Bowers and Wilkerson B&W 802 D3: an impolite Brit?

"10-14-15: Wim1983
It seem I got a pair of Wharfedale Jade 3, that sound problem exactly what you all have discussed here. Bright, sibilant, difficult gear matching, room and placement adjustment, and very unforgiving in presenting music. Hmm, is this what the high end sound to begin with? That's a whole lot of time and money need to spend on these B&W speakers I believe, nevertheless the craftsmanship is amazing. High end speakers is designed for rich people with lots of gold and time to furthermore investment in fine tuning sound, and expand their imaginations, how sad! I need to get rid of my Jade 3, though it's not so easy..."

Please don't take this the wrong way because I'm not trying to be mean or negative in any way. But if you want to get into this hobby and be successful, you need to take responsibility for your own actions. No one put a gun to your head and forced you to buy the speakers you don't like. There's a good reason why some of us sound like a broken record and insist you need to demo everything before you buy it. Audio is a very hands on activity. If you want good sound, it takes some work. And don't think I know better and am trying to lecture you. I know from experience. I've made more costly, jackass mistakes than any audiophile I know.

"Bright, sibilant, difficult gear matching, room and placement adjustment, and very unforgiving in presenting music. Hmm, is this what the high end sound to begin with?"

Not every speaker sounds like a B&W or the Jade 3's you just bought.

"Jkalman, the sibilance is a phase distortion issue & it won't go away with toe-in (like Zd542 wrote). I bet that whatever you try you will not be able to get rid of it. It's inherent in the speaker design & the 4th order x-over. The boomy bass is due to the poor port design. B&W cannot get this right & didn't get it right even in my DM604S2 nor in my friend's 803D. Port design is hard to start with - you have to start & stop a slug of air at a moment's notice given the fact that the bass from the port is 180 degrees out-of-phase with the bass cone driver. If you don't design this correctly, you get bass overhang or what you call boomy bass - the previous bass notes hung around too long & interfere with the next bass notes (from the next bit of music) & smear it.
Play some tracks from Diana Krall's Love Scenes - sibilance city if you will. Let us know at point in time you walked out of the room!"

Hello Bombaywalla,

My understanding is that they don't use a 4th order crossover in the 803 D3s (and haven't in their high end diamond speakers for some time). They use a first order crossover.

In any case, playing around with the room placement and toe-in some more eliminated the issues I was having with the sound. I never said there was problems in the bass frequencies. It was a bit of booming in the mid-range, mostly in the lower register of voices, which don't come close to the bass ranges. The excessive sibilance was from having the tweeters pointed in too much. Sibilance is natural in the human voice, especially in the female voice. Finding the point at which it sounds natural is the goal, not eliminating it completely.

Actually, acoustically speaking, the smearing of notes will happen more because you haver the speaker to close to a wall than anything else. When there is not enough time delay between the direct sound from the speakers and the sound from the first point reflections, then the sounds become smeared, otherwise it becomes ambience. Though, too much ambience can color the sound with the character of the room, and that isn't good either (thus, the need to properly treat first reflection points). The port on the back shouldn't be an issue unless you are already making the mistake of bad speaker placement.

The other issue is placing the speaker too far into the room, at which point locality of sound becomes too diffuse. That is problematic as well.

BTW, I bought them, and it looks like I will be the first person in the USA, or possibly the world to own a pair of the 803 D3s! :D

@Zd542: I agree with you, but that's the situation happen, especially come to so called high end sound, there is no high end sound that can satisfy every customers so to speak, rich for the rich, poor for the poor and most probably you will just need mid for the mid. Mastering of music in future and art of the ancient voice could be more well worth than high end gears.

Distortion? No. Sibilance? No. Boomy? No. What kind of crap setups did you audition a speaker like B&W's 800 series in? I've owned Maggie's to Wilson's and have had terrific results with all of them...even though I could always find some moron here who had no clue and would blame the speaker for their scrap cables or gear! Up through the D2's there is exquisite musicality. As for the D3's? I have to audition them, although I am skeptical myself based on the drastically increased bass response...smacks of home theatre!!

remember the Louis Lipnik review of the B&W 801 in Stereophile many years back?
He described them as the audio end of the road. The disclaimer was that if you fed them less-than-pristine sound, then you got poor results due to their accuracy- since they were originally used as studio monitors.
I had a pair of 801's, and the treble was a bit "hashy" and forward. So were Watt-Puppies at the time. along with Thiels, and several other high-end designs. Guess
what? when CD's started sounding better, so did my speakers. the last time i heard them, my friend who i sold them to had Pass Aleph amplifiers (1.2 mono blocks). the speakers now sounded smooth and relaxed, especially listening to Blue Note jazz recordings. I had NEVER heard them sound like that before. Could it be that what Louis L. stated in his review was the key to understanding the sound they were making?
B&W makes GREAT speakers and they try to meet a lot of budget levels.
If the newest versions are set up with the proper electronics in a decent room
they should sound darn good. How many dealers are up to the task of controlling these important variables? If you can get an in-home audition, that's the place to start, especially if you're interested in buying their premier line of speakers.
And, if you don't like them, fine! But I don't think that you're going to love something else better if they are also extremely transparent and revealing. It take an OPEN mind and a lot of comparative listening experience to determine if it's the speakers (even though they are the most important component overall), or something else that's screwing up the sound.