Wilson Audio Acoustic Diode

The new Wilson Acoustic Diode isn’t an optional device; it’s an essential one. It dramatically lowers the noise floor, both boosting dynamics and revealing previously obscured musical details.
– Jacob Heilbrunn

Building upon the research and development of Pedestal, the Special Applications Engineering Team is excited to announce the Wilson Audio Acoustic Diode™ (AD Spike for short). At the heart of the Acoustic Diode is our proprietary “V-Material.” This superior constrained layer damping composite is unsurpassed in vibration absorption and resonance control.

Energy from the enclosure migrates into the V-Material where it is faced with the effective damping properties of this efficient material. The mass of the loudspeaker concentrated onto the very small ends of the spike tips results in significant levels of PSI that prevent detrimental vibrations from traveling upward into the footer. Those vibrations that do travel up the spike are absorbed by the mass of the Acoustic Diode and have to travel through the V-Material to have a chance to influence the enclosure.

Keeping the spike and threaded post separate prevent a direct path for vibrations to travel, or interplay, and are therefore dissipated and absorbed in either the V-Material or the footer housing. This distinctive design, combined with advanced vibration-mitigating materials, provides the best of both worlds; a solid base from which the drivers can launch as well as preventing the transmission of energy from the floor to the loudspeakers.

Believe me when I say that I did not want to hear what I heard: a completely passive addition to my system that did as much to augment the quality of the bottom octaves while increasing the precise location of instruments and sharpening the attack of the upper level transients, as I would expect of an active component upgrade. The audible benefits to an already stellar performer were such that Al Hirt’s trumpet and Carlos Santana’s guitar and those drums recorded by Enoch Light have never seemed more lifelike nor vivid. My wife had to drag me away from listening to Julie London, the peerless songstress appearing in my room 63 years after she recorded “Blue Moon”. Dinner was almost ruined. Now that’s the test of an upgrade.
– Ken Kessler