800 Series event in london

[james_dmi]

There will be an 800 series at Grahams Hi-Fi tomorrow (17th) I only just found out about this and probably won’t be able to attend as I currently have the flu. Are any of the London based people who hang around here going to be going? Apparently there will be some of the design teem going so would be a good opportunity to get some extra details.

Information from the B&W web site can be found here:

800 Series Events

James.

[Nigel_Rav]

Don't know if any forum members attended the Grahams event, but I'll be going along to the one at Worthing on March 3rd. Looking forward to it...

[BlazeMaster]

There was one at my local dealer, but didn't go. They also had a free pair of 600s to give away to a lucky participant. If they had like a 705s to give away, I might have gone.

[ti33er]

Damn! I got this too late...probably would have gone, and would have been nice to meet you as well James

[Nigel_Rav]

Well the launch event in Worthing was fun. As well as some AV kit, they had Classe equipment including 2 x 400w mono-block amps and ran comparative demos of the 803D, 802D and 800D.

The biggest performance leap to my ears was going from the 803D to the 802D. As others as said, the Marlan surround on the 802D makes all the difference. In comparison, the 803D sounded coloured and seemed slow and cumbersome, particularly in the bass department. Seems like the 803D needs very careful set-up and equipment partnering to sound at its best, but clearly it was always going to suffer in relation to its big brother.

Moving up to the 800D, it was a case of more of the same, but on a bigger scale. A classical piece of music with kettle drums being pounded sounded immense, but not overblown. By this stage in the evening, so much music had been played at spleen-shaking volumes, that my ears were unable to assess fully how much better the 800D was at things like resolution and imaging. I suspect they really needed a better CD than the 3000GBP Classe to truly shine.

BTW, B&W said that the 800D really needed as much power as possible to come alive, but the 802D could happily be powered by something like a Rotel RA1062 (although obviously would relish something more in its price range).

There were 4 or 5 people from B&W there to have a chat with, so all in all a very worthwhile way to spend 4 hours!

[james_dmi]

Nigal_Rav,
Now I read that I’m glad I didn’t go to the London event. I don’t think my wallet could have taken hearing anything better then the 803D. Did you get tempted to up-range by your experiences or were you already in the market for 802D’s+

All the best,
James

[Nigel_Rav]

Well actually I've already bought the 804S which I'm very happy with. I went along because I was curious to hear what the higher end 800 Series range sounded like. Better in many ways to go to an event like this than a Hi-Fi show held in a hotel - the set-up was pretty good.

I would love to get the 802D, but I'm not sure if my 16' x 12' room would be big enough to let them breathe properly. Plus there's the small matter of not being able to afford the £8000 price tag...