BOENICKE audio
Boenicke was founded in 1999. In today’s hifi market with an overwhelming number of brands (some say 20,000 worldwide!), we’ve scrutinized each of our products, asking ourselves, “does anyone really need this?” So Boenicke Audio has grown slowly and organically, not focusing on the number of units to be sold but rather on the quality and relevancy of our products.
As many loudspeakers as there are in the world, they can roughly be broken down into three main categories. The first is the loudspeaker that has been “re-invented” time and time again: a bass-reflex box made from MDF with foam dampening, a dome tweeter, one or two cone drivers on the perpendicular front baffle, plastic-based lacquer coating, spikes, and a standard crossover network.
Many even big loudspeaker houses no longer possess real in-house engineering skills, but have their models designed by third parties who don’t have a genuine emotional link to the finished product. This is a fact, and we think that it might be one of the main reasons why in so many ways, the hifi product market has become so cookie-cutter impersonal.
This tired, passionless method of creation leads to a world where the retail value of a product is perceived as paramount. In this world it’s more about buying and selling (and this is only possible if 99% of all gear is exchangeable) than about finding a really good product and keeping it for many years of pleasure and excitement.
20 years ago there might have been fewer models with “perfect” piano high gloss finish, but there were more models that gave you the opportunity to discover and hear the “handwriting” of the actual designer of that particular model. The ratio between what you see and what you get has actually never been as deceiving and superficial as it is with many of today’s loudspeakers.
Boenicke Audio’s goal and deepest wish is to think about, design, build, and market products that are the other way around. We strive, determined to create products that are so much more than what meets the eye, products that reflect an honest way of living and an accuracy of observation. So, we absolutely can’t justify creating any loudspeakers in this first category of MDF boxes.
The second category of loudspeakers are the brands for whom “less is more” holds true. These brands use better sounding materials for their enclosures than MDF, or build dipole speakers that sometimes use no crossover all at. Whether they are unique or not, these brands create loudspeakers with some true merits.
The third category goes a step further to do things that no one else does. These loudspeakers actively boost sound reproduction quality by adding certain elements to the signal path, to the enclosure, drivers, or any other part of the speaker. So doing, these brands create loudspeakers with a true identity and real, unique selling propositions. There are very few speaker houses who clearly find themselves in this category and we are deeply convinced that Boenicke Audio is the leader and only true contender.
Sven Boenicke, the founder, head, and owner of Boenicke Audio acoustically designs and brings to sonic life every unit that we sell. All our products truly bear Sven’s uncompromising handwriting which we consider to be the key factor to create a truly outstanding product and sound experience. All final decisions are made by Sven so it never happens that opposing interests from different departments within the company destroy the vision, unity, and ultimately the quality of a product. The finance department will never forbid the use of superb but costly tuning parts or enclosures milled from massive wood.
Of course, there are many other reasons why Boenicke Audio is truly unique and exceptional. We are one of less than a handful of companies who build their loudspeakers from solid wood.
There is much gossip on the internet that solid wood speakers are always built as resonating instruments and therefore try to imitate wood instruments. If someone takes a look at the cross sections of our CNC milled enclosures it should become clear that our enclosures are not designed to act as resonating bodies. On the contrary, we try to make our speaker bodies as solid and non-resonant as possible. Some may ask, “then why make them out of natural wood?” The answer is very simple. First, if you mount a speaker driver on a certain mass of a particular material such as solid wood (or MDF or aluminum, just to name other examples), the inherent sound properties of that material will strongly affect the way the speaker driver itself sounds. This is a fact, but virtually no one seems to know about it or take it into consideration when building a speaker driver or loudspeaker. Almost every driver manufacturer knows that using an aluminum phase plug can help to get heat out of the magnet system and eliminate the little echoic chamber behind the dust cap, but compared to a wooden phase plug it adds gross coloration (yes, aluminum to human hearing is a sonically highly coloring material)!
Second, there is no such thing as a non-resonant enclosure, so some degree of sound energy always dissipates from the enclosure itself.
It seems evident that a body of solid wood with a thin oil wax coating will resonate in a more natural way than the same body made from MDF with a plastic coating. Our W13 is a perfect example of the benefit of using solid wood enclosures. While the W13 is heavy and extremely non-resonant, the low degree of inner damping of solid wood with only minimal amounts of an extremely hard glue allows the speaker to reproduce music with so much true light in the harmonic structure of each tone you have to hear to believe it. This is something that we have not discovered with any other loudspeaker brand, regardless of price. Do you know any other manufacturer who uses the variety of tuning devices that we use, especially in our SE and even more the SE+ versions? And do you know a manufacturer who tests every type of driver for the correct sonic (not marked) orientation? Or LessLoss C-Marc internal cabling?
Each and every one of the above described items and tuning devices are a gain in reproduction quality and we assure you that it is well and truly audible. If you leave one out or replace the terminals (for example) with inferior ones to save money, it is not the same level anymore. One or two changes might not seem dramatic, but it all accumulates for better and for worse.
We agree that all this is for naught if each loudspeaker model is not masterfully tuned and sonically balanced in the end. To ensure that each and every speaker is fined tuned we have a method that is as individual and phenomenal as the products themselves.
"I confirm with my signature and by our reputation that it is our upright wish and goal to invent, design and manufacture the most honest products possible. That means that here, you do not get less than what meets the eye from the outside. But even much more.”
“Perhaps I have spent more time in concert halls recording live music than most other loudspeaker manufacturers. Wherever I go, the tone of real instruments is with me. In my memory, in my body – and I promise you can hear it in our products.”
～Sven Boenicke
We are very privileged that Sven started to make his own music recordings in the early nineties.
With the help of one or two splendid minds, he managed to create and build something we would call the most radical, perhaps best sounding 8-channel recording chain in the world. In the last 20 years Sven has recorded close to 300 venues and concerts, many of them with live audiences. Each recording was made in environments such as concert halls, churches, and other buildings. Instead of being in the control room of a recording studio, Sven was always present in the sound-field of the original music from beginning to end (Technicians who consider their memory of the sound in the control room as their true reference will have a problem judging the absolute level of quality of a sound referenced by the original sound in the field, because they were never in the field but always just listen to either headphones or speakers).
Sven has the ability to remember sounds in a photographic way. He can see the harmonic texture of sound as color in his mind’s eye. By means of storing a tightly matching corresponding color in his memory he can vividly recall his experience in the sound-field of these incredible live performances, even months later.
So, to get back to the speakers: in development stage, each speaker model is fine-tuned using these very recordings. The same holds true to our own electronics, cables and power distribution solutions.
Sven uses the remembered concert hall reality as the refer- ence, nothing else, to ensure the tuning and sonic balance of every Boenicke product is life-like. From time to time, we demonstrate this process to interested audiences at shows. For example, In Vienna in 2010 we performed live music and played back the recording via the system right after the live event. We’re happy if we’re somewhere in the region of 90% of the original – a value which most professionals would dismiss as a ridiculous illusion anyway.
At Boenicke Audio coming very, very close to original sounds is not an illusion but an achievable goal. And even now that we have achieved this goal, we will not stop work- ing on an even better experience of the reproduced beauty of sound.
family
Each model in Boenicke Audio’s W family of speakers shares the same intrinsic DNA and construction using only the finest natural components.
The ‘W’ designates solid wood and each model is available in a variety of species like oak, ash, walnut and cherry.
Every speaker cabinet is carefully formed as two individual clam-shell halves whose interiors are routed out by precision CNC cutters before being joined to create the final structure. Regardless of model or cost, the cabinet concept remains unchanged.
W11
The W11 cabinet size gives it real sonic advantages and allows the solid wood's beauty to truly shine.
Crafted for those with larger listening spaces, W11 takes the emotive performance of the W5 / W8 to a new level.
The carbon-fibre honeycomb woofer adds a new bass dimension. Fine adjustments to it can be made to ensure room-tailored performance courtesy of a super high-quality autoformer providing 2.5 dB increments of cut / boost.
The custom wood-cone mid / woofer renders textures in instruments so real that you will reach out to touch what isn't physically present.
W8
The W8 is the first floorstander in the Boenicke Audio range.
You’ll note how the design aspects flow from the little W5 into the side-firing woofer and widebander to which the W8 adds a dedicated midrange and larger ambient tweeter.
The midrange driver is custom and sports an apple tree phase plug and maple cone on the back of the magnet.
Expect deeper and more plentiful bass with the ability to fill most domestic listening spaces.
Listening to the W8 for the first time is finally hearing your favourite musicians as living entities within your listening space and no longer as two-dimensional cut-outs. The magic of individuals playing together to create a performance is laid bare by the W8 as an experience you will enjoy each time you listen.
W5
Standing just 293 mm tall and 104 mm wide, the W5 doesn’t impose itself on any listening space. Once you listen, you’ll be hooked on just how big the little W5 sounds.
Boasting just 2.8 L of cabinet volume, the W5 really shouldn’t fill your listening space with such grace and ease. Punchy bass comes from a driver capable of 18.5 mm of excursion. A liquid and lucid midrange with an accurate top end emanates from our 3’’ widebander made to spec just for Boenicke Audio. The ambient rear tweeter complements the main drive units and augmented by premium silk-wrapped Litz hookup wiring and WBT NextGen binding posts, this is a very grown-up little speaker.
Expect the usual Boenicke soundstaging as breathtaking as any vast landscape, a liquid midrange, accurate tone and harmonics which combine to connect you to your music in a way that defies what you thought possible.
