The midpoint in Wilson’s range is the Alexia, which debuted in 2012 and became the Alexia 2 in 2017. Then, five years later, in 2022, it seemingly jumped a few generations and became Alexia V. However, the “V” stands for Wilson's V-Material, rather than the Roman numeral designating the number five. It is a speaker just small enough to integrate into a moderately large living space, but large enough to command attention in a large, dedicated listening room. The Alexia was created for WATT/Puppy and Sasha owners who wanted a larger Wilson speaker but didn't have the floor space for it. Depending on your perspective, the Alexia V is either a larger small Wilson speaker, or a smaller large one.

Most speaker manufacturers have a signature look or configuration that identifies the brand immediately. Rockport speakers announce their presence with carbon-fiber drivers, graceful lines, and a mirror-black finish. Stenheim’s unrepentant rectangular shape and silver finish with a soupçon of color announce the company's Swiss roots. Wilson’s trademark, from day one, has been its modular design in all but its smallest models. Modular design first appears in the Wilson line with Sasha V, where the midrange and tweeter are combined in a single adjustable module. Alexia has three modules, separating the midrange and tweeter into separate adjustable units. Alexx takes it to four modules by adding a second midrange unit. The Chronosonic XVX comes to five by adding a rear-firing tweeter. The WAMM brings the total to seven separate modules.

The Alexia V stands about 51” tall, and the footprint of 15 3/4” wide by a bit over 24” deep looks very much like its older sibling, but the new model is a couple inches shorter than Alexia 2 with a slightly increased footprint. At 265 pounds per side, it tilts the scales as five pounds heavier than the Alexia 2. It retains the predecessor's three-piece configuration.

According to Wilson, the evolution from Alexia 2 to Alexia V involves more than thirty areas of improvement. Chief among these is the incorporation of V-Material along with X- and S-Materials and refinements to the panel and bracing thicknesses. These three proprietary materials are hidden from view and their formulation is a closely guarded secret, so of course the proof is in the resulting sound. But the most significant advances of the new speaker arise from the choice and placement of these materials and the incorporation of new (to the Alexia) drivers. The V-Material is found in the top of the woofer and midrange enclosures to provide vibration mitigation and control. X-Material is found throughout all three modules to provide bracing and enclosure damping. S-Material is used for midrange-driver coupling. These materials are combined with carbon fiber and austenitic stainless steel.

The redesigned tweeter module houses a new and larger tweeter -- the Convergent Synergy Carbon tweeter originally designed for Alexx V. This 1" doped-silk-fabric tweeter is housed in a unit constructed of carbon fiber manufactured in-house using a 3D printer. The 7" paper-pulp-composition Alnico (Aluminum-Nickel-Cobalt) QuadraMag midrange was originally designed by Wilson for the Chronosonic XVX. The woofer complement of 8" and one 10" paper-pulp-composite drivers remains the same as that of the Alexia 2. These changes have resulted in a 90dB sensitivity rating, improving on the 89dB rating of the Alexia 2.

The spiked feet of the Alexia 2 have been replaced with Wilson’s Acoustic Diodes, first used in the Alexx V. The Diode housings fit snug against the speaker bottom near its four corners. An adjustable spike-and-nut assembly fits into the bottom of the Diode housing. Unlike some earlier versions of Wilson’s spiking assembly, the bottom spike is also machined with wrench marks, so that a wrench can be used on the spike as well as the nut, making for easier adjustment and tightening. The Acoustic Diode is constructed of austenitic stainless steel and Wilson’s V-Material. Like an electrical diode that acts as a one-way switch for current, the Acoustic Diode is designed to prevent mechanical vibrations from the floor to migrate up into the speaker enclosure.

From a design standpoint, the most obvious change from Alexia 2 is the smoother lines of the midrange enclosure and the incorporation of shoulder openings at each side of the bass module. Opening a passageway in the shoulders is said to reduce cavity pressure between the bass and midrange modules. The lines of the Alexia V, as well as every Wilson speaker from Sasha V on up, are defined by Wilson’s adjustable modular approach to design that makes time alignment a top criterion. The last step up, in the Wilson hierarchy, where a single box is utilized, is Yvette, and it remains my favorite Wilson design from a purely aesthetic standpoint. Once you reach the Sasha V level, adjustable sections become the defining look of the larger Wilson speakers.

Time alignment has been around from at least the mid-1970s, when Ed Long coined and patented the term. Over the years, time alignment has taken several forms, with electrical adjustments introduced in the crossover, and physical adjustment through offsetting the plane on which the drivers are set. I remember in the late 1970s, when I turned in my Acoustic Research 3a speakers, with three drivers lined up on a flat plane, for Vandersteen’s then-new, and still in production, Model 2 speakers. Vandersteen employed electrical sophistication and driver alignment on the forefront for that time. Wilson takes time alignment a step further by introducing adjustment to account for the size of the room and the height of the listener and of the listening seat.

The Alexia V is shipped in three wooden crates with a total shipping weight of almost 800 pounds. Each bass module ships its own crate and the two top modules are packed together in a third crate. The bass modules are mounted on removable casters, so they roll easily out of the crate and into the listening room. The two upper arrays, consisting of adjustable midrange and tweeter units, are set into place on the bass units. Having had my last set of Wilson Audio speakers set up using the Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (WASP), a starting point for the Alexia Vs was already known. Dealers will do the setup for buyers, but Peter McGrath, Wilson Audio's brand ambassador, did it in my room.

Adjustment of the upper arrays first requires study of the installation manual’s time-alignment charts. The interface between the modules is a triangle of spikes, plus the connection of two cables -- one each for midrange and high frequencies. Two spikes are screwed into the front of each upper array. A third spike is screwed into the back, although for many installations a taller spike screws in to take its place. Those spikes are set in a groove in the front and an alignment block in the back, allowing front-to-back and tilt adjustment to align the drivers and best match listener anatomy and seating position. The tweeter module has a similar adjustable track arrangement. The instruction manual includes charts for selecting the appropriate settings depending on your ear height from the floor and distance between listening position and speaker.

These adjustments make, at least in theory, the upper-level Wilson speakers a viable solution to a common audiophile problem. Not everyone has a dedicated listening room large enough to accommodate a truly full-range speaker but instead must repurpose an existing room. With most any speaker other than a large Wilson, final time alignment is accomplished by adjusting the tilt of the entire speaker -- raising or lowering the unit at the bottom spikes. In a small room, many tall speakers simply cannot be adjusted to avoid having the high frequencies sail over the listener's head. From the beginning, David Wilson worked to open the possibility of a proper fit between his speakers, the listening room, and the listener. While some have likened the resulting designs over the years to Rube Goldberg machines or a stack of Darth Vader helmets, for me the recent death of Al Jaffee suggested the Mad magazine Fold-in as a closer metaphor. With it, folding the inside back page into thirds transformed the straightforward message into something unexpected and enduring. Even those audiophiles who did not grow up (pun intended) on Alfred E. Neuman can appreciate the transformative results of properly adjusting the upper arrays of a Wilson speaker.

ome audio reviewers suggest that they suspend judgment about how a component sounds until the component has properly broken in and (with speakers) positioned properly, at which time they engage their critical-listening skills. However, unless I wore earplugs, it was hard to ignore the quality of certain aspects of the Alexia V’s performance once the speakers were settled in. Before waiting for the speakers to burn in, before adjusting the modules and without precise positioning, it was immediately clear that the Alexia V’s midrange was rich and well integrated, that dynamic response was impressive, and that the speakers threw a large and convincing soundstage. I was told to expect to hear another octave lower after the drivers had burned in for 20 or 30 hours, so once the speakers were positioned about 8 1/2' apart, my listening chair was placed 9 1/2' from each speaker (i.e., 1.12 times the distance between the speakers), my ear height had been measured and the tweeter and midrange adjustments were made accordingly, I brought out my notepad.

There are many who long for larger speakers to hear deeper bass than can be reproduced by moderately sized speakers. Others, who listen primarily to small-scale ensembles, like jazz or chamber groups, are confident that the cost and inconvenience of large speakers outweigh the benefits. And there is some truth to these convictions. As you climb the bass-driver progression in the Wilson line, from an 8” woofer in Sabrina X to a 10” woofer in the Yvette, to dual 8” woofers in the Sasha V to the 8” and 10” woofers in the Alexia, up to 10 1/2" and 12 1/2" woofers further up the line, there is a considerable improvement in bass extension, assuming the room can support it. But with small-scale music, that is often limited in its content. Smaller speakers can extract as much bass as the room can support, setting in motion the law of diminishing deep-bass returns. But what this ignores is the contribution that larger, high-quality (read expensive) woofers and enclosures make for the rest of the audio spectrum, and especially for the critical midrange.

One way to evaluate the quality of a speaker's midrange is with a good recording of piano. Look at any frequency chart of musical instruments and the thing that jumps out is that the piano covers the full frequency range, making dips in certain frequencies and less-than-perfect crossover points between drivers hard to cover up. Beyond the frequency-range extension is the piano’s size and mass -- a grand piano can weigh a thousand pounds and is the only orchestral instrument that, in effect, grounds itself to the stage. Most high-quality speakers can play a midrange note and make a decent reproduction of the duration, pitch, intensity and timbre of that note from a smaller instrument, but an accurate reproduction of that same note from a piano requires something more: an ability to convey the weight, scale and dynamics suggested by such a large instrument rooted to the floorboards.

Víkingur Ólafsson's recordings for Deutsche Grammophon have been in heavy rotation at my home for many years now and have traveled with me to listen to on friends' systems. My favorite among his recordings remains 2019’s Debussy-Rameau [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft 483 8283]. It is nothing flashy, yet the music is exciting, with a broad range of timbre and texture, and dynamics to spare. The recording (especially the vinyl version of this digital recording) is first-rate, giving a close-up sonic view of the keyboard recorded in a hall rather than in a studio. I have not had the pleasure of attending a concert in Reykjavík’s Harpa Concert Hall, where this recording was made. I have heard Ólafsson perform twice recently. During the time spent preparing this review, I was lucky enough to hear Ólafsson, and Igor Levit, play solo performances at my local concert hall. I grew up playing piano, so have a fair idea of what a piano should (and should not) sound like. The Alexia V makes piano recordings sound like real piano, in terms of tonal quality, weight and texture, better in my listening room than I previously imagined possible. This is a testament to how much Daryl Wilson has improved some of the existing Wilson Audio designs with the incorporation of V-Material and other design improvements.

Leading off with a description of Alexia V’s prowess with piano music is not meant to suggest that it is just a speaker for classical music. Electric guitar is in many ways the rock equivalent of the classical piano, not just because they are both stringed instruments but more so because the electrification of the guitar imbues it with qualities that mimic the scale and weight of a grand piano. Depending on the choice of guitar amplifier and speaker, it can sound larger, heavier, and faster than any unamplified piano.

So I threw some of my favorite guitar-based records at the Alexia V, including Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights [Hannibal HNBL 1303], Traffic’s Traffic [Island ILPS 9081T], and Janis Ian’s Breaking Silence [Analogue Productions APP 027]. Until now, the guitar of Breaking Silence has always sounded incredibly well recorded, but because it was so well recorded, it left me feeling that my system -- and most every other with which I played the music -- was not fully capturing the musical nuance of the guitars. The Alexia V made the system sound like it was extracting the full weight of the guitars. With Shoot Out the Lights, and even more so the Traffic LP, the guitars sounded complete, but they went even further in impressing me with Alexia V. I have played Traffic countless times on many systems, and it revealed far more than the systems' tonal quality or soundstage prowess. It can be very finicky about the speaker’s setup. If the speaker is not properly set up, the spatial cues in the recording hogtie the recording and make it sound like the musician’s feet and hands were stuck in sludge. That seemed a risk with the Alexia V’s adjustable modules, but it never materialized in the speaker's sound.

What about the speaker’s ability to throw a big soundstage and sort out the complexities of orchestral music? One of the first recordings I put on during the break-in period was a newly released CD I had only heard a few times before taking delivery of the Alexia V: Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin's performances of Schumann’s Symphonies [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft 486 2958]. I listened to Barenboim’s rendition of the First Symphony a few times before Alexia V's arrival, but when I played it after the speakers were set up, I was bowled over by what a huge soundstage they delivered.

However, the recording that really impressed me about how good the Alexia V was in sorting out complex music was a faux classical piece. At the risk of alienating fans, I admit up front that I never got prog rock, but during a moment of weakness I bought a copy of Electric Light Orchestra’s Eldorado [Mobile Fidelity MFSV-1-514], played it a few times, and decided I was right. It took a few turns on friends ‘systems, which did not change my opinion. Before tossing it in the “for sale” stack, I gave it a last chance on the Alexia V and discovered that I was listening to an entirely different piece of music. The Alexia V sorted out this music better than I knew was possible. The huge, layered soundstage opened up echoes purloined from classical music and Sgt. Pepper's, so that I could finally understand what ELO was up to, if still not winning over my heart.

If it's symphonic music mixed with pop that floats your boat, try “Street In The City” from Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane’s Rough Mix [Polydor 2442 147], or even better from the 12” single [Polydor 2058 944], but not from the recent reissue. Unlike Eldorado, this pop music with string backing sounds impressive on any decent system, but Alexia V added a touch of extra magic. You feel like you should keep your hands on the mixing board as the strings enter and fade, but then you realize Glyn Johns has already nailed it for you.

I then turned to music that occupies a special place in my heart. Edgard Varèse's "Ionisation" [Percussion Music/Nonesuch H-71291] has been a staple of my audio nervosa since its release in 1974, and it has never sounded better. The Alexia V threw a huge soundstage with percussion flying around displaying pinpoint accuracy in space. Bass and snare drums, wood blocks, bells, a siren and a lion's roar have never sounded so dynamic or flown at me from a larger, better-defined construct.

I think that I have owned every LP in Argo’s classical line, and none gives me greater satisfaction than Stravinsky's Pulcinella [Argo ZRG 575[. It is great music coupled with an impressive performance by Neville Marriner with The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. On top of that, it is a great disc for telling if something is wrong in the system. As soon as the speakers were out of the box and roughed in, but before adjusting the upper modules, Pulcinella was on the turntable, and it sounded shrill and out of step. After the setup was complete, the music snapped into focus. The Alexia V had Stravinsky’s reimagining of early 18th-century music timed to perfection, with whip-sharp attack and decay. This lack of smearing, combined with Alexia V’s superior dynamic speed, let me close my eyes and see the seating chart of the Academy.

Listening to jazz, I focused on big-band music, as it offers more of a challenge to a speaker system than small-scale jazz. One of my favorite big-band records is Francis A. & Edward K. [Reprise FS 1024], with the title referring to Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. This is another record I have enjoyed since the 1970s and heard on a wide variety of systems. Played back on a truly superior system with a large enough pair of speakers, the LP projects a huge soundstage, but unless everything is dialed in properly with the finest speakers and electronics, you cannot truly appreciate Sinatra’s swagger. Alexia V has swagger to spare, with dynamics to spare as well, generating explosive entrances of the five-man saxophone section, crazy-good horn section, and generous percussion section. Play a record like this to really appreciate why you would want and need a speaker the likes of Alexia V.

s Alexia V the last word -- the best speaker I have ever heard? Of course not. There are much more expensive and larger speakers that have impressed me in certain ways that no others have come close to matching. When I heard the WAMM in David Wilson’s house, it had a high-frequency delicacy and lucidity that nothing else has equaled. And more recently, I visited the Göbel factory/showroom where their 1200-pound Divin Majestic produced bass density, resolution, and dynamics that I have not heard in any other system. However, those speakers cost seven to nine times the price of Alexia V, and they would not fit in my home or the homes of most audiophiles.

I have paid close attention to Wilson Audio speakers over the years. I fell in love with Yvette and was sorely tempted by Sasha DAW. However, the Alexia V is now the sweet spot of the Wilson lineup, with its breathtaking dynamics, improved sensitivity, and acute tonal accuracy. Combined with these attributes, its adjustability makes it possible to fit this fairly large speaker into a somewhat modestly sized room. Most of all, the Alexia V has rekindled my love affair with records. I’ve spent the last couple of months playing treasures I acquired over the years that only now are revealing their hidden beauty. The Alexia V stands out among a select few audio products I have reviewed over the years. This is a pair of speakers that will not be leaving anytime soon.