Напольная акустика — Wlm Elisabeth MK II

The Elisabeth MK II is a fully active tower from the Austrian manufacturer Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur, better known as WLM. Under owner Andreas Steiner, and with Martin Schützenauer central to its engineering and manufacturing, the company celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2026 and builds its speakers in Vienna. WLM groups the Elisabeth with the slimmer Maria as a slender active design built around analogue filtering and individual adjustment, and pitches it at medium to large rooms. In the maker's active floorstanding line it is listed below the Franz and Franz S and above the Maria.

Key specs that matter

Each cabinet holds six drivers. Two 8-inch long-stroke bass units with Hexacon membranes handle the lowest octaves, two 7-inch Kevlar cones cover the low midrange, a 5 cm cone tweeter with a graphite membrane takes over above them, and a 12 cm air motion transformer (AMT) extends the top end. Built-in amplification totals 1,800 W per speaker. WLM gives a frequency range of 22 Hz to 30 kHz. The cabinet is 120 cm tall and 50 cm deep, 18.5 cm wide at the front and back and 24 cm wide at its centre, and each speaker weighs 55.8 kg.

Engineering and use context

Two different loading principles share the enclosure. The pair of bass drivers is loaded by a transmission line, while the Kevlar low-midrange units sit in their own bass reflex chamber, so each section can be tuned for its own band. Wall thickness varies from 3 to 7 cm, and the narrower front and rear panels combined with the wider midsection give the cabinet a tapered cross-section when seen from above. The amplifiers live inside the speaker and are fed through analogue filters rather than digital processing, the same approach WLM takes in the Maria. The two tweeters divide the treble between a small graphite cone and a much larger AMT, a pairing that also appears in the compact Sissi active monitor and in the passive Rudolf tower.

Pairing

As an active system the Elisabeth MK II needs no power amplifier and connects to a line-level source or preamplifier. WLM offers its own Anton preamplifier for this role, and the two were presented together when the original Elisabeth was announced as a matched WLM combination of control unit and active speakers.

Alternatives

The WLM Maria is the smaller fully active floorstander, with 800 W per side, a 26 Hz to 31 kHz range and a 98 cm tall cabinet weighing 34 kg.