Lōkē is Wilson Audio’s smallest, and most affordable, subwoofer.

To anyone familiar with Dave Wilson’s design philosophy, “small” and “subwoofer” might sound like an oxymoron.

Why that’s not true in this case requires some context—which is best explained in the video on this page.

But the simple outline is, as the saying goes, there’s no replacement for displacement. So when people build small subwoofers they typically cheat the laws of physics with equalization.

Which works (sort of) except that equalization always destroys the phase coherence of the subwoofer with the speakers it’s supplementing.

What Dave Wilson discovered, though, was that there was an ideal ratio of the size of the driver to the cabinet, which allows a subwoofer to do its job without equalization.

The Absolute Sound reviewer Jacob Heilbrunn’s reference system consists of WAMM Master Chronosonic loudspeakers and two Master Chronosonic subwoofers (installed by The Audio Salon).

In October 2022, he added two self-powered Lōkē subs to the rear of the room based on the understanding that well balanced and phase coherent subwoofers actually open up the midrange and add air and resolution to the soundstage.

Then, on a whim, he turned off the main subwoofers and left the Lōkēs on. He wrote in his TAS review:

“I can’t say that it could replace or even vie with the WAMM subwoofers. But it did more than hold its own. Two things impressed me. The first was the speed of the sub. There was no bloat or smear. On one of the trickiest things to reproduce—acoustic bass on jazz recordings—the LōKē firmly resolved the notes and displayed excellent pitch accuracy. The second thing was the sheer amount of air that the LōKē could move. Don’t be fooled by its diminutive size. The LōKē can bring it on.”

Because Lōkē is self-powered by a 500 watt amp and contains a built in crossover, it turns out it can be reasonably paired with practically any loudspeaker.

And because of its price, two is always better than one.

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