Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
I’m not sure I’m the right guy for this job. With all the reviews I write for SoundStage! Ultra, I never cease to be conscious of how expensive these products are. Speaker cables that cost more than a car. Preamplification components that could put my daughter through a year of private school. Every Ultra-class component that comes through my house and my system is a reminder that I’m not rich.
Then again, I tell myself, maybe I can help temper the concept of value within these pages. Case in point: back in December of last year, I reviewed—and was absolutely smitten by—Bowers & Wilkins’s 801 D4 Signature speakers. As you can infer from that review, those speakers satisfied every aspect of my audiophile sensibilities. I could have happily lived with the 801s for ever and ever.
There were two roadblocks to purchasing the 801s as my forever speakers. First off, they’re physically large and very heavy. Every time a new speaker landed in my listening room for review, I’d have had to wrestle these big floorstanders out of the way—and it’s already somewhat crowded in here. But the larger issue was the price. And that price (US$50,000, CA$72,000, £45,000, €50,000 per pair) was way beyond my reach. Our car has clocked 160,000km, and I think the funds would be better allocated to transportation.
But still! The 801 D4 Signatures crept into my subconscious, poking and prodding me at odd times, making my mouth water, my hair stand on end. Over the review period, I spent more time listening to those speakers than to any in recent memory.
So, as I related in my editorial shortly afterward, I concocted a scheme whereby I would try to recreate the sound of the 801s by combining a pair of 805 D4 Signature standmount speakers with a pair of Bowers & Wilkins DB2D subwoofers. This combination, I posited, could get me most of the way to the sound of the 801s for around half the price. You’ll read about that pairing, and about whether my half-price-yet-full-quality scheme succeeded, shortly. But in the meantime, since I had the 805s on hand, a full review complete with measurements seemed appropriate. Here, I’ll be relating my experience with the 805s on their own, without the DB2D subwoofers.
Sporting a much more reasonable price tag (US$12,000, CA$18,000, £11,750, €13,500 per pair), the 805 D4 Signature is a speaker that I could afford. Given that it’s a standmounted monitor, and considering its manageable weight (34.3 pounds), I could easily manhandle the 805 D4 out of the way as required. The matching Bowers & Wilkins stand for the 805 adds another US$1720 (CA$2000) per pair. The stand is fairly chunky, but it doesn’t add so much weight that the combination becomes unmanageable. The stand is well built, sturdy, and attractive. Especially welcome are the predrilled holes that accommodate four Allen bolts, which firmly attach speaker to stand.
The 805 D4 Signature carries over much of the look of the larger 801. The tweeter, with its tapered tube, still rests on that luxurious Connolly leather, and the main body of the speaker is coated with the same miles-deep lacquer. Some of the 801’s gee-whiz factor is missing, though—the 805’s 6.5″ midrange-woofer is mounted directly into the cabinet of the speaker, in much the same way as the dual woofers are mounted into the 801. The 801’s 6″ midrange is mounted in a teardrop-shaped subenclosure atop the main cabinet, which is extremely cool; but hey, we’re talking less than a quarter of the price, so something has to give.
The 805 D4 Signature uses the same no-bullshit, it’s-a-real-diamond diamond-dome tweeter as the 801 D4 Signature. The tapered tube in which the tweeter is mounted isn’t just there for the cool factor. Its shape and dimensions are carefully calculated to provide resistive damping of the driver’s back wave. The midrange-woofer, however, is unique to the 805. Bowers & Wilkins describes this 6.5″ driver as a “Continuum cone bass/midrange”—it’s made from a woven cone mounted in a cast basket and fronted by a substantial rubber surround.
The 805’s cabinet is constructed from layers of bent and glued birch ply. Internally, the cabinet is heroically braced, and, combined with the cast-aluminum back plate, it’s extremely inert. The crossover is mounted to that aluminum plate.
Bowers & Wilkins specifies nominal impedance at 8 ohms and minimum impedance at 4.6 ohms. Combined with a reasonable 88dB sensitivity (2.83V/m), the 805 should be fairly easy to drive. The big, obvious difference between the 801 and the 805 is the former’s two dedicated woofers. The 801’s specified -3dB point is 15Hz, which is big-ass-subwoofer territory. Contrast that with the 805’s 42Hz. Of course, the latter number is totally reasonable for a single 6.5″ woofer that also has to perform midrange duties.
At this point, I’d like to direct you to Hans Wetzel’s review of the standard, non-Signature 805 D4, which appeared four years ago on SoundStage! Ultra. I purposely haven’t read that review, as I know Hans well, and our tastes in speakers are more alike than different; I didn’t want to accidentally absorb any of his thoughts or re-use any of his adjectives. Best if I just forge ahead blind and go back for a peek after I submit this review.
The standard 805 D4 retails for US$10,000, CA$12,000, £8750, or €10,000 per pair. The upcharge for the Signature version buys several physical improvements. The crossover is upgraded with doubled bypass capacitors, and the tweeter grille is unique to the Signature version, featuring a different perforation pattern. Internally, the aluminum spine joins to a more rigid aluminum top plate.
The Signature version also receives two exclusive finishes: Midnight Blue Metallic and California Burl Gloss. I spoke with Andy Kerr, Bowers & Wilkins’s director of product marketing and communications, and he gave me a glimpse of the process by which the Midnight Blue Metallic finish is applied. The finish is built up with 11 coats—seven base coats of paint, and four coats of lacquer. Each layer is sanded between applications by multi-axis robots. The finish is miles deep and flawless, as good as any I’ve encountered.
I was both impressed and frustrated by the 805 D4 Signature’s biwireable binding posts, which are identical to those on the 801. The finish is superb—gleaming, immaculate chrome that’s so perfectly polished it’s hard to focus your eyes on. Yes, perfectly polished—which makes it hard to get a solid grip on the knobs. I changed speaker cables a number of times, which is a reviewer’s curse, and each time I found myself irked by my inability to really tighten the posts down. Whenever I walked by my workbench I looked askance at a pair of Channellock pliers, thinking about how satisfying it would be to give those posts a good, solid torquing.
Each 805 ships in its own carton. The packaging is protective and the box clearly shows the decantation procedure, which entails flipping and re-orientation. It’s somewhat complicated, but ultimately quite easy, even for one person.
I drove the 805s exclusively with my Hegel Music Systems H30A amplifier. Speaker cables alternated between Crystal Cable Art Series Monets and Siltech Royal Single Crowns. The 805s were surprisingly unconcerned with placement. Spaced wide or narrow, toed in or pointed straight ahead, they sounded great, with very little change due to positioning.
Don’t skimp on the pâté
The 801 D4 Signature’s whomping bottom end easily supported that speaker’s incredibly detailed, crisp midrange and treble. It was a winning combination—an all-you-can-eat buffet of everything I love about musical reproduction. As I noted in my review of the 801, the bass was just perfect for my room. But what about the 805? Would the lack of bass extension make the smaller speaker sound too lean?
Only one way to find out.
As I related in an instalment of My Audiophile Neighborhood, I first set up the 805s at my neighbor Ron’s place. After several gear changes, we ended up driving the 805s with a vintage Museatex Melior amplifier. I didn’t spend much time listening to that setup, but my first impressions were extremely positive. The 805s’ bass easily filled Ron’s large main floor, sounding as balanced through the entire frequency range as the 801s had in my smaller room.
Of course, the deepest bass was completely missing—the -3dB point quoted by Bowers & Wilkins seemed quite accurate. That said, there’s not much musical information below 40Hz in most music, and the 805s cover everything north of a low E on a bass guitar. Ron was extremely happy with every aspect of the sound quality, and was just shy of devastated when the time came to take them over to my house.
There are two great mysteries of the audio world that never cease to amaze me. The first is how the hell vinyl can sound so good. It’s a stone rubbing on plastic, which is the same level of complexity as starting a fire with two sticks. Yet it sounds magnificent. A well-set-up turntable sounds as good as digital to me. Sometimes it sounds better. Putting aside the digital-versus-vinyl blather, it’s enough to focus on the fact that this ancient technology should—at best—sound like a poorly tuned AM radio station.
The second mystery is the ability of a single driver to reproduce multiple notes at the same time. I’m looking specifically at the 805’s midrange-woofer as I write this. Here we have a 6.5″ cone that’s playing music across a wide frequency range! How can this be? I know the physics behind it, but it still amazes me that this is even possible. I do have a point to make, though. The 805’s midrange-woofer has much more work to do, a much harder life to live, than the midrange driver in the 801, which is band-passed to cut out the bass frequencies. It’s the contrast between a two-way speaker and a three-way.
This was another open question I had regarding the contrast between the 801 and the 805—would the 805 retain the startlingly clear, bell-like midrange of the 801 that so captivated me? Short answer? Why yes, yes it would. So let’s start there.
From the meat of the midrange on upward, the 805s displayed an almost indistinguishable similarity to the larger 801s. I was overjoyed—and relieved. With all the music I threw at the 805s, I was presented with an open, expansive, miles-deep wraparound soundstage. I’m still listening to my reissue of Who’s Next (LP, Polydor ARHSLP019) with unending delight. On “Bargain,” Roger Daltrey’s voice epitomized the 805s’ midrange dexterity. I call that a bargain—the best I ever had! The best I ever had!
It’s a shout-out to infinity, a call to arms, a war cry. Daltrey’s voice showed its requisite growl, which is tricky enough to reproduce cleanly, but the 805s added cavernous space, a distance behind and above the speakers. This sounds precious, I know, but the 805s evoked an almost physical image of Daltrey, six feet off the ground, head back, chest lifted as he belted out those lines.
The 805s can do power, sure. Crank up the volume on rock and these two smallish speakers do a superb job of recreating a visceral concert experience. I just received the next two albums in Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s series of Van Halen reissues, pressed on SuperVinyl and cut at 45 rpm. I’ll be writing about these records in detail in my next instalment of For the Record, but here’s a quick preview. Van Halen II (Mobile Fidelity MFSL45UD1S-033) and Women and Children First (Mobile Fidelity MFSL45UD1S-034) resume the bombastic, over-the-top testosterone-fest of the band’s debut album. The MoFi reissues continue to present this Trans-Am muscle-car music with incredible realism, clarity, and dynamic snap.
Listening to “Tora! Tora!” slide into “Loss of Control” brought back memories of playing Asteroids in a dingy amusement arcade. Moving into “Take Your Whiskey Home,” with its slinky guitar line, the 805s filled the entire front of my room with Eddie’s crunching, incendiary guitar. Any thought I had about the 805s sounding lean evaporated as I just wallowed in a balanced presentation, from the bass right through the midrange.
The more I focused on the 805’s midrange, the more I came to admire what this speaker brings to music of all kinds. The 805 excels at both dynamic shading at low levels and crackling articulation at high volumes. It sounds counterintuitive, but the 805’s midrange-woofer is uncanny in its ability to highlight both the small details and the macro-overview of the music at the same time.
A note from myself as I’m currently writing this: “Everybody Wants Some!!” is playing right now, and I’m trying to concentrate on this article—but I can’t. This track is playing loud, and the spread of instruments across the front of the room is just bonkers. It’s a masterclass in musical realism from a pair of speakers sounding significantly larger than their physical size. It’s everything that makes this sport worthwhile. Now back to the review proper.
From slamming, straight-ahead rock to complex orchestration, The Photographer (LP, Music On Vinyl MOVCL005) by Philip Glass is an exercise in precision. The overlaid instrumentation gave me ample time to examine the 805s’ representation of music across the midrange and through the handoff to the high frequencies. “Act III” starts with bell-like synthesizer notes playing off against massed female vocals, and the 805s retained an appropriate sense of balance, the high frequencies just a touch more forward in the soundstage than the vocals. A little further in, staccato trumpets face off over a lowish synthesizer note. Here, the 805s gave me a crisp presentation, with the low notes reproduced perfectly in tone, although—obviously—down a bit in level. It’s easy for this track to collapse into mush—my own Aurelia XO Cerica XLs can’t quite hold it together when it’s played at realistic levels—but the 805s nailed it, reproducing the synths, horns, reeds, and God only knows what else, with clarity, depth, and realism. And, importantly, without the slightest feeling of strain—no grit, grain, edge, or any sense of distortion, no matter how high I goosed the volume.
As the 805’s tweeter is identical to the one in the 801, I could easily repeat my comments from that review, but that would be cheating, and I feel there’s an important distinction I need to dissect. The upper-midrange-to-tweeter transition doesn’t sound quite as hot on the 805 as it did on the 801. I’m not sure what the cause is here, but it feels like there’s just a tiny bit less energy at the point where the midrange hands off to the highs. Listening once again to “Space Groove II” by the King Crimson spinoff band ProjeKct Two (16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC, Discipline Global Mobile / Tidal), which I’d used to assess the 801s, I found myself re-immersed in the hallucinogenic fever-dream trails that ripped off the end of Robert Fripp’s guitar. Through the 805s, however, that guitar’s bite didn’t have as much aggression as it did through the larger speakers.
Don’t get me wrong! The 805 could never be mistaken for a laid-back speaker. It’s still up front and in your face, launching music like a Multiple Launch Rocket System, but not quite as intense, as overtly snappy, as the 801. It took me a while to figure out why the 805 sounded just slightly less forward, more relaxed and approachable, and I think it comes down to the low-end voicing. It sounded like there was a touch more energy down in the upper bass through the lower midrange than there’d been with the 801. Adrian Belew’s drums had just a little extra kick, more presence, which moved them forward in space just a small amount. To answer my first question—would the 805 sound lean without the 801’s woofers—the answer is a resounding no. And maybe that’s how Bowers & Wilkins avoided this potential pitfall.
I could hear just a small amount of low-end richness on tracks that were almost totally deficient in bass. On “Carey” from Joni Mitchell’s Blue (24/192 FLAC, Rhino Warner / Qobuz) the bass is just a rumor, not really there unless you concentrate hard. Still, what was there was up a tiny bit in level, which added a small amount of gravy.
Moving on to “This Flight Tonight,” Mitchell’s voice floated on a silky cotton-candy cloud of strummed guitar strings. I recall listening to this track through the 801s, and there was a very small amount of extra purity to the feeling of Mitchell’s right hand as it stroked down on the strings that was not present with the 805s. This may be a result of the 805’s midrange-woofer having to pull dual duty in the bass. Please be conscious, though, of the fact that I, as a reviewer, have to look for these kinds of differences. After listening through and writing this observation, I put the laptop down and restarted this track. Holy hell—the 805s have an astonishingly pure midrange. Clear, expressive, bell-like. But now I’m just repeating myself, and I think you’ve got the idea.
At the bottom, down low, the 805s were totally satisfactory. Standing alone, no subwoofer, the 805s overperformed, cranking out juicy, tight bass down to their limits. There was that slight amount of richness, a bit of a lift down low, which, as noted, is a smart move on the part of Bowers & Wilkins. Consider this: if the 805’s bass response was ruler-flat, the midrange and top end would likely sound a bit lean and bitey. Still, I heard no flab or overhang in the 805s’ bottom end.
As Joni Mitchell rolled off the edge, it seemed proper to switch over to Leonard Cohen, another Canadian. I just love it when Cohen gets dark, and there’s no better example than “The Future,” from the album of the same name (24/44.1 FLAC, Columbia-Legacy / Qobuz). This is a song about the triumph of fascism, the defeat of hope, and beauty being stomped under a red-laced pair of black Doc Martens. Yet it’s also a warning about what happens when we give in to authoritarianism, and I’ll take it as such.
There’s not a huge amount of bass in “The Future,” but it’s integral to the track. That low-end growl drives the song and adds menace, and the 805s got it right. Their presentation was tuneful and appropriate, sounding larger than they had any right to. Obviously, the extreme low end is totally missing, but considering their size, the 805s are overachievers in the bass.
Young lust
I’ve said many times that the 801 D4 Signature blew my skirt up. I’ll be honest now: moving straight into the review of the 805 D4 Signature was in no small part an attempt to keep that sound in my life for a while longer. I’ve couched this review as an investigative exercise to examine the idea of value within the Bowers & Wilkins lineup, but in a small, sad way, I was the boyfriend whose first girlfriend had just moved overseas. The 805 was a rebound relationship.
Here’s where I stop apologizing. My time with the 805 D4 Signatures proved that sometimes rebounds do work. Despite their smaller size and reduced driver complement, the 805s delivered musical experiences that never stopped taking my breath away. Like its big brother, the 805 D4 Signature isn’t a speaker for the faint of heart. Its tonal balance isn’t even close to neutral—its rise in the upper midrange through the treble likely won’t sit well with listeners who are looking for a laid-back speaker, that’s for sure. Then again, prior to the arrival of the 805 and the 801 before it, I’d have told you that a rising upper midrange and treble just isn’t my thing.
The Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature is most certainly my thing. I strongly suggest you seek out a pair and audition them. I’d bet good money they’ll be your thing too.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
Associated Equipment
- Digital sources: Logitech Squeezebox Touch, Meitner Audio MA3
- Analog sources: VPI Prime Signature and European Audio Team Fortissimo S turntables; European Audio Team Jo N°8, Goldring Ethos SE, and DS Audio DS 003 cartridges
- Phono preamplifiers: Aqvox Phono 2 CI, Hegel Music Systems V10, EMM Labs DS-EQ1, Meitner Audio DS-EQ2, Mola Mola Lupe
- Preamplifiers: Hegel Music Systems P30A, Meitner Audio PRE, Simaudio Moon Evolution 740P
- Power amplifiers: Hegel Music Systems H30A, Balanced Audio Technology REX 300
- Integrated amplifiers: Hegel Music Systems H120, Eico HF-81
- Speakers: Focus Audio FP60 BE, Aurelia XO Cerica XL, Totem Acoustic Sky Tower, Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature
- Subwoofers: Bowers & Wilkins DB2D (2)
- Speaker cables: Siltech Royal Single Crown, Audience Au24 SX, Nordost Tyr 2, Crystal Cable Art Series Monet
- Interconnects: Siltech Royal Single Crown, Audience Au24 SX, Furutech Ag-16, Nordost Tyr 2, Crystal Cable Diamond Series 2
- Power cords: Siltech Royal Single Crown, Audience FrontRow, Nordost Vishnu
- Power conditioner: Quantum QBase QB8 Mk II
- Accessories: Little Fwend tonearm lift, VPI Cyclone record-cleaning machine
Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature loudspeaker
Price: US$12,000, CA$18,000, £11,750, €13,500 per pair
Warranty: Five years, parts and labor
B&W Group, Ltd.
Dale Road, Worthing
West Sussex BN11 2BH
England, UK
Phone: +44 (0)1903-221-800
Bowers & Wilkins North America
5541 Fermi Ct. N.
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Phone: 1-800-370-3740
Website: www.bowerswilkins.com
