Bowers & Wilkins 805S Bookshelf Speaker Review

[amirm]

Nice. But isn’t this sort of like comparing a car & driver review of a 2003 Porsche 911 to a modern youtuber’s review of the same car 17 years later?

??? WhatHifi is not a youtuber.

 

[amirm]

Here is Bowers explanation for this. Starting min 18:00

Very well done and informative video.

 

[BYRTT]

??? WhatHifi is not a youtuber.

.. there's always something that is wrong with the acoustic reviews one way or another, had it performed football panter well objective/subjective someone probably grunted its colour is ugly, thanks for another very good and interesting acoustic review including the nice gardening reports plus tips and have best process get that septic tank fixed..

 

[martin900]

AFAIK they're not 'shot' but it's B&W's house sound - big bass and maximum details in the highs at the cost of midrange. Have had the 802N myself.

 

[Blumlein 88]

One thing is using a Klippel to get anechoic measurements for a speaker this age means it gets tested in a way that generally wasn't possible or certainly wasn't done at the time. So it is closer to having an old youtuber review from the day and getting someone to finally do a proper test on the car in the current terms.

You maybe could cut the speaker some slack taking into account when it was made. But doing this great spin-o-rama testing that wasn't around back then (except at Harman) lets you find out more about the design than was possible maybe even to its designers. I find that worthwhile on this older gear.

I keep hoping someone will get an old Quad to Amir. It in one sense has no relevance to current times, and yet I'd like to see how it turns out.

 

[bambadoo]

Whathifi gives every British product 5 stars...

 

[Newman]

What Neumann calls the "Smiley Curve" for home hifi. link

 

[amirm]

One thing is using a Klippel to get anechoic measurements for a speaker this age means it gets tested in a way that generally wasn't possible or certainly wasn't done at the time. So it is closer to having an old youtuber review from the day and getting someone to finally do a proper test on the car in the current terms.

I am sure they have had access to anechoic chamber for many years now. There is a soundstage measurement of their speaker back in 2001.

 

[Kuppenbender]

Whathifi gives every British product 5 stars...

Not entirely true.
https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/ophidian-p1-evolution
Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres (à payer pour la publicité).

 

[Juhazi]

More discussion https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/b-w-805.7500/

There are also more modern versions, like D3 tested in Stereophile https://www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-805-d3-loudspeaker-measurements

 

[sweetchaos]

Here is 805 D3 measurements:

 

[Frank Dernie]

Here is Bowers explanation for this. Starting min 18:00

Wow, there can't be much profit margin in these speakers given the tooling and manufacturing cost compared to most speaker boxes and bought in drivers!

 

[pierre]

With some radar plots (3D version coming real soon now )

 

[fredoamigo]

AFAIK they're not 'shot' but it's B&W's house sound - big bass and maximum details in the highs at the cost of midrange. Have had the 802N myself.

an entire generation of audiophiles has been trained and educated for this sound ...
it's good that this one is being tested today because most of us already know it well ...

 

[wje]

Whathifi gives every British product 5 stars...

Normally, yes. But, not always. When it came to the Cambridge Audio CXA-60 vs. CXA-80 - the previous generation of integrated amps by Cambridge, What HiFi gave the 60, 5 stars and the 80 4 stars.

Also, I frequently see pairs of these 805s selling for $1,500 or more on the used market. Normally, never any lower. I guess people justify it because they get a similar design of the newer 805 D3, but at 1/4 the cost - regardless of how the sound performs.

Amir, thanks for the review. Off topic: I was thinking the other day about how some of the famed manufacturers that we've had a lot of respect for in the past (e.g. NAD, Marantz) haven't been doing so well in recent tests here on the site. I wonder how performance would be for items such as preamplifiers or integrated amplifiers by Prima Luna, Mark Levinson or even Audio Research would perform? Does anyone have any of these $3K to $6K+ components that they'd be willing to send in for testing?

 

[hmt]

When you listen at low levels this should sound appealing for many people as it is sort of a baked in loudness compensation. The highs would bother me at high levels though...

 

[daftcombo]

Thanks @amirm !

Isn't it here what we call the "BBC dip"?

 

[wwenze]

Back to slaying big brands.

 

[Foxenfurter]

Nice review, as a British reader it is always interesting to see an iconic brand being measured, especially given all the positive press over here. WhatHifi have always been the Headfi of the audio press, they would argue that if the product was bad then why would the print a review on it, but even so....
This made me laugh "With female vocals, the voices were as if they were coming through a mask". Or a veil even?

 

[Robbo99999]

An expensive speaker considering some of it's flaws, but I knew when seeing the spinorama that some EQ would fix most of it, apart from the directivity error at 1kHz. So yeah, not bad, but expensive! EDIT: but as I've read now it's an old speaker, so I suppose I can cut it a bit more slack, but still!