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Bowers & Wilkins 607 S2 Anniversary Edition Review

KarVi71

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Yeah, yeah, sure sure. But how do I say it in Norwegian and Danish?
"Schadenfreude" would translate directly to "Skadefryd" in Danish, which is a real word that is commonly used in Denmark.

If I were to translate it to english, the direct translation would be something like "Harm-joy". The joy of seing something or someone you dont like, having bad luck or have bad experiences.

Its not really a positive thing to feel, but I guess most peoble experience the emotion now and then.
 

danielkt

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I attended a speaker demo in the local hifi shop, where the listeners were asked to compare these B&W's and a set of Dali Oberon 1's.

After which we could fill out a questionaire as to which speaker we preferred.

The comparison was with many different music types, and at various listening levels. They even took requests :)
While not exactly scientific in nature, we did compare the speakers with the same music, driven by the same amp, while attempting to hit the same volume on each.

At this event I found the B&W's to be revealing, but also "sharp", and a little bit "thin" to their sound.
The Dali's were also revealing, but much more pleasant with more "body". Much more balanced, I thought.

The event was actually quite entertaining, and there was a lot of discussion about music and music genres.

A few days later I visited the shop to learn the results of the questionaires. To my surprise about 30% of the listeners liked the B&W's the most.
The Dali's won by a large %, but I was very surprised that so many preferred the B&W's. I did not like these B&W's very much.

Just goes to show that tastes are really very different :)

Yes, i think they make it very bright is on purpose. And maybe based on their market research, for this price segment this type of sound will be sold more.

Also, maybe because their research show most people in this segment listen with off axis. So to compensate it, they make it more bright. I remember watched one designer said this in interview.

I myself listen & place speaker off axis.
 

Rockfella

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What a let down
 

Koeitje

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@amirm I think if you are going to call out a speaker's country of manufacture (China), you should do it for all speakers you review, including all the Revels. Otherwise you could be accused of possible bias... ;)

We need to have a few more B&Ws reviewed to see if this HF "zing" is indeed part of their deliberate "house sound". I have a pair of their larger and older 602 S2s (Made in the UK before the Sound United buyout) here and they are very well behaved in the HF.
It is part of their house sound. Stereophile reviews them a lot. This is what $22000 a pair buys you from B&W
616BW802fig3.jpg


My brother has those old 603 S3's, which aren't that bad. Wouldn't call them great loudspeakers, but far better than the garbage they produce these days.
 

respice finem

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Yes, i think they make it very bright is on purpose... ...maybe because their research show most people in this segment listen with off axis. So to compensate it, they make it more bright... I myself listen & place speaker off axis.
This might be, but then it's hardly proper Hi-Fi speaker design. One might think they're catering to aging "once B&W always B&W" buyers (treble hearing deteriorates with age), but this, in 2021, seriously? A Hi-Fi speaker is not a hearing aid. BTW, hearing off axis in an untreated room means more chaotic reflexions, which is quickly tiring, at least for me.
 
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tomtrp

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Not surprised at all. These speakers are so bright that you can quickly tell after a few subjective listening (and my ears start to feel a bit of pain actually)and the brightness is very well catched by the measurements.But a fraction of people just prefer or think they prefer bright speakers (cause they don't have a chance to listen to well engineered science based speakers) . The phenomenon though, may contribute to things like hearing loss or just personal preference.
 

tktran303

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Yes, i think they make it very bright is on purpose. And maybe based on their market research, for this price segment this type of sound will be sold more.

Also, maybe because their research show most people in this segment listen with off axis. So to compensate it, they make it more bright.

A few of us on this forum could re-do the crossover for a more honest or neutral sound, that measures better on the spinorama. After all, the drive units are good quality units and the cabinet build is decent.

But whatever benefits, real or perceived, of the first order crossover would be gone, and it would lose whatever “magic” or appeal that draws people to buy it and enjoy it in the first place.
 
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skyfly

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After seeing this B&W review, I don't think JBL 4319 measured poorly. I wish JBL brings it back to the market. The woofer in 4319 had fairly low harmonic distortion.
 

wwenze

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I wonder does the higher treble help to counteract table or floor boundary gain.
 

DSJR

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In fairness to ATC, the 3 ways I've heard from them have been quite nice. The two ways... not so much.

The SCM11 isn't upper mid forward like the dearer and older model 19's and more conventional looking 20SL's, but we/I've been here before...

Thirty years ago now, we had a loan pair of N805's to try. They were used on top of meter bridges in pro circles with the engineer on axis with the bass-mid driver and this seemed to work well. Set up domestically on 20" stands, as soon as you stood up, the highs from the tweeter seemed to 'detach' from the midrange and float etherially above - very disconcerting. I used to like the CDM series but again, the tweeter was definitely 'there' but heard on axis, never unpleasant.

I agree with comments regarding later models as the later diamond tweeters have to make their presence felt as well. There just seems to be a part of the market ripe for this kind of acidic reproduction, although most domestic grade PMC's are most often used off axis with the speakers pointing straight ahead.

The way my ears are now, I *need* the lower kHz region to be as 'flat' as possible, not sucked out.
 
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Duckeenie

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I would actually be ok with that dip in the presence region as I can't tolerate a flat response in that area. I would have reservations about those elevated highs though.
 

ezra_s

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A while ago before I came here I found out about B&W and how it was a classic brand which had glory days in the past, but many people were nowadays saying their new stuff was not as good as the old by far. Thanks to amirm we can now see that might be the case. Another great review, and great video!
 

respice finem

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Probably their simplified crossovers are part of the problem, but this is a part of their "philosophy", as is not using waveguides.
That said, for me, in this day and age, active speakers are the bees knees anyway.
 

Bear123

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I have these speakers :facepalm: At least they look beautiful haha. Was going to get these or Genelec for my desktop setup... :p oh well. We make with what we have!
Thanks to B&W's excellent reputation with audiophiles, you should be able to sell them rather easily. No sense sticking with a bad speaker if you don't have to!
 

Mnyb

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Your brain interpolates and error corrects for the speakers and their deficiencies. Then that sound becomes normalized and other speakers, like you said, sound a bit wrong.

Exactly the same thing happens with the listening space. Our brains listen through the room/space after a short time. If I was to play you a recording over speakers in my listening room, you'd pick it apart as too much reverb/echo, but that is normal to me. I don't hear it unless I play such a recording over headphones in a different space. It is immediately recognisable as my listening room, wherever I play it.

It's why single speaker in a system demos and comparisons that are not instantaneous (A-B) are utterly useless.
#112 Exactly. SOT: Another interesting effect: If you are used to your speakers and room and then use headphones, your brain will miss what it is acquainted to from the room, provoking you to turn up the volume of your headphones.

Noticed this effect but the other way around . I replaced my computer and relocated my headphone rig to the computer added an usb DAC and then started use eq for the phones , meaning the novelty of a new pc and DAC and headphone eq has kept my listening to most my music trough headphones for a month ! I’m normally a speaker guy.

Then I got the time and sat down at my usual spot with my normal hifi . It sounded sh*te :D can you say muddy midbass hollow mids etc .

Surely being able to change listening situations speakers rooms headphones etc regularly can give you perspective to hear stuff normally masked by this “brain burn in”.

“Normal” audiophiles that has not collected the best of hifi since decades and stashed in your home.
Are serial offenders you have one hifi system and gets used to that.
 

respice finem

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#136: If you get used to headphones it's often hard to return to speakers. This is not necessarily their fault, it's the room's fault. IMHO if you have a "hopeless" room you cannot "treat", you're better of with good headphones any day.
Any money you put in speakers will not remove the "sins" of the room, and sometimes even room correction can only help so much.
I know this, having lived 20 years in an east block "citizen box"...
 

windwolf447

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Thank you @amirm for the review!
I do wanna share some more insight about their design,
I am a transducer R&D engineer working in the UK (not for B&W),
Long ago I once applied to an R&D position in B&W and went through a very long and technically challenging, multiple-stage interview.
Through the discussions in the interview, it is no doubt that they are very competent in driver design and did a lot of in-depth acoustic research all these years. I was even asked to program a simplified time-domain model in Matlab for describing harmonic distortions in the motor as one of the many tasks. However, I noticed the measurements of their products I found online are surprisingly weird. I questioned this in the final interview, they didn't answer me why they design it like this but just vaguely saying that they don't value the flatness of the response as much as their competitors, and more of the tuning is based on subjective listening.

I suspect it is either because their listening panel has an interesting sound preference, or they have some psycho-acoustic theory which I don't know backing up their funny looking system response, or its purely a marketing thing (make the distinctive B&W sound in the demo room to attract customers to sell more.)
 
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