Sound United Bows Upgraded B&W Flagship 800 Series Speakers

Sound United's resources and scalability allowed the high-end Bowers & Wilkins brand to lean in further in the custom installation space, James Krakowski, vice president-commercial operations, Americas, told us at the ProSource summer conference in San Antonio this month, in a product demonstration embargoed until Wednesday. B&W, which joined the Sound United portfolio of brands last year, previewed at ProSource the newest upgrade in the flagship Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series Diamond lineup that's due to ship Sept. 1. The latest iteration, six years in the making, includes new styling and technology, led by an elongated on-top tweeter with a tube-loading system said to deliver a more open sound for high frequencies. “We wanted to add as much strength and rigidity to this cabinet as we could,” said Sound United’s Seth Snyder, regional brand activator, citing Bowers’ history as a transducer company that produces its own drivers. A primary goal in B&W speaker design is “to get the cabinet to stay out of the way as much as possible,” he said. All models in the 800 series have more metal bracing to keep the cabinet more inert, he said. The 805 D4 and 804 D4 now feature the reverse wrap speaker cabinet used in the previous 800 series’ larger floor-standing models. The structural rigidity of the design allows mounting the crossover in its own compartment in the back of the speaker, away from magnets, to lower the noise floor, Snyder said. The three-way models have new technology, what the company calls biomimetic suspension, that replaces a conventional fabric spider with a composite suspension system that improves midrange cone performance by reducing unwanted air pressure produced by a conventional fabric spider. A new walnut finish joins the white, black and rosenut options. Stereo pairs are the 805 D4 ($8,000), 804 D4 ($12,500), 803 D4 ($20,000), 802 D4 ($26,000) and 801 D4 ($35,000). Center-channel speakers are the HTM82 D4 ($5,500 each) and HTM81 D4 center-channel ($7,500 each).