Duette ™ is the latest Special Applications product from Wilson Audio. The engineering team was challenged to design a loudspeaker that could work in hostile environments.

That didn't mean "work acceptably." With Duette, the goal was to create a product that would produce the signature Wilson sound in those settings: a wide, deep soundstage in which instruments and voices occupied discrete, three-dimensional space. Voices would sound real, tonally accurate, and coherent from top to bottom.

Percussion would explode from a deep, grain-free background with believable dynamics and speed.

In brainstorming the best way to achieve "big" sound from a small enclosure, the design team came up with a Novel ™ idea - literally. The Novel is Duette's external crossover.

Crossover design lies at the heart of the Wilson Audio sound. Each crossover, whether destined for Duette or Alexandria, is hand-wired using custom capacitors and even custom solder. They are, of necessity, large and heavy.

To keep Duette's size and weight appropriate for varied applications, it was quickly apparent it made sense to house the crossover in a separate module.

Another, more compelling engineering reason to do so is that in an enclosure the size of Duette, the proximity of a crossover to the drivers would make the circuits susceptible to mechanical and electromechanical feedback from the drivers, introducing subtle yet audible distortion.

At Wilson Audio, the size of a speaker is irrelevant to the care given to its design and manufacture.