BOWERS & WILKINS 800 SERIES D4
STEREO LOUDSPEAKERS
Bowers & Wilkins is likely the world’s most venerated loudspeaker manufacturer. It’s pushed the boundaries of performance, sound quality and aesthetics ever since it was established in Britain in 1966 by John Bowers and Roy Wilkins.
During the more than half-century it’s been building loudspeakers, B&W has produced some decidedly weird-looking designs like the classic Nautilus ‘snail’ speakers, while the more conventional 800 Series have become legends not only through their well-publicised use in Abbey Road Studios and other studios throughout the world, but for the sheer craftsmanship that goes into the design and delivery of each successive generation. The 800 Series has been the iconic height of the UK-based brand since John Bowers introduced the original 801 back in 1979, with the series representing “everything we know, and everything we are”, as the company says, and the new release of the D4 incarnation looks to continue the 800 Series’ reputation.
We’ve now had the opportunity to hear the entire series — the three largest during a visit to the Sydney offices of Sound United, under whose ownership Bowers & Wilkins now resides, while we’ve enjoyed extended stays of the floorstanding 804 D4 and the standmount 805 D4 in our own listening rooms. Here’s what we’ve heard, along with the technological advances the company has made to bring out the music.
Diamond on top
The ‘D4’ in the 800 Series D4 indicates the new series to be the fourth to employ the company’s diamond tweeters, which sit in the decoupled ‘Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top’ housing. Rather counter-intuitively, diamond being the hardest mineral known to mankind, the diamond dome is actually quite fragile, so to prevent it being accidentally damaged, a grille mesh protects it. This very slightly affects its frequency response and reduces its efficiency, so the company has continually improved this grille to make it ever-more acoustically transparent, with the current incarnation being a mesh grid a little like one of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, with myriad interlinked triangles. This protective grille
