadraMag midrange driver as the $400k Chronosonic XVX. Consequently, the Sabrina V has the harmonic beauty and tonal density of Wilson’s mighty flagship. The Sabrina V also plays larger than its size suggests in bass extension, dynamic impact, and spatial presentation. What’s more, the Sabrina V will fit in just about any room, is easy to drive, exudes fine craftsmanship, is beautifully finished in a variety of colors, and is backed by a 52-year-old company with the best dealer network in the industry. 

The Sabrina V may be the entry level to Wilson Audio’s line of floorstanding speakers, but there’s nothing entry level about this beautifully crafted and musically rewarding speaker.

Specs & Pricing

Type: Three-way floorstanding dynamic loudspeaker
Driver complement: One 8″ paper-pulp woofer, one 7″ paper-pulp composite midrange, one 1″ doped silk-fabric tweeter
Loading: Rear-ported (woofer); rear-vented (midrange)
Frequency response: 27Hz–24kHz ±3dB
Nominal impedance: 4 ohms (2.23 ohms minimum at 121Hz)
Sensitivity: 87dB (1W/1m @1kHz)
Minimum amplifier power: 50W
Dimensions: 12″ x 39″ x 15.5″
Weight: 123 lbs. each
Price: $28,500

Manufacturer Information

Wilson Audio Specialties
2233 Mountain Vista Lane
Provo, Utah 84606
(801) 377-2233
wilsonaudio.com

Associated Equipment

Analog source: Basis Audio A.J. Conti Transcendence turntable with SuperArm 12.5 tonearm; Air Tight Opus cartridge; Moon 810LP phonostage; DS Audio ST-50 stylus cleaner, DS Audio ES-001 Eccentricity Detection Stabilizer, Levin record brush, Degritter ultrasonic LP cleaner

Digital source: Wadax Reference DAC with Reference DC cables, Reference Server with Reference PSU and Reference DC cables, Wadax Akasa digital interface

Amplification: Berning/HiFi One Reference SET; CH Precision L10 Dual Monaural linestage; CH Precision M10 Dual Monaural power amplifiers

AC power: Shunyata Everest 8000-X and Shunyata Typhon 2 conditioners, Shunyata Omega-X and Sigma-X power cords, Shunyata AC outlets, five dedicated 20A lines wired with identical length 10AWG

Support: Critical Mass Systems Olympus equipment racks and Olympus amplifier stands; Harmonic Resolution VXR equipment rack, Ayra Audio RevOpods isolation

Cables: AudioQuest Dragon interconnects, AudioQuest Dragon Zero loudspeaker cables

Grounding: Shunyata Altaira-X grounding system

Accessories: The Chord Company GroundArray noise reduction

Acoustics: Acoustic Geometry Pro Room Pack 12, ASC 16″ Round Tube Traps

Room: Purpose-built; Acoustic Sciences Corporation Iso-Wall System