Wilson Audio, you know, the "sold more speakers over $10k than God" company, has, it appears, finally released their Duette bookshelf. It seems like the Duettes have been popping up in show reports for ages but it's on their site now which must mean it's finally in production.

The Duette is billed as a "Special Applications product" for, basically, sticking speakers in ungodly places while still achieving:

...the signature Wilson sound in those settings: a wide, deep soundstage in which instruments and voices occupied discrete, three-dimensional space.

With a price around $11k a pair, the Duette sports 1" tweet and an 8" woofer for range of 36-32k Hz. Interestingly, if you look at the picture, that little bump at the bottom of the stand is actually an outboard crossover. There's some science that goes into keeping the crossover out of the vibrating box but, here, it appears more for placement issues, or so the website says. Plus, included with the Duettes are:

...a set of tweeter resistors and custom designed cables for near boundary placement and another set of resistors and cables for away from boundary placement. The resistors and cables selected are determined by the application in which the Duette is to be used. Ingenious, if we do say so ourselves!

Interesting...Stereophile covered the Wilson room at CES (though Wilson was strangely absent from the exhibitor list) where Wilson, in typical form, compared the Duettes against other big name speakers like the B&W 800d and Krell LAT-2000. The demo showed how the Duettes could sit against a wall and project sound comparable to the other speakers. Needless to say, the chaps at Stereophile were impressed.

Story via 6Moons