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I then hauled out the big stuff. I went happily from Verdi's Requiem, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic (SACD, RCA 61244-2), to Mahler's Symphony 5, with Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (SACD, Water Lily Acoustic WLA-WS-76-SACD), to excerpts from Pink Floyd's The Wall, from Burmester's test CD Vorführungs CD II—nothing fazed the 802Ds. Given sufficient amplifier power—and I'm sure they could have handled more than I had on hand—the speakers played very loud without any change in character or balance. All I had to do was find the musically appropriate…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, floorstanding, reflex-loaded loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" diamond-dome tweeter, 6" Kevlar FST-cone midrange unit, two 8" Rohacell-cone woofers. Crossover frequencies: 350Hz, 4kHz. Frequency response: 34Hz–28kHz, ±3dB, on axis (–6dB at 27Hz and 33kHz). Dispersion within 2dB of reference response: ±60° horizontal, ±10° vertical. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 3.5 ohms minimum. Sensitivity: 90dB/2.83V/m. Harmonic distortion (second and third harmonics, 90dB/m): <1% (40Hz–100kHz), <0.5% (70Hz–100kHz). Recommended amplification: 50–500W.
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Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Sony XA-9000ES SACD/CD player, Bel Canto PL-1A universal player, Theta Gen.VIII DAC.
Preamplifier: Bel Canto Pre6.
Power Amplifiers: Bel Canto eVo6 & eVo4, Classé Omega Omicron monoblocks; Simaudio Moon W-8, McCormack DNA-1 Rev.A, Linn Chakra C4100.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Studio.
Cables: Digital: Stereovox HDVX. Interconnect: Crystal Cable Cinemax multichannel, AudioQuest Cheetah/DBS balanced. Speaker: AudioQuest Mont Blanc/DBS biwire. AC: JPS Aluminata.
Accessories: APC S-15, Environmental Potentials EP-2450 power…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I estimated the B&W 802D's voltage sensitivity as 89dB(B)/2.83V/m, within experimental error of the specified 90dB figure and usefully higher than the average of the more than 500 speakers I have measured in the past 16 years. The B&W's impedance plot (fig.1) reveals the speaker to be moderately difficult to drive, with a magnitude that drops to 3 ohms throughout the upper bass and an awkward combination of 4 ohms and –50° electrical phase angle at 60Hz. In addition, the very high peak between 2 and 3kHz, resulting from the tweeter/midrange crossover, will…
If, as some would have it, Audiophilia nervosa is like the dark night of reason, then certain audio epiphanies must necessarily stand out from a distance, like a grove of trees 20 miles away thrown into stark relief by prairie lightning. And make no mistake that Audiophilia is a disease---I treasure the memory of the first time my wife and I heard Quad ESLs with tubes far more than the memory of my first kiss (although not more, I hasten to add in case Joan is reading this review, than the memory of our first kiss). I know men who stare into their flickering fireplaces on long winter nights…
Placement in my listening room was relatively straightforward. The speakers ended up about 8' apart and 2' off the front wall, toed-in slightly and 10' from my comfy chair. Some rooms or seating positions may require more toe-in, but the lateral spread I got in my room was amazing. Sound Anchors makes Nautilus 801 stands ($649/set) that lift the speakers off the floor between 4" and 5", which may help tame a boomy room---I didn't seem to need them (footnote 1).
The speakers have two pairs of shrouded speaker terminals sourced from WBT. (The tweeter and midrange drivers are run off the…
So I finally got to hear masked traffic noise. Big deal. More important, I got to hear how that noise informed the acoustic of the performing space, which is one of those details that makes the hall a specific space, not some generalization of one. For Magnificat Primi Toni, the speakers also clearly presented the singers arrayed in a semicircle, with the basses and baritones at the ends and the sopranos and altos between them, and deeper into the soundstage. The voices sounded meltingly pure, full of warmth and passion as they were supported in the air by the very space within which they…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, reflex-loaded dynamic loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (25mm) metal-dome tweeter, 6" (150mm) woven-Kevlar-cone midrange unit, 15" (380mm) paper/Kevlar-cone woofer. Crossover frequencies: 350Hz, 4kHz. Crossover type: third-order. Frequency response: 32Hz-22kHz, ±3dB. Sensitivity: 91dB/2.83V/1m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms (3 ohms minimum). Recommended amplifier power: 50-1000W. Maximum recommended cable impedance: 0.2 ohms.
Dimensions: 43.7" (1110mm) H by 20.6" (522mm) W by 27.2" (690mm) D. Net weight: 229 lbs (104kg).
Serial numbers of…
Sidebar 2: The Evolution of a Speaker
Because the B&W Nautilus 801 combines properties of the Nautilus speaker with those of the venerable (20 years old this year) 801 model, it might be appropriate to glance at the new speaker's antecedents before looking at the new technologies involved.
Along with KEF's R105, the original 801 established the concept of separating the bass and midrange enclosures while mounting the tweeter to the top of the midrange "head." This allowed B&W to optimize each enclosure to the frequency range of the driver, and improved the off-axis…
Since B&W had already determined that the midrange unit could not be pistonic over the required band, it felt that substantial improvements needed to be made to its existing Kevlar driver. One area that immediately suggested itself was the surround. Laser analysis of driver performance at B&W's Steyning research facility showed that the speaker cone and the surround tended to move in opposite directions, creating a set of "surround resonances." If the extra movement of the cone at this resonance more than compensates for the opposing movement of the surround, the result is a peak in…