Sage Series Architectural Loudspeakers

The Wisdom Audio Sage Series provides the performance of an exotic audiophile loudspeaker while respecting architectural integrity and providing a pleasing visual aesthetic. This series offers unprecedented flexibility to address a range of installation options while performing to the highest levels available among architectural designs.

Wisdom Audio enjoys a proud heritage among esoteric loudspeaker companies, having produced some of the most highly regarded (and most costly) loudspeakers in history. After more than two years of development, the Sage Series brings this remarkable performance to market with in-wall, on-wall, and freestanding solutions. Tall and slim, these loudspeakers offer sophisticated, understated elegance that can either complement or virtually disappear from the room as needed.

Architectural Aspect Ratio

The Sage Series easily integrates into a variety of décors:

• The in-wall speakers’ slim design can easily be incorporated into decorative columns or into any standard wall construction.
• The on-wall models mount securely on the wall surface, similar to a flat-panel television, and complement the television’s appearance.
• Finally, the freestanding versions of these remarkable loudspeakers eliminate the need for elaborate installation in a slim, small-footprint design.

The unusual shape of the Sage Series derives from the physical nature of the Wisdom Audio planar magnetic drivers, which reproduce most of the sound you hear. With the development of specially designed, high operating pressure woofers came the possibility of a slim, yet genuinely full range loudspeaker system.

Application Flexibility

The Sage Series includes four distinct models (each of which is available as an in-wall, an on-wall, or as a freestanding loudspeaker), ranging from 20" to 75" tall. These models may be used in any combination to address the specific needs of a home entertainment system.

Importantly, every Sage Series system includes an electronic crossover that incorporates advanced Audyssey MultEQ™ XT® room correction. Professionally calibrated by your local installer, this system measures the acoustic characteristics of your room at up to thirty-two different locations and corrects for any anomalies.

Thanks to the extraordinary capabilities of the speakers themselves and the sophistication of the room correction technology, it is now possible to consistently achieve unparalleled performance in almost any room.

Freedom from Compression

Most of us have had the experience of unexpectedly coming upon live music. It might be in a restaurant or on the street, but you can always tell that it is live rather than reproduced — even before you turn the corner and see the musician.

What you are hearing in live music is the absence of something that plagues even the finest conventional loudspeakers: compression. The result is sound that lacks the dynamic energy of the original performance. It sounds “polite” and restrained as compared to live music; the notes may all be there, but they don’t come fully “alive.”

Traditional “cone and dome” loudspeakers suffer from compression at all volumes, and it typically becomes worse as you approach realistic concert levels. There are many reasons for this limitation, including the inertia of the relatively heavy diaphragms and the fact that the voice coils that make the diaphragms move are tightly wound and buried inside a massive magnetic structure. This arrangement invariably leads to heat building up in the voice coils, and hot voice coils do not work as well as cool ones.

Wisdom Audio planar magnetic drivers are free from these limitations, and equally free from compression. The diaphragms are actually lighter than the air they move, offering negligible inertia. The “voice coils” are unwound and lay flat on the surface of the diaphragm, with so much radiating area that they simply cannot retain any significant heat. Even if you hit them with hundreds of watts of power, the heat generated is dissipated almost instantly. Wisdom Audio planar magnetic drivers have a fraction of the compression found in even the highest-quality conventional drivers.

In a Wisdom Audio system, music comes alive. Movies are every bit as dynamic and exciting as the director intended. The experience is emotionally engaging. It needs to be heard to be appreciated — but be careful. It is hard to go back to a system that is merely “polite.”

Active Crossovers

People who have wanted to extract the highest performance from their systems know that amplifying each section of the speaker directly and separately yields the finest results. Of course, this approach requires having a dedicated, active crossover to divide the frequency range appropriately before the power amplifiers, so that they can then drive the speakers directly. Active crossovers offer many advantages over common passive, internal crossovers, including lower distortion.

“Biamplification” makes use of two channels of amplification to drive different portions of a single loudspeaker. The most common instance of “bi-amping” today is in home theater applications, wherein a dedicated subwoofer handles the deepest bass, while the remaining audible range is handled by the various front and surround speakers. But you can also biamplify a full range loudspeaker, driving the woofer separately from the drivers that handle the midrange and treble frequencies.

Logically, you can combine these two approaches, and the result is “triamplification.” A “tri-amped” system uses separate amplification for three audible ranges. In our case, the three ranges are:

• deepest bass (one or more subwoofers)
• mid-bass (the woofers in the front and surround speakers)
• midrange and treble (the planar magnetic panels)

Since each channel of the amplifier is delivering power over a limited range of frequencies, several forms of distortion are reduced as compared to each channel handling the full range of musical information.

The Sage Series’ SC-1 System Controller supports anything up to a “7.3 channel” system. That is, up to seven main speakers can be supported (all of which are biamplified), plus up to three independent subwoofer channels. It is thus a “7.3 channel in, 14.3 channel out” active crossover and room correction system.

In the Sage Series, the amplifier, woofer, and enclosure are all treated as a single system for reproducing uncompromised bass. Every Sage Series woofer has its own dedicated 500 watt amplifier (provided by either the two or three channel Wisdom Audio system amplifiers SA-2 or SA-3). Amplifiers of the customer’s choosing drive the planar magnetic panels.

Audyssey™ MultEQ® Room Correction

Audyssey™ room correction technology addresses distortion caused by room acoustics, so you hear sound as it was intended, in every seat, automatically.

A good loudspeaker is designed to deliver sound without distortion or coloration. But when even great speakers are placed in a room, things change. Walls, furniture, and other objects reflect and absorb the sound from your speakers, creating complex distortions specific to your room, which could not have been predicted by any loudspeaker designer.

Audyssey™ MultEQ® XT removes these distortions by equalizing your sound system for every seat in your listening room. It addresses and solves problems in both the time and the frequency domains, minimizing the effect of the room so you can hear more of the remarkable speakers you purchased.

Wisdom Audio is a licensee of the most sophisticated form of this technology for use in our systems, and worked closely with Audyssey Laboratories™ to ensure that you get all the performance you deserve. The Wisdom Audio SC-1 is the only balanced input/output, seventeen channel (14.3) implementation of Audyssey MultEQ XT technology available today.

Summary

The new Wisdom Audio Sage Series take a comprehensive and innovative approach to achieving uncompromised performance within the realm of architectural audio.

Employing unique and proprietary biamplification, room correction, independent driver enclosures and innovative mounting systems Sage achieves a level of performance rarely achieved by even the most exotic audiophile systems; thanks to the Audyssey™ MultEQ® XT room correction technology, this stunning performance can be reliably achieved in spite of the limitations normally imposed by the room itself. Perhaps most importantly, these remarkable achievements are available in formats to meet the needs of any installation: in-wall, on-wall, or freestanding solutions are available for all models, none of which compromise performance.