No bass on B&W 800D2
Hi,
I’ve been a B&W fan Since the late 90s and have owned many different speakers over the years. I’ve owned a pair of 802Ds (first gen) For a long time and those had always been my dream speaker.
I recently had the opportunity to upgrade to a pair of 800D2. I had never heard the 800 or the second generation diamonds before, but was tempted by the idea of owning the flagships. I don’t like the looks and sound of the newer generation 800 so in my mind, I was upgrading to the top of the line speaker of the last generation that I like.
I’ve had these speakers for three months now, and I’ve played around with positioning and levels of my subwoofers. when I first set them up I immediately noticed a lack of bass compared to the 802’s. I listen in the near field and have the 800 approximately in the same position as the 802, although with slightly more toe in and a little further away from the wall as they seem more sensitive to room placement than the 802s did. Even pushed up to the wall there is not more bass, just boom.
I’m powering them with a Classé sigma amp 2, which doubles to 400W a channel on 4 ohms. Before you say it’s the amp, the 802s sounded exactly the same on my Denon 4520 as they did on the Classé amp after I upgraded to that - so I don’t really subscribe to the “more power” idea and believe an amp won’t change the sound dramatically as long as it’s decent quality and has enough power. I mostly listen at lower levels anyhow.
Has anybody had the same issue with the 800D2 lacking so much bass compared to the 802D? The midrange sounds about the same and the highs are way more tame, which I like, but this lack of low end authority is making me seriously consider selling these again which makes me sad - since they are absolutely gorgeous in the looks department.
thanks for your thoughts in advance - would appreciate hearing from actual owners of these.
Thank you, @joey_v. these were supposed to be my endgame speakers, so I’m hoping it’s the room and that they’ll sound different when I have a dedicated listening space. to the folks who suggested REW - I had everything dialed in perfectly with my 802s but I don’t have a measurement file to compare to with the 802s playing alone. I do still have the summed response of everything playing together. I’ll measure the 800 next week while my family is out of town and I’ll have time. |
@curiousjim thank you for the suggestion, I am bi-wiring so can rule that out as an issue. |
Thanks @ap1, there isn’t. I don’t think B&W ever made foam plugs for these as they would need to be the size of a sofa cushion ☺️ the port is massive. An advantage of down firing to the plinth is that the distance is always constant and they should be a little less sensitive to room placement. Still not sure why my 802s had so much more bass. |
Can you connect only the bass drivers to your amplifiers and see how things are? It's a shame you can't compare them to the 802s. I am bi amping the 802 d3’s I have, and each speaker has 600 W mono McIntosh amplifiers to support the bass drivers. But 400 should be fine. Personally while the 802 bass power is fine I'm concerned about the quality of the bass that I'm hearing. But I'm very picky. I'm curious do you have them connected to a Home theater processor and maybe you can play around with the DSP curves to see what happens. DSP for your stereo may be an idea if you don't do that. That may help boost the bass. I always thought the 800 were a very room filling experience. They were very big and the drivers are very big too. I do know the Bowers crossovers tend to steal a lot of strength from the signal. They seem to be constraining the signal I wish they freed things up better than they do. |
