Bowers & Wilkins 800 Diamond D5 speakers
At the recent Vienna High End show Bowers & Wilkins unveiled the latest generation of their flagship 800 Diamond series loudspeakers, of which the 801 is the top dog and the oldest model name in the brand’s 60 year history. It is also “the best speaker we make”, a reference to the fact that the distinctive Nautilus, which is still just about in production, no longer holds that distinguished position.
The new 800 series, dubbed D5 as it’s the fifth generation of diamond dome tweeter 800s, looks like a facelift version of the D4 models but there are notable changes both within the various models and visible to the attentive eye. The changes you can see include cleaner plinth shapes on floor standers that follow the line of the cabinet, with better hidden spikes, and a slightly curved spine plate on the back where the fixings are no longer visible. The most obvious change is to finishes that no longer include Rosenut which has been replaced with a dark walnut, and a softer white with no fridge/freezer connotations.
Under the skin there have been a lot of small changes designed to reduce cabinet vibration and thus reduce the noise that can subtly blur what’s being produced by the drive units. The new plinth for instance has tuned mass dampers fitted to it and the top plate that support the turbine head on the larger models is now considerably stiffer with new compliant mountings, this much was obvious from the way that the turbine head wobbled when the 803 was being moved into position. There is extra metalwork within the cabinets in an effort to increase stiffness and in the case of the 804 which has a conventionally mounted midrange driver Bowers & Wilkins are using a metal box within the cabinet to provide a mini version of the turbine head in order to improve isolation for this critical driver.
One of the visible but less obvious changes is to the tweeter grille, this is something that has been used on the Signature versions of the D4 805 and 801 and is essentially much more open with a lot less metalwork. We reviewed both of those models and had demonstrations of what this apparently small change made to the presentation, it was not subtle and the sooner that Bowers & Wilkins gets this simple part into more affordable ranges the better. It’s worth mentioning too that all of the changes made for the Signature models are incorporated into the 800 D5 models, these include higher spec motor systems on the drivers and cryogenically treated bypass capacitors in the crossover. But the structural changes made to the cabinets mean that D5 models surpass their Signature cousins.
In an effort to find out more about the five models that will go on sale in the autumn I visited the company’s research facility, dubbed Bowers & Wilkins SRE (Southwater Research & Engineering Centre), in West Sussex for the first time since it moved in over six years ago. Unlike the warren of extended buildings that the engineers outgrew in Steyning this new facility is modern and substantial, a former IBM data centre it has space for three listening rooms and numerous anechoic chambers, something that has reduced bottle necks in product development caused by limited facilities in the past.
I was surprised to find that the engineers had created a facsimile of the listening room that the press occasionally visited back in the old building, complete with a large triple glazed window and old school room treatment based on a BBC design. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised though because consistency of test facilities is critical to consistency of results, a change of listening room would have taken months for the team to adjust to and I get the impression that in an organisation as big as this they don’t have much time to spare.
The speakers
Andy Kerr demonstrated the 800 D4 models against their new counterparts in this room, so we heard a total of 10 pairs of speakers in the space of just over an hour, it was only slightly gruelling! The takeaway is that the D5 models are clearly more revealing than the D4 as you might expect, the main difference being a clarity of detail produced by an obvious reduction in the noise floor. We don’t think of speakers having noise floors which is usually a term applied to electronics but it’s a way of describing the sound that’s created as a by product of the signal being reproduced, typically this is caused by cabinet vibration. This is typically much quieter than the signal being delivered by the drivers, so much so that you might not expect it to be audible, yet when this noise is reduced the effect is quite obvious.
If you think about a piano where the woodwork that the instrument is made of vibrates in sympathy with the strings being struck this is a similar thing, here the cabinet is absorbing the vibration coming of the chassis of each driver and that vibration turns into sound that is delayed relative to the signal, it is effectively noise. By reinforcing the 800 series cabinets in lots of small ways Bowers has managed to make the D5 examples ‘quieter’ than those they replace.
As a result each comparison between same size models revealed a similar increase in clarity and dynamics, what we didn’t expect is that the D5 models sound perceptibly louder despite measuring exactly the same in both sensitivity and response. This may be due to the contrast between quiet and loud sounds in the mixes we heard but it was obvious to all concerned and may be related to the wider dispersion that the new tweeter grille allows and the way that interacts with the room.
As we moved up the range the degree of resolution notably increased as you might expect with the larger models delivering deeper and more powerful bass albeit the difference between one model and the next wasn’t huge in this respect, it would probably be greater with bass heavy material. We listened to tracks from Harry Belafonte, Phoebe Bridgers and Agnes Obel for the comparisons and played Kham Meslien and AR Rahman pieces via the 801 D5 to round things off.
The system used in this room consists of a Denon DP-S1 CD transport and MSB Diamond DAC IV, Gryphon Commander two box preamplifier and Apex monoblock power amps. The latter specified to produce 210 Watts in Class A, hence the monolithic bulk. It’s a pretty special system even with CD as a source and I get the impression that the silver discs in this room get plenty of use.
I am intrigued to hear one of the Bowers & Wilkins 800 D5 models in my listening room after this experience, I won’t be playing them at the same level or with so much power yet expectations are definitely raised for this latest generation of 800 series flagship speakers.
Jason Kennedy