B.&W. 800 Series
B&W 800 SERIES MUSICAL EVENING
Leicester Hi Fi in association with B&W Loudspeakers held a Musical Evening/AV Experience a complete success, enjoyed by all.
Excellent presentation from Paul (B&W representative) thanks to Zoe (Marketing) for her excellent contribution and knowlegeable chat with our guests thanks to Jon for demonstration of 800 Series & Classe Amplification & CD and to Peter for stonking 805 AV demonstration, good wine & food.
The home of the world's most advanced and innovative hi-fi and home cinema loudspeakers.
805S SSP £1600.00
Rosenut shown, also available in Black & Cherrywood
805 Stand SSP £400.00
Black shown available in Silver
Visually striking and sonically refined, the 805S is our compact entry level 800 Series speaker.
Even if you have a relatively small listening room, there's no reason why you should forgo superb sound quality. The 805S is a compact stand-mount 2-way system that gives a surprisingly full sound for its size and will not intrude into the room.
Here, woven Kevlar® is the cone material of choice for the role of combined bass and midrange driver. Distortion levels are minimised with our novel 'Balanced Drive'. First introduced in the Signature 805, Balanced Drive involves the addition of copper and aluminium components to the magnet system to reduce variations in voice coil inductance as the coil moves in the magnetic field. It's a distortion-producing mechanism that particularly affects bass/midrange drivers and can impair clarity if not attended to.
A separate stand is available that visually matches the style of the 805S and supports it firmly at the correct listening height.
804S SSP £2600.00
Cherrywood shown, also available In Black & Rosenut
The 804S is a more compact version of the 803S. Exactly the same midrange and tweeter configuration is used, but bass is supplied by two smaller 165mm (6.5 in) diameter Rohacell® cone drivers. These operate into a smaller, narrower Matrix™-braced cabinet, making this model ideal for the medium size listening room – elegant and unobtrusive.
Many of the features that go to making the 800 Series models so exceptional are hidden away inside the system. Silver coating the magnet pole in the tweeter helps extend its high-end response. The midrange driver utilises a powerful Neodymium-Iron-Boron magnet.
It supplies enough strength to energise a long magnetic field that remains constant over the voice coil's full movement, ensuring the incredibly low levels of harmonic distortion necessary to reproduce programme with full clarity to high output levels.
803S SSP £3800.00
Rosenut shown, also available in Cherrywood & Black
The 803S is the largest model to feature our aluminium dome tweeter, which has been enhanced with a new design of surround that operates better in unison with the dome. It has allowed the driver's low-end response to be extended in order to use the simple single component crossover design. Tube loaded for extra clarity, and mounted separately on top of the main cabinet for optimum dispersion of sound, the tweeter blends seamlessly with the FST™ midrange driver to create a solid, three-dimensional sound stage.
Bass is supplied by two 180mm (7 in) diameter Rohacell® cone drivers supplemented by a front-firing Flowport™, its now familiar dimples ensuring smoother airflow through the port to give greater dynamics, unsullied by distracting turbulence noise.
802D SSP £8000.00
Rosenut shown, also available in Cherrywood & Black
The 802D uses the same midrange and tweeter layout as the larger 800D and 801D, but its twin 200mm (8 in) bass drivers are housed in a narrower and more compact cabinet, making it ideal for those listeners that value the detail and imaging of the larger systems, but prefer a smaller aspect.
Despite its smaller volume and footprint, the 802D actually yields surprisingly little to its larger brethren in terms of bass extension and there is ample output capability for the majority of applications.
Although the styling is clearly based on its predecessor, the Nautilus™802, it has been revised and enhanced by changes to the plinth, the underside of the cabinet and the way the tweeter sits on the midrange enclosure. For those who prefer to operate the speaker with the grille in place, it's curving profile detail lifts the whole look of the cabinet.
All three models that have aluminium plinths are supplied with roller glides for easy manœuvrability. These may be replaced by optional heavy-duty feet if preferred. This new foot design is double-ended, with a spike for carpeted floors at one end and a clear, non-marking rubber pad at the other for more vulnerable surfaces. A total of 40mm (1.6 in) height adjustment is possible, which allows a few degrees of tilt if necessary.
800D SSP £13000.00
Rosenut shown, also available in Cherrywood & Black
The elegantly curved cabinet of the top-of-the-range 800D stands on a heavy cast aluminium plinth that also houses the substantial crossover.
The twin 250mm (10 in) diameter Rohacell® sandwich cone woofers have a radiating area equivalent to a single 380mm (15 in) driver and can deliver prodigious amounts of bass when called upon to do so, even in large listening rooms. Bass output is reinforced by a down-firing Flowport™ and is configured to have a taut characteristic, enabling the 800D to work optimally in a wide range of ‘real world’ rooms and acoustics.
Thanks to the geometry of the Marlan® midrange 'head' enclosure and the separate tweeter on top, the 800D can project an uncannily realistic and three-dimensional image that is more stable with changes in listener position than more conventionally shaped speakers.
Powerful it may be, but the 800D can also portray the finest nuances from the recording. So good is it at revealing detail that top recording engineers have said that it will change the way they mix and edit programme. This level of detail retrieval is a result of the unique combination of our FST™ midrange driver and arguably the world's finest tweeter. With the first break-up of its diamond dome at 70kHz, it ensures pure piston-like motion up to and beyond the limits of human hearing.
As befits a speaker of this calibre, the 800D contains several unique refinements, most notably the ultimate in crossover capacitors using silver and gold metals.
HTM2D SSP £2600.00
Cherrywood shown, also available in Rosenut & Black
Designed to partner the 803D, and even the 802/801/800 models when space restrictions preclude the larger HTM1D, the HTM2D features the phenomenal diamond dome tweeter in a full 3-way centre speaker. In the main Matrix™ cabinet, the Kevlar® cone FST™ midrange driver is accompanied by two 180mm (7 in) bass drivers, their Rohacell® sandwich cones combining with twin, rear-facing Flowports™ to ensure great dynamics and control.
Thanks to its magnetic shielding, the HTM2D can be placed close to CRT-based TVs and rear projectors, on either a custom shelf or the FS-HTM floor stand. This stand supports the speaker at a height low enough to allow the use of large projector screens that come to within 60cm (2 ft) of the floor and has zero, 4 or 8 degrees of tilt back so that the speaker can be directed towards the listeners.
HTM4S SSP £950.00
Rosenut shown, also available in Cherrywood & Black
The HTM4S is the smallest of the centre speakers in the range and is effectively an 805S with a different aspect and the added feature of magnetic shielding. It is therefore the ideal centre speaker when assembling a high quality, yet compact home theatre system with the 805S looking after the left and right channels.
The 165mm (6.5 in) woven Kevlar® cone bass/midrange driver features B&W's Balanced Drive for incredibly low midrange harmonic distortion. When you're listening to complex musical passages, or to dialogue amongst the background noise of an action movie, this is an essential attribute.
The complementary FS-HTM floor stand provides the ideal support for the HTM4S, offering three tilt positions.
SCMS SSP £1500.00
Rosenut shown, also available in Cherrywood & Black
The SCMS features essentially the same driver complement as the 805S. It's a 2-way system with a Kevlar® cone bass/midrange driver and aluminium dome tweeter. Here, though, the cabinet is much shallower so that it can be mounted on-wall with the minimum of intrusion into the living space. The system is also balanced for its intended on-wall application, taking into account the bass reinforcement from the rear wall.
The system comes complete with a custom wall bracket that allows angular adjustment in both horizontal and vertical planes. This allows the speaker to be angled towards the listeners or, if preferred for a more diffuse surround sound field, away from the listening area.
The SCMS is ideal for use as a stereo front speaker or as a rear surround. To give a more discreet aspect when the speaker is mounted high on the wall for surround applications, the tube-loaded tweeter has been brought into the main cabinet, rather than being mounted on top.
ASW825 SSP £1600.00
Black shown, also available in Cherrywood & Rosenut
There are four subwoofers in the 800 Series and, although the ASW825 is the smallest of the four, it is still a substantial performer.
The 300mm (12 in) driver features our ultra-rigid Rohacell® sandwich cone that can move prodigious amounts of air with almost perfect piston-like control. It has a 100mm (4 in) diameter voice coil and massive magnet assembly for high power handling without compression, which enables the subwoofer to produce true low-frequency sounds, from the subtle recreation of the acoustic of a large space to the most demanding film special effect.
Powering this driver with consummate ease is our 1000W amplifier module; its Class-D operation and switch mode power supply offering efficient performance, with little energy wasted as heat.
Comprehensive controls are provided so that the subwoofer can be integrated seamlessly into either a multi-channel or 2-channel installation.
