This is a review and detailed measurements of the B&W 805S Bookshelf speaker. It is on kind loan from a member. The 805S is discontinued but seems to draw on the same principals of their speakers so makes for a good test. Looks like the original cost was US $2,500.
Despite being bookshelf speakers, the 805S is heavy and fancy looking to be sure:
Everything is curved which likely adds to the cost of manufacturing. Styling is all B&W and attractive.
The back side is designed for bi-amping/bi-wiring and came with a set of wire jumpers which is a bit unusual:
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used 1000+ measurement points which is higher than my normal for bookshelf speakers. This was good enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.
Temperature was 71 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. The main grill was removed.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
We seem to enjoy smooth and flat response to 1 kHz and then hell breaks loose for a while. Directivity is shot at 1 kHz and on-axis remains poor to 3 kHz. Even beyond we have somewhat uneven response with some peaking above 7 kHz which may make the direct sound too bright.
Looking at the driver responses gives us a clue as to the underlying problem:
I wonder why the crossover frequency was picked to be so high (4 kHz). It might be that the small enclosure around it is too small to allow lower frequency response. Touching the tube behind it while playing music, it sure resonated well as if it was an alternate driver! This actually caused problems for the Klippel system's field separation. It confused the that with the room reflection and caused significant error. I adjusted the measurement parameters and fixed it but clearly this speaker has problem in this mid region. It is like two speakers stacked on top of each other -- one for woofer and port, and another for tweeter.
Back to our spinorma measurements, here is our early reflections:
Blending of the reflections and direct axis smoothens the response some:
Had to know where to draw the trend line visually. As shown it will likely sound recessed in mids but slightly emphasized lows and highs which is supposed to be good in a showroom.
Distortion in bass was kept in check which was nice:
Impedance graph shows a resonance around 1 kHz:
Beamwidth is usually prescriptive but I think in this case it makes things look too good:
The -6 dB line in red is quite good and smooth. But then the drop off to -12 dB (pink) is quite uneven. We can see this better in our traditional contour graph:
Vertical directivity narrows in the problem area so best to make sure the speaker stand places the tweeter at your ear height:
Speaker Listening Tests
The instant, "out of box" impression was, "this is not bad...." Ten seconds later though you realize there is too much highs although they seemed to be quite clean. With female vocals, the voices were as if they were coming through a mask. There was a low frequency overtone that shrouded them.
A bit of EQ made a big difference:
The boost in the 1 to 3 kHz brought out vocals and now made them be center stage as they should be. A/B test showed that even male vocals were suffering without this correction.
There was still too much highs but that is easy to fix to taste.
Dynamic capability was quite good. Yes, I could get them to bottom out but otherwise, they could play very loud. I put in a high pass filter at 35 Hz which fixed the bottoming out but then subjectively there was too little bass so I left it off in the above settings. The 805S definitely plays louder and cleaner than your typical budget bookshelf. Its larger enclosure definitely helps with that.
Conclusions
A veteran high-end audio dealer once told me that the only two brands of speakers worth selling were Martin Logan and B&W. Both would draw customers to your door rather than you looking for them. The iconic look of the B&W shows why that is the case. Design wise though, this is a clearly flawed execution. Who would wish to have the frequencies in 1 to 4 kHz screwed up and recessed in their speakers??? While not so obvious when you just listen to them, correct them with EQ and you don't want to listen to them without it.
There is a feeling of quality to the speaker that saved it from getting a "headless panther" rating. Bass and dynamic performance is quite good. And the highest -- despite being excessive -- seemed clean.
Personally I would want a speaker to be much more perfect than this so can't recommend the B&W 805S.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Picked a few ripe sunflowers couple of weeks ago. Left them on the porch to dry but that was not doing the job as it doesn't get much sun there. So I decided to bring them inside, pull the seeds and dry them individually. Check out this "mammoth" sunflower:
I put my hand in there for scale. It is probably 16 inches across if not more. The birds had helped themselves to portion of it on top as you see (happy to share the harvest with the little fellows). After pulling all the ripe seeds (not an easy job), here is how much I had:
They have such a sweet flavor and soft texture at this stage which is to die for. I had saved the seeds for this plan years ago and was so happy to see them still viable. They grew to 10+ feet with little water and tough soil at the end of our garden. Nothing screams "garden" more than sunflowers.
That was the highlight of the day. Couldn't enjoy it for long as our septic tank overflowed early once again and we are without facilities until Thursday when we get it pumped.
Using our camper van for toilet. Depressing to say the least as I can't process any more produce either without the ability to wash things indoor. If you want to make me happy, depositing a few coins in my account would certainly help: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Despite being bookshelf speakers, the 805S is heavy and fancy looking to be sure:
Everything is curved which likely adds to the cost of manufacturing. Styling is all B&W and attractive.
The back side is designed for bi-amping/bi-wiring and came with a set of wire jumpers which is a bit unusual:
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used 1000+ measurement points which is higher than my normal for bookshelf speakers. This was good enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.
Temperature was 71 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. The main grill was removed.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
We seem to enjoy smooth and flat response to 1 kHz and then hell breaks loose for a while. Directivity is shot at 1 kHz and on-axis remains poor to 3 kHz. Even beyond we have somewhat uneven response with some peaking above 7 kHz which may make the direct sound too bright.
Looking at the driver responses gives us a clue as to the underlying problem:
I wonder why the crossover frequency was picked to be so high (4 kHz). It might be that the small enclosure around it is too small to allow lower frequency response. Touching the tube behind it while playing music, it sure resonated well as if it was an alternate driver! This actually caused problems for the Klippel system's field separation. It confused the that with the room reflection and caused significant error. I adjusted the measurement parameters and fixed it but clearly this speaker has problem in this mid region. It is like two speakers stacked on top of each other -- one for woofer and port, and another for tweeter.
Back to our spinorma measurements, here is our early reflections:
Blending of the reflections and direct axis smoothens the response some:
Had to know where to draw the trend line visually. As shown it will likely sound recessed in mids but slightly emphasized lows and highs which is supposed to be good in a showroom.
Distortion in bass was kept in check which was nice:
Impedance graph shows a resonance around 1 kHz:
Beamwidth is usually prescriptive but I think in this case it makes things look too good:
The -6 dB line in red is quite good and smooth. But then the drop off to -12 dB (pink) is quite uneven. We can see this better in our traditional contour graph:
Vertical directivity narrows in the problem area so best to make sure the speaker stand places the tweeter at your ear height:
Speaker Listening Tests
The instant, "out of box" impression was, "this is not bad...." Ten seconds later though you realize there is too much highs although they seemed to be quite clean. With female vocals, the voices were as if they were coming through a mask. There was a low frequency overtone that shrouded them.
A bit of EQ made a big difference:
The boost in the 1 to 3 kHz brought out vocals and now made them be center stage as they should be. A/B test showed that even male vocals were suffering without this correction.
There was still too much highs but that is easy to fix to taste.
Dynamic capability was quite good. Yes, I could get them to bottom out but otherwise, they could play very loud. I put in a high pass filter at 35 Hz which fixed the bottoming out but then subjectively there was too little bass so I left it off in the above settings. The 805S definitely plays louder and cleaner than your typical budget bookshelf. Its larger enclosure definitely helps with that.
Conclusions
A veteran high-end audio dealer once told me that the only two brands of speakers worth selling were Martin Logan and B&W. Both would draw customers to your door rather than you looking for them. The iconic look of the B&W shows why that is the case. Design wise though, this is a clearly flawed execution. Who would wish to have the frequencies in 1 to 4 kHz screwed up and recessed in their speakers??? While not so obvious when you just listen to them, correct them with EQ and you don't want to listen to them without it.
There is a feeling of quality to the speaker that saved it from getting a "headless panther" rating. Bass and dynamic performance is quite good. And the highest -- despite being excessive -- seemed clean.
Personally I would want a speaker to be much more perfect than this so can't recommend the B&W 805S.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Picked a few ripe sunflowers couple of weeks ago. Left them on the porch to dry but that was not doing the job as it doesn't get much sun there. So I decided to bring them inside, pull the seeds and dry them individually. Check out this "mammoth" sunflower:
I put my hand in there for scale. It is probably 16 inches across if not more. The birds had helped themselves to portion of it on top as you see (happy to share the harvest with the little fellows). After pulling all the ripe seeds (not an easy job), here is how much I had:
They have such a sweet flavor and soft texture at this stage which is to die for. I had saved the seeds for this plan years ago and was so happy to see them still viable. They grew to 10+ feet with little water and tough soil at the end of our garden. Nothing screams "garden" more than sunflowers.
That was the highlight of the day. Couldn't enjoy it for long as our septic tank overflowed early once again and we are without facilities until Thursday when we get it pumped.
Using our camper van for toilet. Depressing to say the least as I can't process any more produce either without the ability to wash things indoor. If you want to make me happy, depositing a few coins in my account would certainly help: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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