B&W 800d Advice Needed

[cwighome]

We spent the afternoon listening to a pair of demo 800d. These are not the newest speaker, but rather carry over inventory a local dealer has in stock. The speakers were being driven by nice McIntosh equipment equal or better to the Krell processor and amp I plan to use in a rather large living room.

The demo room was fairly small, with the speakers set 8 - 10 ft. apart, about 4 ft off the back wall. Our listing position was about 8 ft away. I was very impressed when listening to digitally recorded CDs such as Titanic or Diana Krall Live in Paris, but less so when listening to my older music that has been digitally remastered to CD. There seems to be a distinct lack of bass punch that I would have expected from this caliber of speaker.

Possibly, this bass is much tighter than I am accustomered to, or is this a condition of being in a fairly small listening room. Can anyone provide any guidance? I am extremely impressed when listening to more recent recordings, but feel an absence of something on a number of my older CDs.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I've auditioned the B&W 800D twice, a year apart, at 2 different locations.

I did not like what I heard both times.

When I listened to Hotel California both times, it lacked detail and resolution compared to the Infinity P362 and PSB Imagine T. I even think the P362 & PSB Imagine T had better bass!

So when I see people raving about any B&W speakers, I will have to RESPECTFULLY disagree. It is cool that they like the sound of B&W speakers (like PENG, 3dB, Paradigm Dawg, TLS Guy, and many extremely cool and respected gentlemen).

But I was disappointed in the 800D, 802D, and 803D, which is a shame because I really really LOVE the way the 800Ds look aesthetically, unlike GranteedEV!

I think the 800Ds look beautiful. If I were rich, I would just buy them and decorate one of my rooms with them.

But that is just one little subjective opinion from me, which has far less weight then those other gentlemen I mentioned.

My opinion is that you should try the Revel Salon2 or KEF 207/2 as both of these speakers were SPEAKER OF THE YEAR on Stereophile, and both have exceptional purely objective measurements. Another speaker is the Linkwitz Orion.

 

[GranteedEV]

It's not a speaker I dream of...probably because i think it looks like kenny from south park.

I will say that a lot of times good speakers lack the bass punch because it was never there in first place. I'll also say that bass performance can differ based on room acoustics more than anything else unless it is dipole bass which lacks output capability. And lesser amps won't give you the full slam and precision with a lot of these passve 3 ways as they tend to present convoluted, extreme loads. Not that McIntosh gear should strugfle with it.

It sounds most to me like you're discovering how revealing a high end speaker can be of recordings. diamond tweeters as far as I know have very low distortion with ridiculously high breakup modes.

For tiny flagship speakers i'd PERSONALLY rather get a Salk Soundscape 12 with a high quality Acoustic Elegance high bandwidth woofer with dual passive radiators, transmission line Accuton ceramic midrange with high power handling and impressive dispersion, and RAAL ribbon tweeter with elite dispersion horizontally and great vertical dispersion as well...all crossed by Dennis Murphy in LSPCAD with your choice of CUSTOM Salk finish.

But I think all the best speakers will 'reveal' the level of quality of different recordings.

 

[tcarcio]

I have an older set of 801's that I love but B+W speakers tend to sound very realistic and some don't like that. Like some do not think a flat response sounds good. I think it is like any other speaker, You either like them or not. Also I thought my B+W's sounded better to me once I got them in my room and set them up with the rest of my system, Eq'd and such. Just my opinion though and as always YMMV.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

It's not a speaker I dream of...probably because i think it looks like kenny from south park.

Seriously, though?

Okay, you have a point there.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

For tiny flagship speakers i'd PERSONALLY rather get a Salk Soundscape 12.

If he loves trains.

 

[TLS Guy]

We spent the afternoon listening to a pair of demo 800d. These are not the newest speaker, but rather carry over inventory a local dealer has in stock. The speakers were being driven by nice McIntosh equipment equal or better to the Krell processor and amp I plan to use in a rather large living room.

The demo room was fairly small, with the speakers set 8 - 10 ft. apart, about 4 ft off the back wall. Our listing position was about 8 ft away. I was very impressed when listening to digitally recorded CDs such as Titanic or Diana Krall Live in Paris, but less so when listening to my older music that has been digitally remastered to CD. There seems to be a distinct lack of bass punch that I would have expected from this caliber of speaker.

Possibly, this bass is much tighter than I am accustomered to, or is this a condition of being in a fairly small listening room. Can anyone provide any guidance? I am extremely impressed when listening to more recent recordings, but feel an absence of something on a number of my older CDs.

One of my best friends has those speakers and I hear them often. Just this last week in fact.

I would say if anything the bass is a bit on the heavy side and slightly over resonant. B & W apparently agree, as they have tightened the bass up on the new model.

Certainly those speakers do not have as tighter bass as my TLs. The owner prefers my bass.

However they are a very good speaker and if you can pick them up for a good price you won't go wrong.

I think you like most people are used to listening to over resonant bass, with too high a Qt.

 

[FirstReflection]

When it comes to bass reproduction, there's a lot more going on than just what the speakers themselves are producing.

First, there is the room. With bass waves reflecting off of the walls, ceiling and floor, there are many, many cancellations and constructive peaks - some are extreme (ie. standing waves), but there are also many, many less extreme interactions among the bass soundwaves.

Second, there is the recording. A lot of people might be surprised by the rigs that are used by many professional mixers and sound engineers. A lot of times, they only use a pair of nearfield monitors. As such, they don't really pay any attention to sounds below 35 Hz or so. Particularly on older recordings from back before subwoofers were even a common thing! New recordings - especially rap, rock or dance music albums - are often mixed using rigs that include subwoofers (although you'd be surprised by how often the rigs do NOT have subs in place). In any case, my point is that deep bass is often not a priority on recordings and older recordings did not focus on deep bass because they did not have the equipment to reproduce it in the studios at the time!

Third, I am strongly of the opinion that deep bass is best handled by a separate subwoofer. When you try to create a genuinely "full-range" loudspeaker, you wind up limiting your bass reproduction to eminating from the same location as the higher frequencies. The positions of your main speakers are not necessarily going to be the best positions for bass. But you have to give priority to the midrange and treble reproduction! So I'm strongly in favor of crossing over your speakers to a subwoofer and allowing a subwoofer (or better yet, 2 or 4 subwoofers) to handle the deep bass.

Then we move on to the B&W speakers themselves. B&W is the quintessential "British" speaker - which means that it is not designed to measure with ruler-flat frequency response in an anechoic chamber. Instead, it is "tuned by ear". When you see the anechoic measurements, they are rather shockingly jagged.

That said, once you put ANY speaker into an actual room and not an anechoic chamber, you're never going to measure flat frequency response at the listening position. Personally, I prefer something along the lines of the RBH approach to speaker design where they measure the individual components in an anechoic chamber in order to determine the capabilities of each driver, but they don't bother to measure the completed speaker in an anechoic chamber, instead opting to do the final tuning by ear and with the use of in-room measurements.

We must never forget about that massive processor that we call the human brain. It doesn't work the way a single microphone in an anechoic chamber works

Anywho, if we're talking pricey speakers, allow me to throw Focal into the mix. I love me that Beryllium tweeter

 

[TLS Guy]

Third, I am strongly of the opinion that deep bass is best handled by a separate subwoofer. When you try to create a genuinely "full-range" loudspeaker, you wind up limiting your bass reproduction to eminating from the same location as the higher frequencies. The positions of your main speakers are not necessarily going to be the best positions for bass. But you have to give priority to the midrange and treble reproduction! So I'm strongly in favor of crossing over your speakers to a subwoofer and allowing a subwoofer (or better yet, 2 or 4 subwoofers) to handle the deep bass.

I could not disagree more. There is just nothing to touch a well integrated full range speaker.

We were talking about this at a recent AES meeting, and the view was universal. that for optimal reference speaker systems, an integrated speaker is required.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

B&W is the quintessential "British" speaker - which means that it is not designed to measure with ruler-flat frequency response in an anechoic chamber. Instead, it is "tuned by ear". When you see the anechoic measurements, they are rather shockingly jagged.

The B&W 802D measured very flat on-axis, but very jagged off-axis.

The KEF 207/2, which is also a British speaker, measured very flat both on-axis and off-axis, per Stereophile measurements.

 

[GranteedEV]

B&Ws still appear to have that "BBC Dip" in the on axis response centered around 2khz or so. I wonder if it's because it's from a time before off-axis response was focused on equally.

 

[TLS Guy]

The B&W 802D measured very flat on-axis, but very jagged off-axis.

The KEF 207/2, which is also a British speaker, measured very flat both on-axis and off-axis, per Stereophile measurements.

I think it comes from the bend midrange driver.

B & W are probably the only company to never have had a connection to the BBC. In fact the BBC have never used their speakers.

There speakers are now from PMC. They use a slightly modified version of the ATC dome midrange. That is the Rolls Royce of midrange drivers.

 

[GranteedEV]

Which Atc midrange is it that you're always talking about?

is this the one:

http://www.solen.ca/pub/cms_nf_catalogue_fiche.php?id=78&recherche=&numRows=&manufacturiers=1&niveau1=1&niveau2=1&niveau3=

or somethong else?

How does it IYO compare to thr Accuton?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Here is the B&W 802D on-axis FR:

Horizontal off-axis:

Vertical off-axis:

 

[TLS Guy]

Which Atc midrange is it that you're always talking about?

is this the one:

http://www.solen.ca/pub/cms_nf_catalogue_fiche.php?id=78&recherche=&numRows=&manufacturiers=1&niveau1=1&niveau2=1&niveau3=

or somethong else?

How does it IYO compare to thr Accuton?

Yes, that's one of them, but I don't believe they are available to the home constructor any longer.

Here it is in an ATC speaker.

Here is the version for PMC

Next time I'm over and visiting my brother in law in the Malvens, I will drop in on Billy Woodman in the Gloustershire country side and see what the availability is.

 

[cwighome]

Interesting thing happened today. We returned to the dealer with recordings made after digital became mainstream, as opposed to remastered analog recordings. Fleetwood Mac Rumours CD was lacking yesterday. Fleetwood Mac The Dance in most repects was amazing. Acoutic Alchemy, Ottmar Liebert, and other recordings of the last 3 decades are amazingly different than the remasterd analog recordings. The 800 does not suffer fools lightly, but likewise does reward well recorded CDs.

The bass is there, but much tighter than I am used to. That is probably a good thing. The room we plan to use is about three times larger than the audition room.

 

[GranteedEV]

What other potential speakers have you auditioned?

 

[TLS Guy]

Interesting thing happened today. We returned to the dealer with recordings made after digital became mainstream, as opposed to remastered analog recordings. Fleetwood Mac Rumours CD was lacking yesterday. Fleetwood Mac The Dance in most repects was amazing. Acoutic Alchemy, Ottmar Liebert, and other recordings of the last 3 decades are amazingly different than the remasterd analog recordings. The 800 does not suffer fools lightly, but likewise does reward well recorded CDs.

The bass is there, but much tighter than I am used to. That is probably a good thing. The room we plan to use is about three times larger than the audition room.

Good speakers are devastating to poor source material. Garbage in/garbage out.

When Jake reviewed my speakers, he brought some mp3 files, even though I warned him. He just could not believe how bad they sounded on this rig. He had not experienced anything like it previously.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

What other potential speakers have you auditioned?

That is very important right there!

How does the B&W 800D sound in comparison to the Revel Salon 2 or KEF 207/2 or Wilson Audio Shasha or other $20K+ speakers using the same exact CDs?

 

[Jim85IROC]

I've auditioned the B&W 800D twice, a year apart, at 2 different locations.

I did not like what I heard both times.

When I listened to Hotel California both times, it lacked detail and resolution compared to the Infinity P362 and PSB Imagine T. I even think the P362 & PSB Imagine T had better bass!

So when I see people raving about any B&W speakers, I will have to RESPECTFULLY disagree. It is cool that they like the sound of B&W speakers (like PENG, 3dB, Paradigm Dawg, TLS Guy, and many extremely cool and respected gentlemen).

But I was disappointed in the 800D, 802D, and 803D, which is a shame because I really really LOVE the way the 800Ds look aesthetically, unlike GranteedEV!

I think the 800Ds look beautiful. If I were rich, I would just buy them and decorate one of my rooms with them.

But that is just one little subjective opinion from me, which has far less weight then those other gentlemen I mentioned.

My opinion is that you should try the Revel Salon2 or KEF 207/2 as both of these speakers were SPEAKER OF THE YEAR on Stereophile, and both have exceptional purely objective measurements. Another speaker is the Linkwitz Orion.

Wow... funny you mention the 800 series and Hotel California. I too have listened to all of the 800 series speakers, most often being driven by a McIntosh front end, and always I've used Hotel California as my reference audio track. In all cases, I found the 804 through 800 speakers to have a very elevated midrange that caused a very un-natural sounding reproduction of male vocals, and just an overall lack of precision and clarity in the midrange. I found most of them to be bass shy, and also to have a recessed (but brilliantly detailed) treble. The one exception is the 805d. That speaker has a much more natural (i.e. flat) presentation, from bass through treble. There is no midrange bump, the highs are more present (and still brilliantly detailed), and likewise, the bass isn't as recessed. The big improvement to my ears when moving up to the 804 or higher is that they have a more accurate bass reproduction even though they're lean, and due to their power handling and the sheer amount of air they can move, I found them to have a much more dynamic "punch" during louder passages.

I think the 804 through 800 speakers are among the most beautiful I've ever seen, but unfortunately, I absolutely hate how they sound.