The 800 Diamond's bass is deep and powerful, but you still have to be careful with cables and components to avoid brightness; the response is a bit lumpy, and I'm not in love with the FST Kevlar midrange, but I have owned several B&W speakers and I'm familiar with all of them. While the 800 Diamond is the only one I still consider a good value in the line, audio has moved forward and several new speakers designs are better at the same or lower price, for example Acoustic Zen Crescendo, Legacy Audio Aeris, Magico S5, PBN Sammy, PMC IB2 SE.
3 responses Add your response
They look impressive, they have deep bass and a wide frequency response. Cabinet resonances are near zero, and they're well finished and look impressive. And yet, although they have higher highs, lower lows, and wide dynamic range beyond their asking price, I don't find them engaging. The Stereophile test & measurements reveal an inconsistent power response with a suckout at 3.5 Khz at a mere 5 deg. deviation on the vertical axis. And the step response is anything but phase coherent. I suspect these aspects plus the dissimilar driver materials and the deviations from linearity (wide +5dB bass hump from 60-100 Hz, another 5dB rise from 5-10Khz) combine to disengage me. OTOH, I found their little PM1 plus PV1D sub mesmerizing with a great sense of involvement and musicality. But if you're looking at the 800 Ds, the PM1 probably won't scale up large enough for your needs. For a $24K floorstander, some of the alternatives mentioned above (Crescendo, Aeris, S5, etc.) plus some offerings from Sonus Faber (Elipsa SE, Olympica III) would give you a nice range of alternatives. Also, if you have the listening room space, consider Magnepan 3.7s or 20.7s plus some serious (e.g., JL or Velodyne DD+ series) subwoofers. |
I have owned the B&W 802 Diamonds for about 6 months now. They are driven by a pair of 400W Parasound JC1 monoblocks. My dedicated listening area is not all that large 12'x16'x9'high. Initially I did have issues with bass. You can move them out further from the back wall or get a pair of corner bass traps as I did because of room size constraints. I also treated the side walls with acoustical panels especially the first reflection point and this made a world of difference. With the treatments there is no heavy bass. The bass sounds tight and appropriate with no boom. I am very pleased with their sound. So much so that I have left them on the glider wheels on the bottom and not spiked them up for easier access to the gear rack. |