There's another comment I want to make re. the later versions of B&W speakers that used 6" & 7" Kevlar midrange drivers. I used to own a pair of B&W DM604S2 speakers that used a 7" Kevlar mid & I found that when Diana Krall was playing, she sounded like she was in the plane or slightly ahead of the speakers (& I was seated 10 ft from the speakers). When I played Frank Sinatra, he sounded well behind the plane of the speakers. I found this perplexing. When I did some research on AudioAsylum I found an owner of a N801 in New Zealand had found the very same issue on his speakers! He & I got chatting on this issue & what we found was that a 6" Kevlar midrange in his N801 was beaming at 2200Hz & my 7" Kevlar midrange was beaming at 1900Hz.
When I say beaming what I mean to say is that the Kevlar midrange is beginning to enter its cone breakup mode & the sound coming out takes the shape of a beam of light from a lighthouse during the night. I.E. it becomes very directional. With mid being one of 3 or 4 drivers in a floorstander, the integration of the drivers fail & the balance of sound is disturbed thereby moving the soundstage to the front or the back as I was hearing. The matter is made worse because B&W (in all their infinite judgement) decided to cross-over the mid to the tweeter at 4KHz!! Well above the 6" or 7" Kevlar mid cone break-up mode! Why did they do this?? I could not understand....
You will not find this issue with the Matrix 801S2 as the midrange driver is 5" & the cone breakup frequency is 2700Hz & the cross-over frequency is 3KHz.
In more than one way, the Matrix series speakers were engineered correctly: selection of drivers, selection of cross-over frequencies to match drivers, cabinet contruction, offset of drivers to make them time-aligned, Ct0517 brings up another good point - the BAF module to make the woofer integrate correctly with the other drivers.
B&W seems to have thrown all this out of the window with John Bowers' passing when they introduced the N8XX & beyond models.....
here's a pix of the Matrix 801S2
[url]http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/506/index.html[/url]
and here is a pix of the N801:
[url]http://images.productwiki.com/upload/images/b_w_801d.jpg[/url]
check out the vast difference in the sheer size of the midrange driver (I realize the pix are not the same size but even then you get an idea). The Matrix 801S2 driver a lot more flange & I'd not be surprised if the actual area of the driver is less than 5". Whereas the N801 midrange has almost zero flange - I can only see a rubber surround - it's all driver right to the very edge meaning to say it's all of the advertised 6".
When I say beaming what I mean to say is that the Kevlar midrange is beginning to enter its cone breakup mode & the sound coming out takes the shape of a beam of light from a lighthouse during the night. I.E. it becomes very directional. With mid being one of 3 or 4 drivers in a floorstander, the integration of the drivers fail & the balance of sound is disturbed thereby moving the soundstage to the front or the back as I was hearing. The matter is made worse because B&W (in all their infinite judgement) decided to cross-over the mid to the tweeter at 4KHz!! Well above the 6" or 7" Kevlar mid cone break-up mode! Why did they do this?? I could not understand....
You will not find this issue with the Matrix 801S2 as the midrange driver is 5" & the cone breakup frequency is 2700Hz & the cross-over frequency is 3KHz.
In more than one way, the Matrix series speakers were engineered correctly: selection of drivers, selection of cross-over frequencies to match drivers, cabinet contruction, offset of drivers to make them time-aligned, Ct0517 brings up another good point - the BAF module to make the woofer integrate correctly with the other drivers.
B&W seems to have thrown all this out of the window with John Bowers' passing when they introduced the N8XX & beyond models.....
here's a pix of the Matrix 801S2
[url]http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/506/index.html[/url]
and here is a pix of the N801:
[url]http://images.productwiki.com/upload/images/b_w_801d.jpg[/url]
check out the vast difference in the sheer size of the midrange driver (I realize the pix are not the same size but even then you get an idea). The Matrix 801S2 driver a lot more flange & I'd not be surprised if the actual area of the driver is less than 5". Whereas the N801 midrange has almost zero flange - I can only see a rubber surround - it's all driver right to the very edge meaning to say it's all of the advertised 6".