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Bowers and Wilkerson B&W 802 D3: an impolite Brit?

I heard the new Bowers and Wilkerson 802 D3 today, only the second time they have been heard in public, at an L.A. Audio society event. They have a very large soundstage, and are exceptionally dynamic. The bass is not as good as Magico for example, because of the ported design, but is nonetheless quite good. Detail is excellent, perhaps to a fault. What I don't like about them is that they are quite forward, an anomaly among British speakers. I was experiencing listening fatigue after an hour.I don't know if that is the diamond tweeter, or simply how the speaker/crossover is voiced. Tone of the speakers is not quite real. Being this forward and somewhat more detailed than real life, sells well, but does not please as years and decades go by in my opinion.
FWIW, my mom still has a series 802 that I still find pleasing, and neither too forward or polite, with sealed woofer and bextrene midrange.
Not too sound like sour grapes, it is fabulous pop/rock and home theater speaker, and worth its price given the economy of scale B & W possesses and 8 year redesign effort by a talented team with huge technical resources...but the tone thing is critical for jazz/classical/acoustic instrument lovers. I don't think it's the right choice for them. I am a high quality 2 way stand mount plus subwoofer kind of guy.
(Harbeth Compact 7 ES3 with REL Strata III sub)
Your thoughts?

Tom
tompoodie
sunnyjim
927 posts
 
Overall, I hope these responses will help out our comrade, Tom. If learning to fly a jet plane was compared to learning the steps to audio nirvana, many of us would have crashed and burned long ago.

Unfortunately, no matter how many audio primers and product reviews there are, there are as many if not more obstacles to overcome to finding the sound quality you enjoy and more importantly, find just right.
jkalman
298 posts
 
Tompoodie, to respond directly to your criticism of the 803 D3, after spending another few hours with them. I would wonder if they were not set up well or were too close to the walls. My experience with them listening to a few recordings with excellent acoustic segments (Nora Jones first album, Grateful Dead reckoning, Allman Brothers Eat a Peach Album) is that they were exceedingly realistic. They sound like what a guitar sounds like when I'm in the room playing with other musicians, to the point where the positioning of fingers on the neck corresponded with placement in the soundstage. It doesn't get any better than that in my experience. The last speaker I had that was close to that level of realism was the Revel Salon2. My current setup unfortunately is not on par with the Salon2 or the 803 D3.

To be honest, they are exceedingly difficult to set up. They are not very forgiving at all from my experience today. I am going back again tomorrow to try to fine tune the positioning some more. I may purchase them if I can get rid of a slight boominess in some of the lower voice frequencies. Instruments were insanely lifelike, as well as the human voice in most keys, except where there was some boominess in lower keys. Attack, decay, and separation of instruments was all spot on. The soundstage was large and impressive. I found the experience of listening to the music was engaging and immersive. Several tracks that I love were so life like that it gave me the chills. It reminds me that it's extremely important for people to know how to set up speakers in a room themselves on the fly, or to at least be able to realize when a setup is suboptimal.

I'm back with my regular speakers right now and the 803 D3 experience is leaving my regular system sounding quite unidimensional in comparison. The attack and decay are not as precise and the separation between instruments and notes is not as coherent. :/
jkalman
298 posts
 
Right now the only criticism I can aim at them is a slight sibilance in the higher ranges of the human voice along with the boominess in certain low frequencies of the human voice. Tomorrow I hope to see if the sibilance can be eliminated with less toe-in, while also trying to decrease the lower voice frequency boominess by moving further off one of the walls. Hopefully this is possible without the center of the soundstage becoming too diffuse...

In any case, it's still worlds better than my current setup.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"Tomorrow I hope to see if the sibilance can be eliminated with less toe-in, while also trying to decrease the lower voice frequency boominess by moving further off one of the walls."

Its not likely that toe in will get rid of sibilance. That's an equipment matching issue.
mark_nz
48 posts
 
It is disappointing to see sweeping comments about B&W speakers as "bright", "edgy", "fatiguing", "never had bass" etc without identification of the speaker model and system components.

I have owned the CDM1, CDM2SE, CDM1NT, CM1, 804S, 803D, 803Diamond, 800Diamond.

The only speaker out of that list that I found a bit "edgy" and "bright" was the CDM1NT. With the same system components at that time (Sony CD player and Plinius amplifier) the CDM1 and CDM2SE were warm and easy to listen.

The 80xDiamond series as compared to the 80xD series do have tweeters that are measurably more sensitive. So the 80xDiamond they can sound bright if auditioned with bright components. However with suitable matched components, I found the speakers compelling, easy to listen, transparent, and have superb bass for size of speaker.

I lived with the 803D and then 803Diamond for about 5 years. I listened almost every day for on average a few hours without any fatigue and or sense of significant tonal imbalance.

Perhaps my careful consideration of component matching, speaker positioning and mains quality paid dividends!
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