Tastes differ, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, et cetera, et cetera—but there are some constants in every hobby and in every aspect of life. Take cars, for instance, since most of us can coalesce around this subject, and also because I’m too lazy to think of something more subtle.
For me, the perfect car is a big, four-door, long-wheelbase German missile with the beefiest engine possible—a BMW 7 Series or a Mercedes S-Class. Load either one up with a 12-cylinder and tires with a contact patch like an untrimmed brisket. Slam the optional bar set with mini-fridge in the back where the armrest usually goes. Now we’ve got something.
For you, my beloved reader, this may not be, in your mind’s eye, the perfect car. You may prefer something low, sleek, and fast, with two doors, complicated entry, and poor sight lines. Maybe a Corvette, or—on a more extreme bent—a Lotus Emira.
That said, I’m reasonably certain you would regard my choice of a Teutonic Autobahn missile as pretty damn cool, even if you wouldn’t want to own it. In the same way, I’d be thrilled to go for a rip in your Lotus. The love of cars would bring us together, giving us the breadth of interest to share in each other’s viewpoints and passions.
I’ve been mulling the concept of preference and bias for the past few months, given how I’ve recently cycled between two of the best speakers I’ve yet had pass through my listening room. The first, and the more eye-opening of the two, was the Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signature, which I reviewed just a couple of months ago. If you were to re-read that review, it would be fairly clear that this speaker gobsmacked me. As a reviewer, my job is to tell you how a component sounds and what it’s like to live with. If I dislike the component, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not right for you, so I do my best to minimize my feelings and stick to the facts. Conversely, if I really, really do like a component, the review becomes an easy write, and I don’t much try to disguise my enthusiasm. So yes, I was utterly smitten by that speaker.
The only issue I had with the 801 was its size. The review pair were wide, deep, heavy, and, truth be told, a touch physically large for my room. Just a touch, though; I had difficulties accessing the door to the backyard behind the left speaker. Not really a big deal—it wasn’t easy parallel parking my long-wheelbase S500 in downtown Toronto, but I dealt with it. Same with the 801s. For their supermodel looks and dramatic sound quality, this was a small price to pay.
The follow-up to the 801 that also spun me around was the DALI Epikore 9, which you can read about here on SoundStage! Ultra. The Epikore 9 didn’t startle me the same way as the 801. This Danish speaker was rich, embroidered velvet, the Sistine Chapel ceiling to the 801’s fractal chain lightning. Besides, I’d already had my head blown off by the Epikore 9’s big brother, so I knew what to expect. Still, its massive, weighty, refined sound drew me in and captivated me just like the larger Epikore 11 had.
After the Epikore 9s had returned to Lenbrook Americas, DALI’s distributor, I kept spinning the 801s I had around in my mind. The British speakers had done a number on me. Oh sure, there was an element of almost cartoonish, over-the-top manipulation of the midrange. Not for everyone, that’s for certain. They’re definitely not flat, accurate speakers, but their presentation of images, the way they communicated musical intent, was borderline magical. Listening to the 801s was a musical fever dream.
But they’re big and expensive—220 pounds apiece and $55,000 per pair (all prices in USD). Still, I kept turning my time with them over in my head, and I found myself scheming, trying to figure out how I could replicate this experience in a manner more suited to my room and my budget.
I’ve always been a subwoofer guy. Before I really got into high-end home audio, I owned a number of car audio systems. Not the boom-boom noise-makers that you curse as they cruise past the restaurant patio on a Saturday night in summer. No, I always aimed for quality sound—balanced, audiophile sound. But I did aim for bass power. Not a wall of 12s taking up all of the back seats, mind you—that was childish nonsense, prepubescent peacock-strutting attempts to attract a mate.
My favorite bass system among all my cars was installed in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. It consisted of three 10″ JL Audio 10W6 woofers, each with two 4-ohm voice coils, and if you wired them up right you’d present a 2.6-ohm mono load to the amp. And that amp! A Soundstream REF1.1000 mono amplifier that could chug out 1000W made those subs jump. Low pipe-organ notes were astounding, so intense you’d get literal eye wobble. The rest of the system was top-notch also: Morel separates driven by a US Amps four-channel amplifier with a real tube input stage (four 12AX7s, not 6922s used as buffers).
Point being, subwoofers are always at the back of my mind when I’m thinking about audio, and I’ve had a whole bunch of fun with them at home—my own SVS PC-13 Ultra, which I recently upgraded with a new amplifier, being the most relevant here.
So when I started thinking about how I could create a budget 801 D4 Signature, I immediately thought of the 805, the 801’s little brother. The 805 is available in the D4 Signature version, meaning, for the most part, that it’s the midrange and tweeter section of the 801, but free-standing and stand-mounted.
Note that I said “for the most part.” Both speakers share the same diamond-dome tweeter in their dedicated tapered-tube enclosures. The 801’s dedicated midrange and the 805’s midrange-woofer are similar, sharing the company’s Continuum Cone technology, but the 805’s driver is 6.5″ compared to 6″ in the 801. That 6.5″ midrange-woofer has to reproduce the bass frequencies, so it lives a harder life.
While it’s a handsome little chap, the 805 doesn’t have the warp-speed death-star look of the 801. But that’s OK; I’m just looking for sound quality, so we’ll put that aside for now.
The bottom line—how close to the 801’s sound quality could I get with the 805? Well obviously, there’d be very little real bass. Bowers & Wilkins specifies the -6dB point for the 805 D4 Signature at 34Hz, so I’m guessing there wouldn’t be very much in-room bass below 40Hz, and that just won’t do. I nipped over to Bowers & Wilkins’s subwoofer page and noted that their DB2D sub uses “the same 10-in drivers found in the flagship 800 D4 speakers.” Each $4499 DB2D contains two 10″ drivers in a force-canceling back-to-back configuration. Of course, there’s an on-board amplifier and clever DSP processing, which should assist in optimization.
Let’s think this through. A pair of (large) monitors and a pair of substantial subwoofers isn’t a new concept, but I’m not trying to break new ground. What I’m trying to do is create a more space-efficient 801 for a bunch less cash.
How much less? Well, the 801 D4 Signature retails for the aforementioned $55,000 per pair. The 805 D4 Signature rings in at $13,500 per pair, and the matching stands add $1600. So that’s near-as-dammit 15 large. Two of those DB2D subs come in at $9K, so that’s $24,000, give or take a couple of bucks. Less than half the price of the 801 D4 Signatures. That’s what I’m talking about.
This system—the 805s and DB2D subs—isn’t in any way a one-to-one match with the 801s. For starters, I’ll be running the 805s full range. These two-way monitor speakers will be running down to their low-frequency limit, and I won’t be using a high-pass crossover to give them an easier time of it. The DB2Ds don’t have a built-in high-pass crossover with requisite outputs, and, given the configuration of my system, I wouldn’t use them if they were there. I want the 805s to run straight out of my amp via my preamp. Of course, I could make this a whole different project by adding an active crossover into the mix, but again, I don’t want to do that. I have a carefully curated system that I love, and inserting another component would, in my opinion, confuse the project. This will be a one-to-one comparison, and I have faith that the 805s will hold their own despite this small handicap.
Just before the new year, I pitched this idea to Bowers & Wilkins, and they were amenable. As I’m writing this, I just received a pallet loaded down with two DB2Ds, two 805 D4 Signatures, and a set of matching stands. It’s sitting in my garage, and next week I’m going to start unloading it. The 805s weigh in at a manageable 34 pounds each, which is a nice departure from the man-sized full-range cabinets I’ve been dealing with lately. The DB2Ds, on the other hand, clock in at 79 pounds apiece, so they’re going to be a bit of a handful. Stay tuned to SoundStage! Global, maybe, as my neighbor Ron has been petitioning me for first crack at the 805s. Question is, am I able to wait? Am I that nice of a guy?
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
