The Age Of Wisdom?

US install speaker specialist Wisdom Audio is making a play for UK custom home cinemas. Martin Dew gets the inside scoop on its Insight Series in-wall models, and then cops a listen…

- Martin Dew

IF YOU FIND yourself in the enviable position of having to scout around for a speaker package to deliver sonic goods in a premium, largescale home cinema, your auditioning journey may well take you to Wisdom Audio, and the company's latest planar magnetic, line-source ‘Insight’ series of in-wall models. You'd need to have a big budget, of course, but then that's the type of customer that this US-based company – recently alighted on Blighty’s shores through custom installer distributor Habitech – is catering to.

Wisdom Audio began life in Nevada in 1996, when Tom and Debi Bohlender set about developing speaker products based on planar magnetic technology. According to managing director Luc Guillaume, the pair were ‘focusing on the high-end super-duper two channel’ market. The company eventually changed hands, expanded its team, and shifted focus towards home cinema and in-wall applications. The biggest portion of business remains in the United States, but Wisdom is keen to grow. ‘Within Europe,’ says Guillaume, ‘we’ve been getting more traction in Scandinavia so far than the more central European [countries]. But that’s going to change very quickly.’

The brand has solutions for smaller rooms and tighter wallets, but Guillaume, formerly of JBL Synthesis, is rightly enthusiastic about the Insight custom installation line. I met him in the screening room of Habitech in Basingstoke, for a walk through of the performance characteristics and design philosophy of a 7.4.4 system, built around the Insight's flagship L8i LCRs.