Wilson Benesch A.C.T. C60 Limited Edition Review — Extreme Grip, Stunning Off-Axis Performance, and Heart-Stealing Sound

Wilson Benesch A.C.T. C60 Limited Edition

Grip is a term often associated with the bigger drivers of great speakers. Usually, we’re talking about the low end, but something about the word “grip” implies a type of bass definition that is likely affected by a treble or midrange transient element. After all, music is not a set of test tones, but a wild soup of transients and concurrent complex sound sources.

It’s so complex, we need to describe it with general “feel” words like grip and bounce, or with more common visual descriptors like dark and bright.

Grip for me means excellent transients. It means I can listen to my favorite solo bass album and reap the musicality buried within the wash of deep, dark tones.

The Wilson Benesch A.C.T. C60 Limited Edition speakers we just got in and tested are absolutely huge (another visual metaphor) in sound, and the bass grip rivals or betters anything I have ever, ever heard.

Going further, the midrange “grip” is uncanny. I guess in this case I mean the same thing in a slightly different way. Listening to a bowed double bass on these gives me the shivers. That’s as real as I’ve ever heard.

The one thing everyone at TMR wants to remark on about these speakers is their off-axis sound quality. I’m standing here typing, between and actually behind the speakers, and I can pinpoint every image behind my head in the stereo soundstage. TMR Marketing and IT guy Chad just came up to say they sound fantastic from the TMR front office. Andy came over from shipping to hear more of what was already sounding really great.

I love that. In fact, it’s one of my favorite qualities of high-end speakers. Really, any speakers. Most of you and I realistically can’t be in the sweet spot for hours and hours at a time, and it’s a real shame to keep a beautiful system dormant most of the time.

The beautiful black carbon-finished Wilson Benesch is quite expensive, and it should be. Wilson Sophia 3, you may have just slid a little on the list of speakers that stole my heart. These might be better.