The Boenicke W5: A Miniature Giant in the Audio World
When I first encountered the Boenicke W5 at an audio show, I admired its beauty, craftsmanship, and ingenious design, but I didn’t truly respect it. Having been accustomed to the large speakers commonly showcased at exhibitions, how could such a miniature speaker command attention? After the show, I nearly forgot about it. That was until recently, when the distributor sent a pair of W5s for review, and I had to completely reassess these diminutive performers.
The Recording Engineer Behind the Design
Based in Basel, Switzerland—a city renowned for its watch exhibitions—Boenicke was founded by Sven Boenicke, who brings unique credentials as a recording engineer. Over the past two decades, he has recorded nearly 300 concerts, including many live performances. As both an engineer and music enthusiast, Boenicke sought to create speakers that could recreate not just the musical performance but the entire atmosphere of a live event. This vision drove him to establish his brand in 1999. In 2013, Boenicke unveiled the remarkably compact W5 bookshelf speaker at the Munich High End show, where even the prototype generated significant buzz. Despite minor refinements over the past decade, the W5’s fundamental design has remained unchanged, cementing its status as a modern classic.
Unprecedented Compactness
The most striking feature of the W5 is its size—or lack thereof. Delivered in a cardboard box with a handle, each speaker weighs just 3.5 kg, for a total shipping weight of about 9 kg including packaging. Upon opening, you find two speakers wrapped in thick velvet cloth, each roughly half the size of conventional bookshelf speakers. To put this in perspective, my Pierre-Etienne Leon Quattro+ speakers each match the volume of a pair of W5s, with more than double the weight. While audio equipment shouldn’t be judged by size alone, these physical attributes initially led me to underestimate the W5’s capabilities—a prejudgment I would soon regret.
Innovative Driver Configuration
The W5’s compact design centers around a custom 3-inch aluminum full-range driver that handles the primary frequency spectrum. This driver occupies most of the speaker’s modest 10cm width. While most bookshelf speakers consider 4 or 4.5-inch woofers small, Boenicke boldly opted for this 3-inch full-range driver, hinting at deeper engineering considerations.
To compensate for the full-range driver’s frequency limitations, Boenicke integrated a 5-inch woofer on the speaker’s side panel. This woofer, featuring an impressive 18.5mm excursion and specially designed surround, extends the W5’s bass response down to 50Hz—remarkable for a 2.8-liter enclosure that’s half the size of typical bookshelf speakers.
Enhanced Spatial Performance
The W5’s rear panel reveals another innovative element: a rear-firing tweeter housed in a black circular opening above the speaker terminals. This tweeter, equipped with a special wave guide, enhances spatial diffusion and ambiance. Its contribution becomes immediately apparent when experiencing the W5’s remarkable soundstaging and air.
Hidden Technologies
Internally, the W5 harbors several proprietary technologies. An 8cm spiral resonator works in parallel with the full-range driver to optimize tonal qualities and frequency extension. This resonator technology appears throughout Boenicke’s lineup, with larger models featuring proportionally longer resonators. The internal wiring utilizes specialized Litz wire with silk insulation, specifically optimized for the W5. The speakers feature WBT NextGen terminals mounted on polished stainless steel plates—a choice Boenicke insists is driven by sonic benefits rather than aesthetic appeal.
Sophisticated Cabinet Construction
The W5’s cabinet construction represents another departure from convention. While most manufacturers utilize MDF or HDF, Boenicke opts for solid wood cabinets, CNC-machined from single blocks. However, unlike traditional wooden speaker cabinets that might emphasize resonance, Boenicke’s approach prioritizes solidity while managing inevitable vibrations through careful material selection and design. The internal structure features complex CNC-cut channels that appear maze-like but serve to evenly dissipate back waves and prevent standing waves, all while maintaining a bass-reflex design principle.
Beyond the standard version, Boenicke offers SE and SE+ variants. The SE version incorporates 16cm spiral resonators—twice the length of the standard model—for both the full-range driver and woofer, along with premium Mundorf silver/gold foil capacitors and Duelund tin-plated copper bypass capacitors. The SE+ further adds Harmonix tuning devices and proprietary acoustic phase linearization networks. These upgrades come at a substantial premium, with the W5 SE approaching the price of the standard W8 floorstanding model.
The W5 offers remarkable placement flexibility. While it can be placed directly on furniture or desktops, Boenicke offers optional suspension springs that install into pre-drilled holes in the base, providing isolation similar to automotive suspension systems. Custom stands are also available, featuring a minimalist single-pole design optimized for the W5’s dimensions.
Despite its diminutive size, the W5 delivers remarkably refined and detailed sound with unexpected spatial qualities and substantial bass weight. Its soundstage extends both wide and deep while maintaining precise imaging. Bass performance, while naturally limited by the bookshelf format, consistently exceeds expectations set by its physical dimensions, rivaling or surpassing many larger competitors in both extension and detail.
Testing with both solid-state (Heed Lagrange) and tube (Audiomat Adagio) amplification revealed different strengths. The solid-state pairing delivered superior density, impact, and bass performance, while the tube combination offered enhanced tonal richness and fluidity at the expense of some weight and bass quantity.
While capable of wide speaker spacing beyond 2m, the W5s excel in near-field listening configurations. My optimal setup involved 1.4-1.5m spacing and similar listening distance, with toe-in adjusted so the speakers’ axes cross just behind the listener’s head. Regarding the side-firing woofers, Boenicke recommends facing them outward for spacing under 2m and inward for wider arrangements, though room acoustics may suggest different solutions.
As a recording engineer, Sven Boenicke extends his audio philosophy to B:There Records, Boenicke’s in-house record label. Available on TIDAL, these recordings eschew typical “audiophile” production techniques in favor of natural tonality. Their approach to recording demonstrates that when naturalism reaches a certain threshold, it achieves both authenticity and beauty.
B:There’s recording methodology is remarkably pure: just two microphones capture each performance. Since 2019, they’ve employed custom-modified microphones based on Bumblebee and Rode designs, housed in proprietary wooden and carbon fiber enclosures and wired with their cryogenically-treated LessLose CMarc cables. The eight-channel microphone preamps and A/D converters are custom-built by Switzerland’s Audio Consulting, incorporating Bybee quantum purifiers and resonators—the same technology found in Boenicke’s premium speakers.
The W5s excel at showcasing B:There Records’ natural recording quality. Take the album “Navigando,” featuring harp duets with saxophone or recorder. The 3-inch full-range driver captures the harp’s crystalline resonance with remarkable clarity, conveying both the initial pluck and lingering decay. The saxophone’s lower register demonstrates surprising depth and texture, challenging preconceptions about what such compact speakers can achieve. When the recorder takes center stage, the W5s reveal their agility, precisely rendering the instrument’s sweet, lyrical character. While this responsiveness isn’t unique to 3-inch full-range drivers, their physical properties make them particularly adept at reproducing these midrange-focused instruments. The 5-inch woofer’s contribution ensures proper body and richness, allowing each instrument’s natural beauty to shine through.
Detail and Weight
The “Undine” album, featuring flute and piano duets, further demonstrates the 3-inch driver’s prowess. In Reinecke’s Flute Sonata, the W5s capture both the flute’s rounded tone and subtle breath sounds, creating a vivid performance. During the intermezzo’s contrasting playful and romantic sections, the speakers maintain clarity through rapid passages while delivering unexpectedly deep and authoritative piano lower registers.
Imaging and Percussion
The Hadouk Trio’s “Baldamore,” blending folk instruments with jazz, showcases the W5s’ precise imaging capabilities. Various exotic wind instruments are rendered with focused body and clear definition. Percussion reproduction is particularly impressive, accurately conveying both texture and impact. At moderate volumes in near-field listening, the soundstage opens effortlessly as the speakers seem to disappear. Increasing the volume reveals the W5s’ surprising capability for dynamic impact and weight.
Spatial Performance and Tonal Character
Despite using a 3-inch full-range driver, the combination with the side-firing woofer and ambiance-enhancing tweeter creates an expansive frequency range. The All Star Percussion Ensemble’s Carmen Fantasy demonstrates the W5s’ exceptional spatial rendering and precise positioning. The aluminum cone likely contributes to a slightly elevated tonal balance, lending additional brightness and presence to the presentation—as if the performance were lit with slightly brighter stage lighting.
The Sven Boenicke Touch
Sven Boenicke possesses two unique auditory gifts: exceptional sonic memory and synesthesia—the ability to see colors when hearing sounds. These capabilities influence both his recording techniques and speaker designs, particularly evident in the W5s’ vivid tonal palette.
## A True Yoda of the Speaker World
Like Master Yoda from Star Wars, whose true capabilities weren’t revealed until challenged in combat, the W5s initially appear unassuming. However, once engaged, they demonstrate remarkable prowess that belies their diminutive stature. These speakers represent a triumph of innovative engineering over conventional thinking, proving that exceptional audio performance can come in very small packages.
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