The Wilson Benesch Trinity/Torus Loudspeaker System

Moving to the other end of the scale and that storm sequence from Scheherezade, the Torus adds scale, foundation but most importantly of all, a feeling of majestic inevitability to proceedings. There’s that same ease, but this time hitched to a feeling of unbridled power; you can almost picture the sea smashing against the huge rock, creating a dramatic picture and an equally dramatic contrast with the delicacy and tranquility of the closing violin part.

It’s hard to review a sub-woofer based system without discussing even focusing on the bass, but that’s not really the point. What a system like the Torus and Trinity deliver is balance, seamless extension at both frequency extremes that embraces and enhances the midband, creating a coherent whole that makes greater sense of the musical performance – and gives greater access to it. There’s a clarity and poise to the musical proceedings that makes the structure – the notes, the phrases, the parts – easier to hear, easier to slot together. It’s easier to hear the contribution of each player, easier to separate each voice and instrument. All of which is nice to have, I’m sure you’ll agree – especially when you consider the jumbled and confused tumble of sound that most hi-fi systems generate when compared to live music. But the easiest thing of all with the Trinity and Torus, is understanding the intent behind the music and why whoever wrote it bothered in the first place. The vivid, almost pictorial impressions created by Scheherezade are no accident. Nor are the stark drama and contrast created by the alchemy of Beethoven and Heifetz as the latter blazes through the Kreutzer sonata, his pauses and stately grace in the slower passages bringing a subterranean tension as he coils himself for the next blindingly fast flight, his trajectory marked by the spray of notes scattered in his wake. The solid, funky, dirty groove of ‘Las Cuevas De Mario’ leave you in no doubt that eggs is definitely eggs, while the monochromatic angst of Robert Smith’s vocal transports you back to the depressed and decaying terrain of early 80’s Britain and the Thatcher years; ‘Tramp The Earth Down’ indeed.

Music works on many levels: the emotional, the spiritual, the intellectual, the facile. It matters not why we listen, the Tourists enjoying exactly the same status as Telemann or Tchaikovsky. What matters is that we receive the message we seek, the reward within. We might want Marco Pierre White, we might want classic Roux brothers cuisine – or we might want candy-floss; sometimes all we want is a bit of fluff. And my point is? A wide bandwidth, phase coherent, high-resolution and dynamically coherent system should be able to deliver without fear or favour. The Trinity/Torus set-up does exactly that. It’s a select group of speakers that provide such access, such musical credibility and do so with so little residual character. Like the Duette and WatchDog the Wilson- Benesch combination gives up ultimate transparency and textural resolution to the biggest and best. But at the price being asked that’s a trifling concern which need only bother those with a burning need to drop another 20 or 30 grand – and that’s just on the speakers. Because in some ways the best thing about the Trinity and Torus isn’t how good they sound with the best possible ancillaries (and they are well worthy of the best); no, the best thing about them is just how well they work in isolation, how willingly they work with amps that shouldn’t really be allowed anywhere near speakers of this quality. This is one sub/sat system that really does deliver on the promise, both in terms of superb sonic results and bite-sized financial practicality. Full-range, effortlessly engaging, addictively entertaining, musically sophisticated, unflappably capable but still prepared to let its hair down, at around £13K plus an amp the Wilson-Benesch Trinity and Torus have set the bar awfully high for speaker systems confined to just a pair of boxes. Forget domestic acceptability, these are speakers you buy for their performance – everything else is just icing on the cake