Yes, I do like the 800 series on the whole.
I know the 800D very well and listen to them often, at my friends place in Lilydale, over looking the Mississippi River.
Do I like them as much as my rig, no I don't, but they are still a good speaker.
There are problems with them though.
First they are an unbelievably difficult load. They are rated by B & W at 8 ohms. That is just a bare faced lie. Phil has a 400 watt per channel Mac amp, with the auto transformers. So the dealer who should have known better hooked them up with the MAC on the 8 ohm taps. When I first heard them at Phil's place I was very disappointed and so was he. Luckily I went straight to the cause and put them on the four ohm tap.
If you look at the impedance phase curve and do the calculations, then there are some staggering low impedance points. In the region around 100 Hz, where there is a lot of power, the amplifier sees an impedance of 2.4 ohms when you factor in the phase angle. The speaker is pretty much below four ohms from 60 to 800 Hz, where most of the power is.
Now at concert levels, I'm pretty sure those speakers are running the 400 watt Mac out of gas. The meters move very close to the top end on peaks, and I'm sure the ballistics are slow, and my ears tell me that the the amp can clip at listening levels that are entirely reasonable.
The next issue is that the power these speakers will consume is not unlimited and people do blow them. For speakers sold to the professional studio community this is a definite downgrade. However for a professional studio monitor this is a pretty cheap speaker. In this market the offerings of their serious competitors cost a lot more, between two and four times as much. Don't get me wrong however these speakers can handle some serious power.
Now to sound.
First the bass. It is a good bass, but you are aware of port kick in. To me the port does not blend seamlessly with the drivers. This is a common problem with tuned ported boxes in my experience, particularly when F3 is at 30 Hz or less. B & W say they have ameliorated this problem in the Diamonds.
If you look at the measured frequency response graphs, the deviation in the critical mid band is not more than 3db and the peak narrow. There is a 5 db peak at 10K, but this may be artifact. The tweeter does not sound bright to me.
I think the peak in the 3 to 4 kHz area is real. The ear is very unforgiving of trouble in this region. In my experience this is one of the worst regions to have a peak, even if small, and this is small.
The effect to me is that these speakers have a slightly aggressive forward sound stage. I don't want to overplay this, but compared to what I like, and remember I'm old enough to be set in my ways now, the strings have a slight excess of steely string over body. When the brass blazes it sounds to me as if the brass players are out in front. The speakers can not provide that illusion that I favor of the brass coming full throated from behind the strings. I don't want to suggest that the brass is right in your lap, but to me these speakers are perilously close to heading there.
This later I think is what makes them somewhat unforgiving of the source.
I have stated before, that when I have a design and I find I'm only stating to reach for recordings at the apogee of the art, then I start investigating and usually end up with a modification.
I don't want to suggest that these speakers will not throw an image behind the plane of the speaker because they will. However they do not have a deep enough depth of field to completely satisfy me. This is particularly noticeable with music from British Cathedral spaces. With my rig your really do hear the organ above the choir and the two sides of the choir stalls stretching away from you. The 800D speakers will not produce that degree of realism.
As far as off axis, these speakers do not have a particularly narrow sweet spot unless you are too close. I think these speakers sound their best with a greater distance than usual from the speakers. I suspect the Diamonds might be better in this regard.
As I think you know I visited ATC in the beautiful Cotswolds recently, and was graciously entertained by Billy Woodman. I chose to audition their
flagship speaker, which is a competitor to the 800D, in its passive iteration.
We listened with a 150 watt per channel amp. We listened at concert level. I never felt the amp was running out of gas.
I could not fault the tonal balance at all and the depth of image and detail was first class, without in any way being over the top. It was a speaker put together with consummate taste.
The only slight criticism was that the bass was slightly light weight. However Billy can't abide a blooming bass and nor can I, and so intentionally over damped them. Certainly no port kick in here.
One of the discs we played was the Beethoven No. 5 from Minnesota. On mine there is more body to the bass strings and tymps but still without blooming. However I put a lot more resources into the bottom end of my rig, so if that were not so, then I would have wasted a lot of time and effort. These were most certainly speakers I could live with and enjoy.
You have to bear in mind however that these speakers are just over twice the price of the 800Ds.
So even at this level I guess you pay for what you get.
