Напольная акустика — Wlm Maria

Within the fully active range of Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur (WLM) of Vienna, the Maria is the smallest floorstander, and it borrows construction principles from the larger Franz and Elisabeth models. Its slim cabinet is milled from solid wood in a five-axis CNC process, routed halfway, then glued together and finished by hand, while a white lacquered MDF version is also offered. At its introduction German pricing started at EUR 18,900 per pair in white MDF and reached EUR 21,900 for the solid wood enclosure, and WLM covers the pair for five years.

Key specs that matter

The Maria is fitted with six drivers. Two 6 x 9 inch racetrack woofers with hard-hung paper cones handle the bass, two 5 inch woofer-midrange units use papyrus-reinforced paper membranes, a 5 cm cone tweeter has a graphite-coated diaphragm and an AMT unit of 6 cm radiates front and back as a dipole. WLM rates the built-in amplification at 800 W per channel and gives a frequency range of 26 Hz to 31 kHz. The cabinet stands 98 cm tall and 34 cm deep, and it is 13 cm wide at front and back but 19 cm across the middle, giving a faceted plan. Weight is 34 kg per speaker.

Engineering and use context

Wall thickness runs from 2.4 cm to 5 cm. The low end uses two loading methods at once - a transmission line that vents toward the rear and a bass reflex section that fires downward, with one woofer mounted in the floor of the cabinet playing the same volume as the upper unit. The two tweeters are not identical, and they run in parallel in a staggered D'Appolito arrangement around the upper midrange driver. Separate Class D modules drive the bass, midrange and treble sections. On the rear panel three rotary controls and two toggle switches set the AMT level down to -3 dB, shape the midrange and bass contours, adjust bass level and select between standard operation and a full-range dipole mode for the bass and midrange. Filtering is analogue, in line with the WLM approach for its fully active models.

Pairing

Owners do not have to buy a separate power amplifier. A source with a variable output, such as a streamer with digital volume or an analogue preamplifier, connects straight to the speakers, and the narrow footprint suits living spaces where a large passive tower and separate amplifiers would not fit. The rear controls let the owner trim bass and treble output to placement close to or away from walls.

Alternatives

The WLM Elisabeth MK II is the next fully active floorstanding model above the Maria in the range.