A couple of days ago I had the following equipment delivered to my house for demo purpose:
Speakers:802D, 803D, 805s
Electronics:Classe CA-2200, CP-500, CDP-102
I demoed them in the following two rooms:
Living room: 8m x 5m (appr. 26 feet x 16 feet)
Study: 5m x 3m (appr. 16 feet x 10 feet)
The speakers were positioned roughly symmetrically along the longer wall in case of booth rooms.
Experience: it was quite interesting. In the living room the 802Ds were terrific of course with very balanced sound, bass sometimes rattling the sofa underneath me, extending so deep with the right tunes. The 803D's somehow did not sound right, the real deep bass notes were missing, yet the upper bass notes seemed overpresented. The 805s sounded also balanced, but of course quite lost in the room, as one might expect.
After this we moved the 803D's and the 805s' to the study. The 803D's sounded extremely boomy, although until now I thought there's no such a thing for me as too much bass. We just had to turn it off after a very short run, it was so bad. Then came the surprise part for the day. The 805s were connected and after like 10 sec there was an involuntary "wow" remark made by both me and my wife. They sang with such musicality, with so much bass yet with so beautiful mids and highs right from the first note that we said we must have them for the study, no matter what we plan for the living room. To have the ultimate bass I might need to add a sub too, but apart from the real deep bass notes and maybe due to special, untreated room acustics the 805s did sound better than the 802D's in the living room.
So I thought I had to share this experience with people, searching for the right speaker for the right room. My feeling is that speaker manufacturers should publish recommended room sizes in their specification sheets with a warning that unless someone is willing to do serious room acustics conditioning they should not select speakers out of the recommended range because the sound will be too thin or too heavy regarding bass. And as far as the high frequencies are concerned, it appears I'm personally not so sensitive about them, but if B&W manufactured the entire 800 line-up with diamond tweeters that would take care of that concern too.
Finally, for those that are still browsing or in the future will be browsing these pages for hints about room sizes and recommended speaker ranges, what is your experience? Please share with us.
Speakers:802D, 803D, 805s
Electronics:Classe CA-2200, CP-500, CDP-102
I demoed them in the following two rooms:
Living room: 8m x 5m (appr. 26 feet x 16 feet)
Study: 5m x 3m (appr. 16 feet x 10 feet)
The speakers were positioned roughly symmetrically along the longer wall in case of booth rooms.
Experience: it was quite interesting. In the living room the 802Ds were terrific of course with very balanced sound, bass sometimes rattling the sofa underneath me, extending so deep with the right tunes. The 803D's somehow did not sound right, the real deep bass notes were missing, yet the upper bass notes seemed overpresented. The 805s sounded also balanced, but of course quite lost in the room, as one might expect.
After this we moved the 803D's and the 805s' to the study. The 803D's sounded extremely boomy, although until now I thought there's no such a thing for me as too much bass. We just had to turn it off after a very short run, it was so bad. Then came the surprise part for the day. The 805s were connected and after like 10 sec there was an involuntary "wow" remark made by both me and my wife. They sang with such musicality, with so much bass yet with so beautiful mids and highs right from the first note that we said we must have them for the study, no matter what we plan for the living room. To have the ultimate bass I might need to add a sub too, but apart from the real deep bass notes and maybe due to special, untreated room acustics the 805s did sound better than the 802D's in the living room.
So I thought I had to share this experience with people, searching for the right speaker for the right room. My feeling is that speaker manufacturers should publish recommended room sizes in their specification sheets with a warning that unless someone is willing to do serious room acustics conditioning they should not select speakers out of the recommended range because the sound will be too thin or too heavy regarding bass. And as far as the high frequencies are concerned, it appears I'm personally not so sensitive about them, but if B&W manufactured the entire 800 line-up with diamond tweeters that would take care of that concern too.
Finally, for those that are still browsing or in the future will be browsing these pages for hints about room sizes and recommended speaker ranges, what is your experience? Please share with us.
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