Who said such things exactly?
And that is the very truth. Predictive sound quality nor preference weren't in question.
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Bowers & Wilkins 607 S2 Anniversary Edition Review
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Helicopter
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But I mean Focal is way, way better than B&W in every way... In a blind test, Focal speakers would totally dominate, and they look better, and they are made better, and they are cooler...
Who buys B&W? People who don't know any better. Focal has some real rivals, but B&W is not among them.
Who buys B&W? People who don't know any better. Focal has some real rivals, but B&W is not among them.
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Maybe not in terms of pure engineering acumen, but B&W is absolutely one of Focal's main rivals in the general sense. B&W sells a lot of speakers. B&W and KEF are the main two that come to mind when I think of Focal's main rivals on the hifi side.
Helicopter
Major Contributor
Competitors. So is Klipsch.
Revel/JBL and Neuman, Genelec are the rivals. Some Elac stuff too. Perhaps a couple others.
adamjohari
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Then there's me, who bought B&W 607 S2 speakers because it got rave reviews and looked beautiful. Haha. Still enjoying them. Good thing is that this is my second pair of speakers. My first pair, Monitor Audio Bronze from 2012 are in their box. Haven't had time to compare.
Harman research. The papers themselves, not the internet lore that people blindly repeat.
No idea what you're talking about then. What's the point of measurement if not to predict sound quality? Is it to marvel at how perfectly they measure even though they don't necessarily sound good to you?
And that's your opinion, thanks for sharing it.
I could say the same thing about Focal. But I'd rather not get into a grade school "my dad is smarter than your dad" argument because that's basically what I'm hearing from you.
I guess the brightness does not have much to do with the top end 20kHz, 16kHz, or 13 kHz.
Somebody's aged high frequency hearing does not necessarily mean he/she likes overly bright speakers. With the aged hearing, he/she can compare tonal balance between loudspeakers, liver music, live voice and speech/talk, etc.
I heard that, in music industries, there are sound engineers involved in producing, editing, and mastering with aged hearing, but highly paid.
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VintageFlanker is right about the house sound of B&W. When you research online for measurements, all B&W in the last twenty years or so have a very wide bump of about 5 dB in the 10 khz area. B&W DM303 doesn't have that bump according to Soundstage! measurement.
Now that is not necesseraly bad for some people. I am sure that some like that brightness in their speaker and there are a lot of people that don't hear that range very well and welcome that bump in FR.
I, otoh, couldn't live with B&W speakers and that brightness was messing up my soundstage.
But, supposedly B&W did some research and found that people like that kind of FR, but that research is sadly not available for public. Which brings it in question.
Never the less, I would like to see some independent research with double blind tests done, similar to Dr. Tolle's, but not affiliated with any brand. Which is very hard because who would fund it....
Now that is not necesseraly bad for some people. I am sure that some like that brightness in their speaker and there are a lot of people that don't hear that range very well and welcome that bump in FR.
I, otoh, couldn't live with B&W speakers and that brightness was messing up my soundstage.
But, supposedly B&W did some research and found that people like that kind of FR, but that research is sadly not available for public. Which brings it in question.
Never the less, I would like to see some independent research with double blind tests done, similar to Dr. Tolle's, but not affiliated with any brand. Which is very hard because who would fund it....
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B&Ws voicing is often underestimated, also by me in the past.
A couple of years ago I was at a hi-fi studio and heard the current 705 S2 and being a KEF fan compared them directly with a pair of KEFs in the similar price range (R3):
As you can see in the room, Hifi Studio was usually more acoustically "livelier" than mine, but therefore more representative of an average modern living room, listening distance was around 3 meters so rather diffuse field. I heard with both Eagles - Hotel California Live, Marla Glen - The Cost of Freedom and Jennifer Warnes - Bird on a Wire, all good recordings that are often used in listening tests (e.g. Marla Glen at Hifi-Selbstbau.de, Jennifer Warnes at the Harman Group) and it was switched several times in each song directly via the AB function of the amplifier, unfortunately not leveled, but the perceived loudness differences were small and I was able to reduce them further with the remote control.
Well, in this room and listening distance, as expected, the image was much more diffuse than I am used to in my more dampened room and smaller listening distances, so I mainly focused on the tonality and cleanliness of the reproduction. As expected, both sounded very clean and you could hear some fine details. Tonally, the B&W worked damn well in the room with these recordings, I don't know what I would change there. The KEF, on the other hand, sounded too dark and sometimes like "cupped hands" which I didn't know from my LS50 or the outstanding Blade 2 at KEF in England. In retrospect, however, I am annoyed that I no longer turned the KEF towards myself, the B&W is more likely to be set up relatively parallel to the wall. In any case, in this setup and room I'm pretty sure that most of the listeners would have preferred the B&W, it just sounded nice (even if it was embellished) but without being too artificial. When I got back home 15 minutes later, I immediately listened to these 3 tracks with my "B&W Voicing" on my Genelec and this "slightly sugary" pleasant feeling was there again. In summary, in the room and this (not wrong because not too far from the front wall) setup, the current B&W Voicing worked excellently for me, but this does not mean that it always has to be like that, as iny some was due to hi-fi shows and a store I also had different memories.
After I liked the B&W 705 S2 in comparison with the KEF R3, I went to the same dealer again few weeks later to compare the 705 with the inexpensive 606 with the same woofer and fairly similar measurements: 6 tracks were played again which I know well and switched directly to each one several times, in fact the differences were small and even barely detectable for some songs, the 705 had a tad more withdrawn mids and its image was larger, although that changed when we then put the 606 on the outside like on the picture.
So from curiosity I spontaneously bought the inexpensive pair 606 in order to be able to make more tests and comparisons with my KEF LS50 Anniversary. So that the comparison is fair, I set up both pairs one after the other in the identical positions, which fortunately are also the ones that both manufacturers recommend, i.e. at least 50 cm to the sides and the back wall, in my case 80 cm to the side and 50 cm to the rear. I didn't turn both of them in because they both measure each other more balanced at angles, so that looks from the listening position (unfortunately I forgot to take the photo with the KEF):
As you can see, I've also put my subwoofer away and deactivated any EQ or DSP. Enclosed listening position measurements of both pairs, each as an average of L + R as well as with psychoacoustic smoothing, since such a representation correlates more with our perception, I have increased the less efficient KEF in the plot by 3.5dB so that both can be better compared:
In my opinion, there are mainly 5 significant tonal differences that can be heard. The B&W goes much deeper in my listening room and has the -3dB point at an impressive 25 Hz, so it sounds "grown up" in the bass, like a good floorstanding speaker. The upper bass of the KEF is slightly raised in comparison to my listening room, possibly also to compensate for the missing deep bass, which also slightly changes the fundamental tone of male voices or the electronic bass, e.g. with EDM. Between 2-3 kHz you can clearly see the euphonic presence dip of the B&W mentioned by me in the first post of the thread, which makes it sound pleasant, the KEF is unfortunately a bit too powerful, which makes a good saxophone recording sound very impressive, but with some recordings can also be annoying and e.g. but was corrected with later active LS50s and Metas. In the high-frequency range you can also see the sibilant dip around 5-6kHz I mentioned at the beginning of the B&W, which takes the sharpness of the high-frequency and S-sounds, as well as a slight exaggeration over it, which gives a little more "details" and "shimmer" to a good recording.
The two dips of the B&W and the excessive presence of the KEF can also be seen well if you compare the listening position measurements with the ideal listening position curve (i.e. good loudspeakers in a good room) from Toole, with both doing well, the only major deviation is in the upper bass and partly in my setup and Walls in debt. In a few words, in my opinion, a very clever voicing is confirmed, the whole thing does not sound 100% neutral like, for example, with my Genelec, but still coherent and pleasant at the same time, so that, like the Polish tester, I would not immediately know what to change would.
A couple of years ago I was at a hi-fi studio and heard the current 705 S2 and being a KEF fan compared them directly with a pair of KEFs in the similar price range (R3):
As you can see in the room, Hifi Studio was usually more acoustically "livelier" than mine, but therefore more representative of an average modern living room, listening distance was around 3 meters so rather diffuse field. I heard with both Eagles - Hotel California Live, Marla Glen - The Cost of Freedom and Jennifer Warnes - Bird on a Wire, all good recordings that are often used in listening tests (e.g. Marla Glen at Hifi-Selbstbau.de, Jennifer Warnes at the Harman Group) and it was switched several times in each song directly via the AB function of the amplifier, unfortunately not leveled, but the perceived loudness differences were small and I was able to reduce them further with the remote control.
Well, in this room and listening distance, as expected, the image was much more diffuse than I am used to in my more dampened room and smaller listening distances, so I mainly focused on the tonality and cleanliness of the reproduction. As expected, both sounded very clean and you could hear some fine details. Tonally, the B&W worked damn well in the room with these recordings, I don't know what I would change there. The KEF, on the other hand, sounded too dark and sometimes like "cupped hands" which I didn't know from my LS50 or the outstanding Blade 2 at KEF in England. In retrospect, however, I am annoyed that I no longer turned the KEF towards myself, the B&W is more likely to be set up relatively parallel to the wall. In any case, in this setup and room I'm pretty sure that most of the listeners would have preferred the B&W, it just sounded nice (even if it was embellished) but without being too artificial. When I got back home 15 minutes later, I immediately listened to these 3 tracks with my "B&W Voicing" on my Genelec and this "slightly sugary" pleasant feeling was there again. In summary, in the room and this (not wrong because not too far from the front wall) setup, the current B&W Voicing worked excellently for me, but this does not mean that it always has to be like that, as iny some was due to hi-fi shows and a store I also had different memories.
After I liked the B&W 705 S2 in comparison with the KEF R3, I went to the same dealer again few weeks later to compare the 705 with the inexpensive 606 with the same woofer and fairly similar measurements: 6 tracks were played again which I know well and switched directly to each one several times, in fact the differences were small and even barely detectable for some songs, the 705 had a tad more withdrawn mids and its image was larger, although that changed when we then put the 606 on the outside like on the picture.
So from curiosity I spontaneously bought the inexpensive pair 606 in order to be able to make more tests and comparisons with my KEF LS50 Anniversary. So that the comparison is fair, I set up both pairs one after the other in the identical positions, which fortunately are also the ones that both manufacturers recommend, i.e. at least 50 cm to the sides and the back wall, in my case 80 cm to the side and 50 cm to the rear. I didn't turn both of them in because they both measure each other more balanced at angles, so that looks from the listening position (unfortunately I forgot to take the photo with the KEF):
As you can see, I've also put my subwoofer away and deactivated any EQ or DSP. Enclosed listening position measurements of both pairs, each as an average of L + R as well as with psychoacoustic smoothing, since such a representation correlates more with our perception, I have increased the less efficient KEF in the plot by 3.5dB so that both can be better compared:
In my opinion, there are mainly 5 significant tonal differences that can be heard. The B&W goes much deeper in my listening room and has the -3dB point at an impressive 25 Hz, so it sounds "grown up" in the bass, like a good floorstanding speaker. The upper bass of the KEF is slightly raised in comparison to my listening room, possibly also to compensate for the missing deep bass, which also slightly changes the fundamental tone of male voices or the electronic bass, e.g. with EDM. Between 2-3 kHz you can clearly see the euphonic presence dip of the B&W mentioned by me in the first post of the thread, which makes it sound pleasant, the KEF is unfortunately a bit too powerful, which makes a good saxophone recording sound very impressive, but with some recordings can also be annoying and e.g. but was corrected with later active LS50s and Metas. In the high-frequency range you can also see the sibilant dip around 5-6kHz I mentioned at the beginning of the B&W, which takes the sharpness of the high-frequency and S-sounds, as well as a slight exaggeration over it, which gives a little more "details" and "shimmer" to a good recording.
The two dips of the B&W and the excessive presence of the KEF can also be seen well if you compare the listening position measurements with the ideal listening position curve (i.e. good loudspeakers in a good room) from Toole, with both doing well, the only major deviation is in the upper bass and partly in my setup and Walls in debt. In a few words, in my opinion, a very clever voicing is confirmed, the whole thing does not sound 100% neutral like, for example, with my Genelec, but still coherent and pleasant at the same time, so that, like the Polish tester, I would not immediately know what to change would.
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zajogungster
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[QUOTE = "zajogungster, post: 741100, member: 16544"] [QUOTE = "Fafnar, príspevok: 716432, člen: 10846"] Revel M105 je v zásade rovnaký cenový bod (750 $ proti 700 $) a podáva ďalšie lepšie výsledky .
NHT c3 je o niečo lacnejší (391 mesiacov) a má lepšiu výkonnosť oproti cieľovej krivke.
Mám podozrenie, že prehnaná vysoká frekvenčná odozva je zámerom ťažkej pre WhatHiFi a Steva Guttenberga z celého sveta. [/ QUOTE]
systém Bum-Cink! je to sexi a ľudia v masách tomu radi veria, že to tak má byť. Prečo by to inak taká spoločnosť robila? chcú nadchnúť ... Lenže drvivá väčšina má doma podpriemerné ,, zosilnovače "kde to je žiaľ výhodné .. aspon niečo z tých ,, výšok" mať : D[/ QUOTE]
Sám by som to lepšie nenapísal !
NHT c3 je o niečo lacnejší (391 mesiacov) a má lepšiu výkonnosť oproti cieľovej krivke.
Mám podozrenie, že prehnaná vysoká frekvenčná odozva je zámerom ťažkej pre WhatHiFi a Steva Guttenberga z celého sveta. [/ QUOTE]
systém Bum-Cink! je to sexi a ľudia v masách tomu radi veria, že to tak má byť. Prečo by to inak taká spoločnosť robila? chcú nadchnúť ... Lenže drvivá väčšina má doma podpriemerné ,, zosilnovače "kde to je žiaľ výhodné .. aspon niečo z tých ,, výšok" mať : D[/ QUOTE]
Sám by som to lepšie nenapísal !
zajogungster
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A hill of you writes here about "ears" but Hi-Fi is about measurements and it's ridiculous to say who and how it hears. Manufacturers should pay attention to the accuracy and quality of components. B&W also knows what is needed, but deliberately integrates cheap components (unfortunately in the switch) where their tolerance barely reaches + -20% + other factors that can affect the resulting sound.
I agree with AMIR that although everything can be improved by their exchanges and quite cheaply, but really it should be the role of the consumer? If I sell waste, what I think B&W is !!! people will never understand what quality music and its reproduction are.
I agree with AMIR that although everything can be improved by their exchanges and quite cheaply, but really it should be the role of the consumer? If I sell waste, what I think B&W is !!! people will never understand what quality music and its reproduction are.
The published research on loudspeakers would disagree with you on that.
Here we go again. Define "accuracy" of a loudspeaker.
Too bad a lot of music was mastered on B&W monitors.
Usually mastering studio assumes really flat FR in LP done by equalisation, so "brand tuning" must not matter so much.
Top BW speakers can handle huge SPL peaks and have low inherent distortion, that's their strong points, not some elevated highs.
Helicopter
Major Contributor
With a random person, I would certainly expect that to be a safe conclusion, but here on ASR, where the smart kids who have smart dads hang out, I know better.
Perhaps we agree Focal measurements, especially frequency response, better align with predicted preferences compared to B&W. While measurements are not the entire picture, they are highly predictive of preferences. The ideal process for speaker selection would be to pick several options that fit aesthetic tastes, electronic needs, budget, and then do a blind listening test to find a favorite. In lieu of that (unrealistic for virtually all) option, another approach is to find a batch that meet the criteria mentioned, and also have excellent measurements, especially frequency response, and then listen to them, ideally at home for some time, but perhaps more practically, someplace else for a short demonstration. If you're going to evaluate them like this, the B&W won't make the cut to get a listening test. A third option, far from ideal, but available to virtually everyone, is to order unheard, based on the criteria mentioned and subjective reviews from others. Again, B&W won't make the first cut due to objective performance.
Seems like you're rejecting the argument that measurements are highly predictive of preferences. When I hear that, I steer toward the conclusion that you are letting substantial bias change your thought process. I really don't trust my ears in sighted listening, and I suggest others be cautious about the same. All it took was a few McGurk Effect videos for me to form a very strong notion that sighted auditory perception is surprisingly flawed and unreliable, for everyone.
I'm pretty sure that B&W use quality components in their crossovers nowadays.
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B&Ws voicing is often underestimated, also by me in the past.
A couple of years ago I was at a hi-fi studio and heard the current 705 S2 and being a KEF fan compared them directly with a pair of KEFs in the similar price range (R3):
As you can see in the room, Hifi Studio was usually more acoustically "livelier" than mine, but therefore more representative of an average modern living room, listening distance was around 3 meters so rather diffuse field. I heard with both Eagles - Hotel California Live, Marla Glen - The Cost of Freedom and Jennifer Warnes - Bird on a Wire, all good recordings that are often used in listening tests (e.g. Marla Glen at Hifi-Selbstbau.de, Jennifer Warnes at the Harman Group) and it was switched several times in each song directly via the AB function of the amplifier, unfortunately not leveled, but the perceived loudness differences were small and I was able to reduce them further with the remote control.
Well, in this room and listening distance, as expected, the image was much more diffuse than I am used to in my more dampened room and smaller listening distances, so I mainly focused on the tonality and cleanliness of the reproduction. As expected, both sounded very clean and you could hear some fine details. Tonally, the B&W worked damn well in the room with these recordings, I don't know what I would change there. The KEF, on the other hand, sounded too dark and sometimes like "cupped hands" which I didn't know from my LS50 or the outstanding Blade 2 at KEF in England. In retrospect, however, I am annoyed that I no longer turned the KEF towards myself, the B&W is more likely to be set up relatively parallel to the wall. In any case, in this setup and room I'm pretty sure that most of the listeners would have preferred the B&W, it just sounded nice (even if it was embellished) but without being too artificial. When I got back home 15 minutes later, I immediately listened to these 3 tracks with my "B&W Voicing" on my Genelec and this "slightly sugary" pleasant feeling was there again. In summary, in the room and this (not wrong because not too far from the front wall) setup, the current B&W Voicing worked excellently for me, but this does not mean that it always has to be like that, as iny some was due to hi-fi shows and a store I also had different memories.
After I liked the B&W 705 S2 in comparison with the KEF R3, I went to the same dealer again few weeks later to compare the 705 with the inexpensive 606 with the same woofer and fairly similar measurements: 6 tracks were played again which I know well and switched directly to each one several times, in fact the differences were small and even barely detectable for some songs, the 705 had a tad more withdrawn mids and its image was larger, although that changed when we then put the 606 on the outside like on the picture.
So from curiosity I spontaneously bought the inexpensive pair 606 in order to be able to make more tests and comparisons with my KEF LS50 Anniversary. So that the comparison is fair, I set up both pairs one after the other in the identical positions, which fortunately are also the ones that both manufacturers recommend, i.e. at least 50 cm to the sides and the back wall, in my case 80 cm to the side and 50 cm to the rear. I didn't turn both of them in because they both measure each other more balanced at angles, so that looks from the listening position (unfortunately I forgot to take the photo with the KEF):
As you can see, I've also put my subwoofer away and deactivated any EQ or DSP. Enclosed listening position measurements of both pairs, each as an average of L + R as well as with psychoacoustic smoothing, since such a representation correlates more with our perception, I have increased the less efficient KEF in the plot by 3.5dB so that both can be better compared:
In my opinion, there are mainly 5 significant tonal differences that can be heard. The B&W goes much deeper in my listening room and has the -3dB point at an impressive 25 Hz, so it sounds "grown up" in the bass, like a good floorstanding speaker. The upper bass of the KEF is slightly raised in comparison to my listening room, possibly also to compensate for the missing deep bass, which also slightly changes the fundamental tone of male voices or the electronic bass, e.g. with EDM. Between 2-3 kHz you can clearly see the euphonic presence dip of the B&W mentioned by me in the first post of the thread, which makes it sound pleasant, the KEF is unfortunately a bit too powerful, which makes a good saxophone recording sound very impressive, but with some recordings can also be annoying and e.g. but was corrected with later active LS50s and Metas. In the high-frequency range you can also see the sibilant dip around 5-6kHz I mentioned at the beginning of the B&W, which takes the sharpness of the high-frequency and S-sounds, as well as a slight exaggeration over it, which gives a little more "details" and "shimmer" to a good recording.
The two dips of the B&W and the excessive presence of the KEF can also be seen well if you compare the listening position measurements with the ideal listening position curve (i.e. good loudspeakers in a good room) from Toole, with both doing well, the only major deviation is in the upper bass and partly in my setup and Walls in debt. In a few words, in my opinion, a very clever voicing is confirmed, the whole thing does not sound 100% neutral like, for example, with my Genelec, but still coherent and pleasant at the same time, so that, like the Polish tester, I would not immediately know what to change would.
I hear something kinda similar to your studio impressions in the choir portion of this video.
I also tried the B&W voicing with my Genelec speakers and actually thought I enjoyed it for a week or(clear that I really didn't when I switched back).
Nope. I've read and interpreted the Harman papers in JAES myself. You appear to be simply repeating what your read on internet forums. For starters, the ability of cea2034 measurements, analyzed through a regression formula, only explains 74% of the variation in blind listening preferences. But even at a given predicted score (again based on measurements), there is still significant variation in actual blinded preferences. In other words the measurements are somewhat predictive of how listeners will like them, but only when you properly analyze them objectively with software of via a formula, you can't simply eyeball them. So if you think you can eyeball a set of spin charts from and predict reliable predict which one will sound better under blind conditions, you are simply fooling yourself.
It's not brand tuning. It's a recording mastering engineer making decisions about eq adjustments based on their monitor speakers. If the studio is using B&W monitors and that's what the engineer is hearing, what makes you think using home speakers that have a different tonality are going to sound closer to what the studio intended? It's the Circle of Confusion theory, proposed by the Harman group.
Here are the crossovers from the B&w 802d. Not sure where you got the idea that as a rule, B&W uses cheap crossovers in all of their models.
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