Floorstanding speakers £31,995
We listen to hundreds of products every year. Some are bad, many are good and the odd few are truly excellent. But then, once or twice in a decade, if we’re lucky, we come across something as sublime as Wilson Benesch’s A.C.T. 3Zero.
Now, we are no strangers to Wilson Benesch’s speakers. We have reviewed and liked a number of them over the years, and back in the late ’90s even used a pair of the original A.C.T. One in our main reference system. Those floorstanders were the brand’s first speakers and set the template for everything that has followed. The One’s DNA clearly still runs strongly through the 3Zero.
Those originals pioneered the use of curved speaker cabinets; the shape reduced the build-up of internal standing waves, but in our opinion, that wasn’t the most important part. The clue lies with the initials A.C.T., which is an acronym for Advanced Composite Technology. What does that mean? In the case of the One, it meant carbon fibre; a material that even today seems exotic in the context of a speaker cabinet.
The A.C.T. One combined carbon fibre, metal and wood to produce a wonderfully elegant enclosure that was class-leading when it came to balancing rigidity, inertness and resonance control. Compared with the standard rectangular wooden boxes made by most of the competition at the time, and even now for that matter, this Wilson Benesch design was light years ahead. Drive units? Originally, the company bought in drivers made by respected Danish OEM specialist Scanspeak, but over time and numerous generations of the speaker, these were changed to in-house engineered units.
BETTER SONIC PERFORMANCE
Fast forward to today and it is fair to say that the new A.C.T. 3Zero are arguably the most significant variant yet. Why? They mark the move away from carbon fibre to a biocomposite that is claimed to deliver a better sonic performance while being a more natural, renewable and sustainable material. This biocomposite material was developed as part of a pan-European research project financed by the EU to the tune of €7.4million. The aim of the project, which combined the talents of numerous universities working with both small and large businesses, was to develop alternatives to oil-based non-recyclable materials.
This new biocomposite forms a large U-shaped monocoque that makes up the sides of the A.C.T. 3Zero. It is claimed to be stiffer and better damped than the carbon-fibre composite piece the company used previously. This new monocoque is added to an aluminium front baffle, rear spine and base together with a sloped c
