The hero piece of Audemars Piguet’s SIHH 2016 was based on a concept watch first shown to the press at last year’s show.
The Royal Oak Concept Supersonnerie is the commercial realisation of last year’s Royal Oak Concept RD1, an eight-year project into perfecting the acoustics of striking watches.
I’d venture that the resulting Supersonnerie is the loudest striking watch anyone has ever creating by a long, long way. The engineers at Audemars created the sonically superior timepiece by decoupling the gongs from the watch case, instead attaching them to a soundboard that not only resonates for a clearer sound, but also offers water resistance underneath an open caseback.
The Supersonnerie does not just offer an incremental improvement on the striking watch, I’d argue that it’s so good it renders everything that has come before it obsolete. Audemars Piguet estimates that it will be capable of producing just 20 of these extraordinary watches annually priced at €520,000 each.
