Напольная акустика — Wolf von Langa SON WVL 12739 ULTIMA

The WVL 12739 ULTIMA is a model of the compact field coil tower range from Wolf von Langa, whose workshop sits in Neunkirchen am Brand, Germany. Its designers set out to build it without economic or technical limits, and it premiered in 2024 at AXPONA in Chicago and High End in Munich. The listed price is EUR 30,400 per pair.

Key specs that matter

Wolf von Langa describes it as a three-way system in FC-HRP technology - a current driven bass and midrange driver working with a Helmholtz resonator passive radiator - plus a jet tweeter. The range extends from 20 Hz to 25,000 Hz, sensitivity reaches 94 dB for 1 W at 1 m and impedance is 8 ohm. Rated handling is 150 W continuous and 1,500 W as a 10 ms impulse. The lower module is 404 x 700 x 300 mm, the treble module on top is 404 x 170 x 60 mm, and each finished speaker weighs 43 kg including its acoustic cover. The mass to area ratio of the jet tweeter is chosen for fast impulse response.

Engineering and use context

Unlike a permanent magnet driver, the front woofer uses an electromagnet with a current controlled field and a ventilated motor for smooth air flow. It has an effective cone area of 530 cm2, a very light but torsion resistant paper and silk cone, and an underhung voice coil wound from copper clad flat aluminium wire. A flat rear passive membrane is tuned precisely to the active driver. Each speaker has its own high current buffering and a new constant current source with a low noise reference to energise the coil, and the field coil uses a new winding method. The magnetostatic dipole treble panel sits asymmetrically on the cabinet, decoupled from resonance and held by magnets, letting the owner set its stereo spread and its timing relative to the woofer. The cabinet uses five layer particle board with real wood veneer, or optionally dense fibreboard coated with PMMA on both sides.

Pairing

The filter splits treble and bass sections and uses copper air core coils with hand made VSF Copper-Cast capacitors from Duelund. Owners can bi-wire or bi-amp it through WBT nextgen PlasmaProtect copper posts, and a two-pole speaker cable needs two bridges. Its efficiency means low power amplifiers already drive it well. Veneers are chosen on request, with mirror gloss black or deep matt as options, and the treble panel is clear and polished. Compared with the SON, Wolf von Langa upgraded the crossover parts and fitted a much improved power supply.

Alternatives

A closely related field coil model from Wolf von Langa is the WVL 12639 SON, which shares the cabinet dimensions and is priced at EUR 22,600 per pair.