Bowers & Wilkins has announced the launch of the 800 Series Diamond. The first new incarnations of the legendary 800 Series for six years brings Bowers & Wilkins closer to the ultimate ambition of its founder, John Bowers - to create a transducer that truly neither adds to nor subtracts from the original signal.
The 800 Series has long been the world’s premier high-end loudspeaker range. Designed for the home, but offering levels of quality such that the most demanding recording and mastering studios in the world choose to use them. Abbey Road Studios in London and Skywalker Sound in California both use Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series.
The already un-rivalled levels of performance are boosted by the implementation of Bowers & Wilkins’ famous diamond tweeter technology throughout the whole range, including the new 805 Diamond, a speaker that brings diamond tweeters into the range of more discerning listeners than ever before.
Further major advances in audio-critical areas provide the entire range with a dramatic leap forward in terms of audio quality compared to the outgoing 800 Series. The diamond dome tweeter is now a quad-magnet design, which increases efficiency and improves the dynamic range of the top-end performance. A new surround material aids dispersion characteristics, and provides a more stable stereo image while increasing openness.
At the other end of the tonal scale, bass performance has also improved with the introduction of a new dual magnet motor system, which utilises powerful neodymium magnets. This innovative design improves the linearity of the bass drivers’ performance, therefore reducing harmonic distortion.
Serious work has also gone into the small details that combine to make a loudspeaker special. New Bowers & Wilkins-designed oxygen-free-copper speaker terminals and links ensure the signal quality into the speaker is the best possible. All models’ crossovers feature a new design of capacitor using a unique silver, gold and oil construction. This component, chosen subjectively by Bowers & Wilkins engineers, in itself provides a dramatic increase in sound quality.
Elsewhere, proprietary Bowers & Wilkins technologies such as Kevlar® FSTTM mid-range drivers, NautilusTM tube-loaded tweeters, Matrix enclosures and the unique sphere/tube heads on the two largest speakers in the range, remain as acoustically valid as ever.
