Premiere Design

With his magical hammer Mjöllnir, the Norse god Thor is said to have produced thunder. So there is no more appropriate name than Thor's Hammer for the ultimate subwoofer from Wilson Audio. In fact, this monster might have put Thor himself to shame, since it can reproduce frequencies even lower than natural thunder.

Standing five feet tall and weighing over 400 pounds, Thor's Hammer utilizes two 15-inch, long-excursion drivers with dual spiders designed to limit their movement to a single direction of motion, thereby greatly reducing distortion. The dual-ported cabinet is made of Wilson's X material, an extremely dense composite that exhibits high rigidity and high damping at the same time.

Whereas most subwoofers these days are powered, Wilson believes that the best possible sound is achieved by using the same amps for all speakers, including the sub. So Thor's Hammer includes no amp of its own, leaving you to power it as you see fit. With a sensitivity of 89dB/W/m at 100Hz, it doesn't need exorbitant wattage, though the extreme low frequencies do require substantial power to make a real impact.

So how low can it go? Wilson claims an average in-room response down to 10Hz! Of course, that kind of oomph doesn't come cheap—Thor's Hammer will set you back $21,000, not including an appropriate amp. But if you want to descend into the depths of Hel (the Norse underworld), there's probably no better way to get there.