Proud new B and W owner

[newguy987]

Hi all, I am a proud new owner of B and W 683's, the htm61, and the ds3's. In a word....WOW!!! My old speakers were the monitor audio bronze. I'm not even sure what series they were - approx. 10 years old or so. I never used to believe all the stuff you read about how much better music-mainly 2 channel can sound. I am now convinced that it is truly a different world, and my "ears" are open! I'm not sure how much detail to go into-as I am very new to higher end. I have listened to many set-ups over the years, however I feel it isn't the same until it is in your own room, with your own material being played. I am currently powering everything up with a arcam avr300. Fronts are bi-amped, with-cough cough, monster cable speaker wire. My source for now is the Nad t535 dvd player-all interconnects are again monster. Seemed like a good idea at the time, damn future shop and their ignorant sales people! I am holding off on upgrading wire and interconnects-as I am in the process of building a theater room. After that I will have an idea as far as wire lengths, and I will make the change at that time. I have found this forum to be very helpful and informative, as well as there sure are a lot of people with a lot of money out there......As far as other gear I know I desperately need a better transport for cd playback and I do have a couple in mind, however the speakers set me back, so it will be a few months yet before I make any new purchases. The two I am looking at are the arcam cd17 and the Sim Audio cd-1. After that who knows what's next I will want/need a new sub, better interconnects, blu-ray, better projector, I do realize it will never end....again I'd just like to say I am very happy with the speakers, and to anyone with my kind of budget, the 683's are an awesome speaker for the price and I bet are hard to beat. As far as questions......I still don't know how hard the 683's can be pushed, I do enjoy my music loud and I am always hesitent to go too loud. I understand about distortion and clipping, but when things still sound good how far can you go volume wise?? for 2 channel I use the stereo direct function so all info is passed to the fronts. and I have it on the 4 ohm setting-tried the 8 ohm and it made the speakers crackle at certain frequencies. Plus I find the 4 ohm a better sound imo. that's about it for now....I'm sure i'll have other questions down the road. I will post pics of the room in progress and of course the speakers.....are you allowed to post home theater room pics-not completed yet?

[videophile]

Congratulations newguy987 for your purchase! I'm pretty sure you'll have years of enjoyment ahead. Cheers

[Alaric]

Welcome to HTGuide! Post pics! We can't hear your setup , but we can admire it!

[Ken49r]

I share your excitement. I too started with the 600 series. Sounds like a good HT setup.

Congratulation's & Happy listening!

[newguy987]

Thanks....I still wouldn't mind some input as far as how much/loud B and W's can be pushed without worrying about damage/clipping etc. Also the FST midrange. since it doesn't move/flex, due to being fixed, is it more prone to being damaged from high volumes of playback? I usually have volume at 82-86 db's, but I do understand every amp is different so it's hard to base actual volume output. I admit I like my music loud, not ear deaf, but loud so you can not just hear the music, you can also feel the music-hard to explain. Another Idea is a list or thread of what others use for music to test their own set-ups. I found out very quickly with my speakers that some recordings sound excellent while others sound like garbage. It would be interesting to know what others have found as far as good quality recordings. For example I have found that: Pink Floyd, Santana, Enya, Artural Sandoval, Mathew Good, and The Rock Soundtrack, sound very good.

[sunshdw]

Congrats on the purchase!! I, too, have just bought the 683's not long ago (http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=31642) and I will agree with the sound they produce. As I said before, bang for the buck they're tough to beat. I've talked to my B&W/Rotel rep about the same concern with the FST driver and his response was "I'm sure B&W engineers have thought about that." Which makes sense, and he went on to say that there are so many variation of possible configuations that if you blow one it isn't uncommon. Understandably so, if they are cranked to the limit with a sub-par receiver/amp they will let go the same as the 703s or 804s. I do see what he's saying and would have to agree. I play mine at a fairly agreesive level and don't anticipate to have any problems as I haven't doing the same with the other B&Ws I've owned. Enjoy!!

[fhsun]

Congrats! I recently purchased 683 front, HTM61 center, M-1 rears, ASW610 sub myself. I think they finally broke in (the fronts anyways). As far as the FST midrange, I wouldn't worry about blowing them anymore than the other drivers in the speaker system. B&W has been using them for a while in their esteemed 800 series.

[wgriel]

Generally, you'd have to play at very uncomfortably loud volumes to exceed your speakers ability. However, you might create problems if your amplifier is pushed too hard and it clips: that can damage your speakers quite readily.

[newguy987]

Wgriel, thanks for the reply, first where in canada are you from? I'm Rider Fan-so where I'm from should be obvious. As to your reply define uncomfortably loud? For example I will have the stereo at a pretty low volume and the Girl complains it's too loud, however I find it's barely halfway. and before you ask no my ears are not damaged. I get ear tests done yearly(with work) and they have not degraded at all. The best way I can tell how hard the amp is pushing is the load indicator on my voltage unit(APC H15) 10%, 20% etc. When I have it at what I would consider half way, the 10% indicator only just turns on. When I have it where it's just about to sound/feel loud, the 20% light comes on. But at 20% I sometimes wonder if that is too much. I've been testing listening and trying to figure this out with stereos my whole life, and i'm still uncertain. I understand clipping ruins your tweeters first. How to you know it's clipping? is it obvious? or is it one of those things that by the time you can hear/detect it, it's too late? sorry for all the questions I'd just like to know how far I can push the stereo without worries. I've blown speakers before and I don't want to do it again. thanks

[emig5m]

Hi all, I am a proud new owner of B and W 683's, the htm61, and the ds3's. In a word....WOW!!! My old speakers were the tmonitor audio bronze. I'm not even sure what series they were - approx. 10 years old or so. I never used to believe all the stuff you read about how much better music-mainly 2 channel can sound. I am now convinced that it is truly a different world, and my "ears" are open! I'm not sure how much detail to go into-as I am very new to higher end.

Is this me posting under a different name? That's my SAME exact experience except replace the DS3's with 685's. :E

I have listened to many set-ups over the years, however I feel it isn't the same until it is in your own room, with your own material being played.

That's why when I decided to try out B&W I didn't even bother to turn them on at the dealer and just took a pair home with seven days to return them for a full refund. How the speakers sound in their room on their equipment doesn't mean anything to me. How it sounds in my room with my gear is the only thing that counts to me.

My expectations was that I was 100% sure I'd be returning them because 1) I really couldn't afford a speaker upgrade with work being so slow with the economy/etc and just wanted to mainly try them for shits n giggles and.. 2) I thought I would never be happy with such a small speaker being used to the highly efficient and "big" and powerful sound of my Cerwin Vegas with specs of 102dB 1w/1m and a frequency response of 28Hz - 28,000Hz +/- 3dB... Boy was I wrong! It's all about the quality of how a speaker reproduces the frequencies it can play of its specs! I'll never go by paper specs AGAIN!

Once I A/B'd the speakers back to back selecting one then the other as the music played it was totally clear that the B&Ws where in a different class than what I had been used to before.



First thing I noticed was the tweeter was so much more airy/sweeter/more sensitive to fine details (a certain track with birds singing I REALLY noticed this.) Then it was the enhanced spacial imaging and then all those finer details that I normally could hear clearly through headphones I could now hear from a loudspeaker.

I liked the 684 so much I decided to go ahead and keep them even though I really couldn't afford them this year.... Soon after the rest of my Cerwin Vega speakers got replaced with a HTM61, Velodyne MiniVee, pair of 685's for rears and upgraded the 684 to 683 (holy wow for 2-channel music listening!) So much for the not being able to really afford them this year holding me back...lol.

and to anyone with my kind of budget, the 683's are an awesome speaker for the price and I bet are hard to beat.

I hear ya on that! First thing I did when I got the 685 is try them as mains....WOW at how clear, detailed, and big such a small speaker can play! They absolutely blew away all my expectations for 2-channel music without a sub for a tiny bookshelf speaker! I was almost thinking it would of been wiser and cheaper to just get the 685's all the way around, but when I plugged back in the 683's, the added clearness in the midrange was easily noticeable. Hard to imagine with how good the 685/684 sound, but there IS an improvement in the 683 midrange. And the added bass weight, added midrange clarity, bigger more realistic soundstage, definitely the speaker pick for the more serious full range 2-channel music listening...

As far as questions......I still don't know how hard the 683's can be pushed, I do enjoy my music loud and I am always hesitent to go too loud. I understand about distortion and clipping, but when things still sound good how far can you go volume wise??

Well I push mine loud... Metallica helps greatly lower the break-in time! :lol: (just skip their last two albums, their sound quality went way downhill.) Yea, I like to rock out with some heavy stuff sometimes, and I feel I really didn't lose much volume wise from the Vegas. Sure the Vegas had more sheer max volume, but the 683 can play loud enough to get your ears ringing, rattle nick-knacks on walls in other rooms with tight bass, while everything to do with actual sound quality is at a totally different/higher level.

I actually started running the Yamaha RX-663 into protection mode with the 683's with heavy bass tracks like in Will Smiths song Wild Wild West (great sounding recording quality for popular music IMO) when playing at dance club levels. It didn't sound distorted, maybe starting to get a little compressed, but I figured I better just get another dedicated power amp like I used to have with my Carver separates system I used to have.

I got a Emotiva XPA-5 and use the pre out of the receiver into it... no more driving into protection mode and no more compression at high volume with heavy bass (I think all the B&Ws I tried sound better for 2-channel music on their own - I just can't seem to like subs for music - I find it distracting and hard to integrate - and mainly they say you can't locate a sub, but I can tell where the sound is coming from regardless the crossover frequency used.)

I found out very quickly with my speakers that some recordings sound excellent while others sound like garbage. It would be interesting to know what others have found as far as good quality recordings. For example I have found that: Pink Floyd, Santana, Enya, Artural Sandoval, Mathew Good, and The Rock Soundtrack, sound very good.

I've noticed this as well. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it has to do with finally having a speaker that holds nothing/much less back than what you where used to and is more capable of from a performance aspect to get more from the best/better recordings. Like say, having a poorer speaker might make ALL recordings sound more equal to each other in quality since the speaker itself has a certain level it can perform to (a brick wall in its capability) and that's it. Some recordings just surpass what the speaker was capable of making it sound the same vs a poorer recording. An extreme example would be PC multimedia speakers vs real hi-fi speakers where the good/bad level out to the same result on the PC speakers but you can notice different levels of varying quality on true hi-fi speakers.

Now you have a speaker that's more capable and less prone to hold back from the better recordings and not mask the bad because it's more muffled/less detailed and has that brick wall where its performance is exceed by the recording it's trying to reproduce, and now the better recordings take you to a much higher level and now you can hear the vast differences in recording qualities of varying recordings. Heck, even Metallica, their new stuff sounds like shit in comparison to their old. I noticed it big time on the B&W's but not so much on a factory truck radio/speakers.

I read something that most newer recordings especially in the more popular genres are purposely compressed for portable mp3 and car/radio playback and this compression not only takes away the dynamics, but can clip and distort when over-done like with Metallica's latest album. Metallica got ragged on pretty bad for their newest recording (I thought I had gotten a bad disc when I first heard it since it didn't sound that bad on the radio on a crap factory car system but was highly noticeable on my home system with CD playback! :E Absolutely awful it is! :E)

Yea, Pink Floyd has one of my favorite sounding recordings... The Wall. It sounds so good and lifelike on a good system. It's so old you'd figure everything new should destroy such an old recording for sound quality but it doesn't work like that, lol, and in fact most newer stuff is the lower standard in recording quality (except for movies).

I think your (and my) observation is just the case you can now can hear the vast differences in recording qualities because you no longer have that brick wall in the performance of your speakers leveling out the good and bad and the brick wall in performance is now steered towards your recordings and it sucks because there are some great songs I absolutely love that are just poorly recorded and it's the recording itself holding back the sound system and not the other way around. Every recording should be recorded to the highest level and let the end users system be the deciding factor in the sound quality but it appears some recording studios use old Kmart sound design systems when mastering, lol, because that's about the best sound quality you get out of them regardless the equipment used.

[newguy987]

Thank-you very much for that in depth reply emig5m. I try do get some listening in everyday, and each day I notice differences to the sound/recording. I am still truly blown away. My set up is a rough one-just temporary. I am in the process of building a theater/listening room. So I can't wait to hear everything properly set up and in a better room. You mentioned to use the 685's as surrounds instead of the Ds3's-why? My set up in my room will be obviously the 683's for fronts, the htm61 for center, the ds3's for side surround-set to dipole mode, and I have a pair of in wall cwm500's for the back surrounds. Most movie listening will be in 5.1 so the back surrounds won't be used much. I figured the ds3's would do a better job of the overall surround-being dipole. Again I haven't had a chance to test this theory out since my room isn't built....but I'll let you know when I do get a chance to try them. Keep in touch as far as good recordings you come across-I agree about metallica, what a shame, so many bands now are more focused about pumping out the albums and making quick money-instead of quality recordings. maybe that's the reason why I find myself listening to more jazz and old school stuff. The doors, floyd, santana, zepelin, hendrix, the eagles, movie soundtracks. anyways thanks again.