B&w 803d

Anyone heard the B&W 803Ds in action? I have an opportunity to try them in my system but I fear the room is too small for them. If they work fairly close to the wall [away from the corners], they may be fine. I have an Opus 21 CD player, two Classe CAM350 monoblocks, Heimdall speaker cables & balanced i/cs, Dalkey Audio Cables silver mains cables & my speakers are Ruark Crusader 2. The speakers are around [counts on fingers] 15 years on the go and they sound less dynamic than newer speakers but this is my first attempt to see if there is a better speaker than the Crusaders. I thought about trying a pair of Hyperion HPS 938 but my dealer said they are more suited to valves amps. I like valve amps but I don't want to go down that route this time as I am trying to reduce the number of boxes and the size of the rack in my music room. I will post my findings here but if anyone has any contribution/suggestion to make - feel free to do so.

 

Hi Rocker and welcome to ZG,

AFAIK B&W use Classe electronics to voice their speakers, so I assume they're a natural fit. Allegedly very "thirsty" speakers, the 8XXD series, but your monoblocks should have more than enough grunt to deal with them. I'm not familiar with the Ruarks you mention and have no idea what kind of "sound" you like (your user name implies you like rock music?!). I have been extremely impressed with Coincident speakers, Amphion (which I own and treasure!) and I love Sonus faber too (although they leave some people cold). The Anthony Gallo Ref 3 might be worth a look too. The PMC OB1+ is an impressive sounding speaker and I've only heard good things about the Hyperions that you mention (though I have never heard them). One oft forgotten speaker is the Mordaunt Short Performance 6. I'd LOVE to audition them at some point, but there are so few dealers around....

To be honest, I'd be more concerned about the lack of a pre-amp in your system (Classe make some particularly gorgeous examples. I WANT A CP-500!) and a turntable too of course!

Indicentally, if you're looking to reduce the number of boxes, why are you buying a large floorstander like the 803? If you are considering a "super integrated" to reduce the box count, the Pathos INPOL2, Accuphase E550/E408 and BAT VK300x SE would high on my list of audition candidates (in the £4-5k ballpark).

Rgds,
DT

 

i Have the standard N803 and the 803d should work close to a side wall but not in a corner.
I use them in a 10ftx14ft room (firing across the 10ft side) but without room correction they are a bit "boomy" but i'm limited to speaker position.
I power them via a Lyngdorg TDA2200 (again to reduce the number of boxes due to room size constraints) and they sound just fine to my ears.
Not heard the 803d but the diamond tweeter on the 803d should be a bit smoother and better integrated (i think they also tweaked the mid range on the 803d as well) . well worth a demo tho.
cant comment on the other speakers you mention.

 

Thanks guys for the comments.

So far I have taken out my rack and replaced it with a wall shelf that the Opus 21 is sitting on. The monoblocks are on the floor immediately beneath the wall shelf. This is about as minimilist and neat as I can envisage, it certainly is a lot less room dominating than the old rack and a lot less cables!!! The built-in volume control on the Opus 21 suits me fine, the Ruarks are floorstanders circa 1 metre high, I know the 803Ds are larger - I hope they work when placed close to where the Ruarks are. If so everything will be fine. My ultimate aim is to put together a CD only system that will last me at least ten years without major upgrades. The speakers are the last link in that puzzle. So far so good.

Oh my login name Rocker, it is in tribute to the late Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, the Rocker.

My music tastes are wide and varied [like the Irish weather], trad Irish, Country, Country Rock such as The Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rock [AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith, ZZ Tops etc.], Piano [I love Chopin], Rory Gallagher, and misc others such as Simon & Garfunkel, Air, Dire Straits, The Undertones, Status Quo, Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond etc........

 

The 803Ds are being delivered and setup in my music room this Thursday. Should have a handle on the sound by early next week - if I like them and they 'fit' the room, they will be kept. I will post a comment or two about them here sometime next week.

 

First impressions are that the speakers are large. Large as in making the Ruarks look quite tiny. The good news is that the dealer set them up fairly close to where the Ruarks were so there is not a major nett room loss.

They were supplied with finite element Ceraballs fitted instead of spikes. The advantage is that small positional movements of the speaker is easy enough, problem is that I tried Ceraballs under the Ruarks and the sound lost some definition. Our music room is carpeted, this will not be changed in the immediate future so a set of spikes was couriered down.

A hi-fi friend 'volunteered' to call to help me install the spikes. We marked the floor, installed the spikes, ensured the speakers were vertical and sat down for a listen. Truly it was like listening to a different pair of speakers [compared to the Ceraballed speakers!]. It only took about ten seconds to decide the speakers were being kept. Nothing to do with the effort involved in moving them, they just sounded so solid and good. They can play loud without sounding loud, an apparent contradiciton but clearly audible. Piano sounds closer to a real instrument than I ever heard in our music room. Acoustic guitar when miked properly has a resonance [sadly missing from a guitar that is amplified by an undersaddle pickup] and a quality that is scarily real. I play guitar [poorly] but my chords sound very close to the stereo now, there was always a difference until the 803Ds arrived. Electric guitar to me is AC/DC and James Burton. The impact of the AC/DC chords is shockingly real. James Burton who played with Rick Nelson and Elvis, plays a Telecaster with [presumably] a hybrid picking style, this to me is what a Telecaster sounds like. Vocals are very good, I need only play a track from The Calling by Mary Chapin Carpenter to appreciate what the system can do.

Stereo imagery is not of the point source of smaller speakers, rather it is larger and more lifelike with a freedom from the speaker boxes and good depth [if on the disk].

Satisfied? You bet. It has taken a while and a lot of reading and thinking but I am very happy with my system now. I hope not to upgrade anything for about the next ten years, I don't want to go through all that again......

 

The 800d's are good!

 

wait until they are fully run in then update your comments.
b&W's are notorious for a long run in period.. mine took 100's of hours to settle in before giving their best