B&W 800 D3 vs KEF Blade. Let's discuss.

[sarumbear]

A big studio like Abbey Road is a serious place where everything has to work every day, so relationships with suppliers are usually long-term and in depth. There's a huge tail of spare parts and replacement units to be supplied. Some technical manager (perhaps @sarumbear was one?) signs off on the deals, with at least some engineering common sense, so price isn't really make or break. The studio gets a trade price, possibly 50% of retail, and depreciates it over a number of years, down to maybe 25% of retail, and probably the spares are on sale-or-return. So no big deal. Meanwhile the supplier books the retail price of absolutely everything as promotional deductions, and loses very little in the end.

An excellent analysis of the situation. And no, I was a recording engineer. I was not involved with procurement.

 

[Koeitje]

A big studio like Abbey Road is a serious place where everything has to work every day, so relationships with suppliers are usually long-term and in depth. There's a huge tail of spare parts and replacement units to be supplied. Some technical manager (perhaps @sarumbear was one?) signs off on the deals, with at least some engineering common sense, so price isn't really make or break. The studio gets a trade price, possibly 50% of retail, and depreciates it over a number of years, down to maybe 25% of retail, and probably the spares are on sale-or-return. So no big deal. Meanwhile the supplier books the retail price of absolutely everything as promotional deductions, and loses very little in the end.

B&W can still provide the speakers for free in such a situation and have a paid SLA with Abbey Road for the support. But as you said, because they have a longstanding relationship they already prefer B&W regardless if they are the best loudspeaker for the job.

 

[bo_knows]

I haven't heard the Blade or the 800D3, but I have heard the 802D3 and the KEF Reference 5 in an acoustically treated showroom with just these speakers in there. Even though the KEF is the less expensive one it was the best. The bass was went deep and sounded better on the 802D3, but above 2kHz the B&W just falls apart. You got some extreme peaking that can really ruin certain tracks. On the KEF it was always just right and for the price difference you can just add double subwoofers anyway.

But...but...but, KEF ref 5 is only a Stereophile class B speaker

 

[AdamG]

If folks can’t behave in this thread I will issue reply bans. Please and thank you. Last few posts deleted. Use the ignore function if you can’t stand one another. My Ignore function sends you to oblivion.

 

[steve59]

There were stories of B&W providing studios the 800 matrix to supplement their marketing, but that would have nothing to do with their sound only the sound of the recordings. I'm amazed at how the blades sound and with the affordable amplification I use they really are a bargain. I drive a Chevy you drive a Ford, arguments like these are pointless.

 

[richard12511]

Funnily even the on-axis curve has almost a 10dB fluctuation between 3 and 20 kHz.

By the way here are detailed measurements (also directivity) of it https://www.fidelity-online.de/bowers-wilkins-800-d3-messungen/

Eeek, those measurements don't look very good. Frequency response is decent, but not great(bad for the price), and one can argue that some might prefer different - non neutral - frequency responses like that, and if not, it's fixable with EQ. The bad (super uneven) directivity is less forgivable though. It's not fixable with EQ, and I have a super hard time believing anyone prefers super uneven directivity like that. The dispersion width is just all over the place based on the frequency . Definitely no where near as good as the Blade(at least with subs). It does extend to 15Hz, though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it beat the Blades with 2.0 stereo. The Blades aren't really full range speakers.

It's so weird to me, as measurements of older B&W models were legitimately great speakers(especially for the time). The Nautilus measurements especially looked great IIRC, and so were the 800 series speakers from the 90s. It's like new management came in and declared that super uneven directivity and v curves is the goal. I don't get it. In their youtube videos, you can see their tooling and software is fantastic, especially when it comes to identifying resonances. They have all the resources they need, yet somehow they still end up with speaker that has quite a few bad resonances and super uneven dispersion.

They're beautiful, expensive, and dig super deep, so I'm sure they still do extremely well in sighted listening tests. That I love the look so much makes the poor measurements more frustrating. Probably my absolute favorite speaker aesthetic. I just love the rounded and sophisticated look they bring. They were my dream speakers before I learned about the importance of good measurements . I really hope new management takes them back to the top of the engineering pack where I know they can be.

 

[richard12511]

That's the problem ...

Agreed, but instead of .

 

[LTig]

I wonder how many people commenting on this thread have auditioned a pair of 800D3 and Blade in a controlled environment (not at a show or showroom)?

I did (I used to own a pair) and I say there’s no competition. 800D3 wins by a good margin, especially at realistic levels of a symphony orchestra or a (unregulated) night club.

I listened to the 800D3 at a lengthy demo at my local dealer. The demo guy played them very loud and neither me nor several other people could stand the high notes of piano - it was just earbleadingly aggressive. If this is the SQ required in studios I get doubts about the ears of the engineers using them ... (don't remember the amps, might have been the biggest Macintosh mono blocks).

 

[preload]

I love how people come up with conspiracy theories when facts don't fit their rigid view.
Example:
1) Perspective: B&W speakers sound horrible and are far from neutral.
2) Fact: Abbey Road studios has been using B&W speakers in their flagship monitoring rooms for decades.
3) Conspiracy: Therefore, B&W must be paying Abbey Road on the side to feature their speakers!!!!

And the rabbit hole gets worse because it then requires you to assume:
1) that Abbey Road is so financially strapped that it can't afford to purchase its own $10k-$30k speakers (or whatever that is in pounds)
2) that the Abbey Road engineers are saying "gee, we're world class audio engineers at a world class studio, but we're going to use these inferior B&W speakers as our monitors on recordings that will bear our name"
3) that the brand and reputation of "Abbey Road" is worth risking in order to obtain free, non-neutral sounding speakers from B&W
4) ...and so forth.

This progressive assumption of more and more ridiculous facts that are necessary to accept the conspiracy are an example of cognitive dissonance (when the term is actually being used correctly).

P.S. The Abbey Road brand is worth BILLIONS of dollars. Think about it people.

 

[HiFiDiscoveryTrip]

Eeek, those measurements don't look very good. Frequency response is decent, but not great(bad for the price), and one can argue that some might prefer different - non neutral - frequency responses like that, and if not, it's fixable with EQ. The bad (super uneven) directivity is less forgivable though. It's not fixable with EQ, and I have a super hard time believing anyone prefers super uneven directivity like that. The dispersion width is just all over the place based on the frequency . Definitely no where near as good as the Blade(at least with subs). It does extend to 15Hz, though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it beat the Blades with 2.0 stereo. The Blades aren't really full range speakers.

It's so weird to me, as measurements of older B&W models were legitimately great speakers(especially for the time). The Nautilus measurements especially looked great IIRC, and so were the 800 series speakers from the 90s. It's like new management came in and declared that super uneven directivity and v curves is the goal. I don't get it. In their youtube videos, you can see their tooling and software is fantastic, especially when it comes to identifying resonances. They have all the resources they need, yet somehow they still end up with speaker that has quite a few bad resonances and super uneven dispersion.

They're beautiful, expensive, and dig super deep, so I'm sure they still do extremely well in sighted listening tests. That I love the look so much makes the poor measurements more frustrating. Probably my absolute favorite speaker aesthetic. I just love the rounded and sophisticated look they bring. They were my dream speakers before I learned about the importance of good measurements . I really hope new management takes them back to the top of the engineering pack where I know they can be.

I listened many times to the B&W 800 D2 and 800 D3. The improvements of the D3 are very clear when listening. The tweeter still has this utter transparency, but blends much better with the midrange driver. The D3 sounds extremely neutral. That was not the case with the previous version.

 

[kyle_neuron]

This progressive assumption of more and more ridiculous facts that are necessary to accept the conspiracy are an example of cognitive dissonance (when the term is actually being used correctly).

It’s not a huge stretch. I’ve seen a surprising (or not) number of ‘essentially free’ promo deals done from all manner of size companies or brands, some of which made little sense to me personally.

As you say they’re both ‘heritage’ brands with a long working relationship so cross promotional efforts are likely very much in order.

The speakers are also still going to be an audiophile object of desire, and I’d wager there’s a lot of B&W systems out there in the target market for the studio. Therefore it’s frankly reasonable to have pairs of their flagship, even if the sound perhaps isn’t the engineer’s preference or even ‘objectively good’.

Do you think mixing engineers liked listening to Auratones?

 

[Koeitje]

Its probably a case of "good enough".

 

[thewas]

What would interest me is if Abbey Road uses an EQ for room correction and for example even to tame their pronounced highs.

 

[gsp1971]

What would interest me is if Abbey Road uses an EQ for room correction and for example even to tame their pronounced highs.

https://www.abbeyroad.com/the-studios

For every room they list the equipment used.

 

[thewas]

https://www.abbeyroad.com/the-studios

For every room they list the equipment used.

I know and any such pro equipment includes of course EQ option even at several stages, the question remains though if some of them are used for room and loudspeaker correction.

 

[Frank Dernie]

However, the reason is not only that plastic is cheap, but because acoustically it does not have the best properties.

This is wrong.
It depends on the plastic and how you price it but, by weight, plastics are mostly more expensive than metals.
If you are going to produce a very large number of items making them in a plastic material may work out cheaper since if you have the volume to justify the (high) cost of tooling the piece part manufacturing cost can be very low indeed compared to making the same part from metal, but that is because of manufacturing cost, not material cost.
Next some fibre reinforced plastics are the highest cost and performance engineering materials we have.
The acoustic properties available will depend on the detail design but there is no reason at all why a "plastic" speaker enclosure can't be first class technically.
Thermo-set plastics reinforced by appropriate fibres (there are many choices) are horribly expensive but produce, IME, the best properties of all materials I have used.

 

[gsp1971]

On B&W 800 series, please read this from the man himself.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...cal-music-pros-using.12225/page-8#post-841644

 

[preload]

It’s not a huge stretch. I’ve seen a surprising (or not) number of ‘essentially free’ promo deals done from all manner of size companies or brands, some of which made little sense to me personally.

Let's be clear. Are you saying that Abbey Road Studios and its world class engineers all believe that B&W 800's are horrible sounding and not neutral, yet they use these speakers in their flagship mastering studios to create recordings because it's an "essentially free promo deal" and because you've seen these types of deals elsewhere that didn't make sense to you?

And THIS is why you think it's plausible? If so, thank you for illustrating my point about cognitive dissonance. I'm going to assume that you're otherwise an intelligent person and logical person in other domains.

 

[sarumbear]

Let's be clear. Are you saying that Abbey Road Studios and it's world class engineers all believe that B&W 800's are horrible sounding and not neutral…

The problem is, some “Audio Limunaries” are agreeing.

 

[preload]

The problem is, some “Audio Limunaries” are agreeing.

If you're referring to Luminary Toole's post, which I read twice to be sure, there is no mention of a conspiracy alleging that Abbey Road Studios acknowledges that B&w speakers sound terrible and "non-neutral" but uses them to create recordings because B&w gave them a pair for free. If I missed it, please let me know.