Art's comments show nothing about the intrinsic capabilities of the diamond tweeter to cross over below 2kHz.
It is the ultimate goal of a speaker or any piece of audio gear to reproduce the recording faithfully and to do so requires that certain technical standards are met. The first of which is a linear frequency response and the B&Ws fail this by a country mile.
Is a huge pitfall.
For example is what you should be aiming for.
that's not a claim it is a fact! They don't sound like snake oil,they do simply sound bad and not likely to make any good music for you...however if you wish you can stare at the square wave response while listening 😀
All I am saying is that, try to do a blind test with other equipment and see which one you pick for yourself!
ok..then listen it for yourself and tell me if you like it! My guess is that it will give you a nice headache like it did to me!
Measurements aren't a guarantee of good sound...look at B&Ws...accordingly to you and many others they are crap because they measure crap...however..they are used in recording studios and are reviewed and considered among the best speakers out there.
Classe in the other end, do measure good...but so did amplifiers from the 80s with lots of feedback...but they do sound real crap....explain that!
Measurements matters up to a certain point, what matters the most in the end is what you ear tells you.
Again, please explain why trustful ears at recording studio choose what you call a failed design, simply because the graph doesn't look as pretty as you think it should.
I agree with you on the fact that it would have been even nicer if the speaker sounded like 800 plus had the response of the revel, nevertheless it doesn't, but yet Art told you that it is ahead of a revel.
I think you are very skilled and technical and you go way beyond my knowledge on speakers and probably of many other users here, but sometime you got to get out of that academic suit and take more a more pragmatic approach and listen to things and also but especially, decide for yourself following what your ears tell you.
On the contrary measurements are an excellent guarantee of good sound unless one is only looking at one specific measurement and are then assuming that it explains everything.
Just because someone is a recording engineer doesn't mean that they are exempt from audiophoolery, quite the contrary in fact, lots of studio monitors measure quite poorly indeed. Lots don't, but lots do, it's just the same boat as 'audiophile' stuff.
I think it's also worth pointing out that the vast majority of recording studios do NOT use B&W loudspeakers only a tiny minority do.
Well to you they sounded crap and that really isn't saying anything. Lots of people think Classe sound great! The measurements provided of the other Classe amplifier showed a well designed amplifier that would sound absolutely fine.
Art didn't tell me anything, Art said that in his opinion that the 800s sound nicer to him in his room. This doesn't mean that the 800s are a better loudspeaker, it just means that they suit his tastes better. I am not talking about suiting someone's tastes, I am talking about having a loudspeaker that reproduces what's on the recording accurately.
The B&W 800D measures terribly, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that they would hurt my ears. That horrible peaking at 3.5kHz will make them sound forward and the wide-narrow-wide dispersion profile (from the midrange being crossed over way too high to the tweeter), will also give the speakers a forward sounding nature, which will again make them sound far too forward. Some people like this, recording engineers are known for liking this, which is why the Yamaha NS-10 is so popular, because of its mid-forward balance. It isn't natural but it helps to push detail forwards, which is important for recording engineers and some people find this exciting.
I do follow what my ears tell me. I have designed many different types of loudspeakers and know precisely what sounds great and what doesn't. What sounds great are loudspeakers with a flat frequency response, even off axis response, a slightly downward tilted balance and low distortion. The even off axis response can be had by crossing mids to tweeters low, or by arranging a directivity match between the mids and a suitable tweeter. If you deviate away from this then you are moving away from accurate and an all day listenability.
They can measure as good as any other equipment, and they actually measure almost alike other equipment, but do they all sound the same? quite the contrary!
Measurements are not everything on audio. I do think they are important, but again I have designed circuits in the past that measure beautify but man...did they sound bad!?...in the other end I have designed circuit with different solutions that didn't measure as good, but they provided a much better sound, and in a blind test, a wide sample of people choose the latter over the most performing measuring-wise.
I don't know about 805N but i heard the 805S once and i do agree they have sound which can be attractive to some people but personally i find them too aggressive,boomy and plasticky sounding.They do image well.
can you be more specific as to what model? Marantz makes several models and so does Karan.
Watch out... here comes captain obvious.
The crossover is configured as it is because the midrange is astounding and they want it to integrate as softly with the tweeter as possible. The downsides are known by all:
- Loss of absolute detail
- Unique 'signature sound' (i.e. non-flat on frequency...)
- which leads to... sounds terrible with the wrong recordings.
It's the last one that really puts me off these as a high end speaker.
The advantage on the other hand is simple, in the right environment (i.e. large enough room with correct conditions and larger than usual listening distances) the sense of sound stage is immense and the sound comes into it's own. Ever listened to frank sinatra on these in a big enough room? sounds amazing. switch to something like in flames and you'll want to take a hammer to them, it's actually painful to listen to... well, that was my experience of the 800 series anyway.
The idea of 3rd order low pass (woofer) 2nd order high pass, 1st order low (midrange) and 1st order high pass (tweeter) (all electrical) is a topology that has been rolled-down across the 3-way range for B&W AFAIK. They also keep all the drivers in phase in connection. When I customised a B&W 3-way I changed the electical crossovers between the mid and tweeter to 2nd order electrical (midrange) and 3rd order electrical (tweeter) and inverted the MID.
The result was a more 'cohesive' sound, the FR was much flatter, and sound staging locked in at a closer listening distance.
I didn't feel like it lost any of the magic, but it DID allow me to listen to those recordings (biffy clyro, in flames) that were painful to listen to before.
The only down-side was the extra $$$ for a large high-quality tweeter cap, for those that love cap-wars and snake oil, I ended up replacing mundorf supremes with audyn plus... let the flame war begin 😉
The crossover is configured as it is because the midrange is astounding and they want it to integrate as softly with the tweeter as possible. The downsides are known by all:
- Loss of absolute detail
- Unique 'signature sound' (i.e. non-flat on frequency...)
- which leads to... sounds terrible with the wrong recordings.
It's the last one that really puts me off these as a high end speaker.
The advantage on the other hand is simple, in the right environment (i.e. large enough room with correct conditions and larger than usual listening distances) the sense of sound stage is immense and the sound comes into it's own. Ever listened to frank sinatra on these in a big enough room? sounds amazing. switch to something like in flames and you'll want to take a hammer to them, it's actually painful to listen to... well, that was my experience of the 800 series anyway.
The idea of 3rd order low pass (woofer) 2nd order high pass, 1st order low (midrange) and 1st order high pass (tweeter) (all electrical) is a topology that has been rolled-down across the 3-way range for B&W AFAIK. They also keep all the drivers in phase in connection. When I customised a B&W 3-way I changed the electical crossovers between the mid and tweeter to 2nd order electrical (midrange) and 3rd order electrical (tweeter) and inverted the MID.
The result was a more 'cohesive' sound, the FR was much flatter, and sound staging locked in at a closer listening distance.
I didn't feel like it lost any of the magic, but it DID allow me to listen to those recordings (biffy clyro, in flames) that were painful to listen to before.
The only down-side was the extra $$$ for a large high-quality tweeter cap, for those that love cap-wars and snake oil, I ended up replacing mundorf supremes with audyn plus... let the flame war begin 😉
Interesting! what music do you use for your tests? What is "biffy clyro, in flames" ?
Rock and metal bands respectively, both of which I enjoy, along with things like "...and justice for all" by metallica, these are the less well produced albums that need a tightly balanced system to sound good. If something isn't right it gets painful to listen to.
Testing for me is 3-stage, measurements, well produced then badly produced.
My examples of well produced tracks includes madonna, michael jackson, dire straits, frank sinatra and the beatles, (ray of light, thriller, brothers in arms, best of, and white album respectively)
Neither of 800D, 801D and 803D has 1st order electrical LP on midrange.
What range of 3 way B&W speakers are you talking about?
On April Fool's Day I'm gonna publish the specs of new caps I have been
working on for the last 3 centuries and these will reveal that violins on every
recording are actually violas and so on. Stay tuned for Lojzek's bs caps.
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Am I saying right by saying that you don't believe that capacitors on audio circuit have a large impact on sound quality?
Am I also assuming right by saying that you don't believe on the influence of cables on the audio reproduction either?
Do you listen to those in digital or analog format in your test?
On your analog rig, what cartridge do you have? What phono stage do you use? You have listed a digital room corrector as a phono, maybe I misunderstood. Could you detail more?
Measure terribly?
You're a very harsh judge because they measure very well for a pair of full range 3-way speakers. See my own measurements earlier in the thread and you'll see that the response is very flat when slightly off and below the tweeter axis, which is the intended listening axis. The slight resonance at 3.5kHz is barely audible nor measurable on that axis.
You're making the mistake that many people make, which is to 'listen' to a set of measurements. As an owner of 800 diamonds I can assure you that they're far from 'forward' sounding, and if anything they err on the side of politeness, which is exactly what you would expect with a slightly falling power response in the presence region.