CES 2008

"It's the finest two-way loudspeaker we've built to date, "said B&W's Chris Smith," as he stood next to the short white tubular Signature Diamond. "We've decided to make it a special edition of just 500 pairs, each pair numbered." I was very interested because the previous two-way model, the John Bowers Silver Signature, was very well-reviewed by Stereophile back in 1994 and became John Atkinson’s reference for many years.

I liked the Signature Diamond’s simplicity. It has a 7" Kevlar-coned mid-bass driver with a phase plug, a Nautilus-inspired, tube-loaded, diamond-dome tweeter in a marble housing, and a dimpled, golf-ball-style reflex port. It was designed by Kevin Grange to commemorate B&W's 40th anniversary, and can be ordered in a pure white finish or a brown–bronze–gold color which is named Wakame, the Japanese word for "seaweed." This alternative color is more to my liking than the stark white of the speaker shown at CES.