B&W Announces Next Wireless Headphone Series in Staggered Launch

Bowers & Wilkins began taking orders for the Px7 S2 headphones ($399), it said Wednesday, replacing the PX7 with a model that includes new drive units, noise cancellation technology and materials. A flagship Px8 model ($549) has a September target date, in a “staggered launch” owing in part to supply chain disruptions, said Andy Kerr, director of product marketing, on an embargoed webcast this month.

“Everybody’s been affected in different ways” by supply chain shortages, Kerr said. B&W has been “very fortunate” since it manufactures a lot of the components that go into the products at its facilities in the U.K., “which to some extent has helped us out.” But shortages are “across the board, and I’d be lying if I said any different,” Kerr said. “We’re doing a staggered launch rather than trying to launch everything at one time,” he said, to make sure that “when we hit the shelves with the Px7 S2, we’ve got a good, satisfactory supply of products.” Then, it will “come in a little bit later with the Px8,” he said, “making sure we have all the requisite parts in terms of DSP (digital signal processing), power supplies, etc.”

The Px7 S2 headphones are the company’s first to work directly with the Bowers & Wilkins Music App, which can be used to pair the cans to a mobile device, customize the sound through adjustable equalization, activate or disengage the noise-canceling transparency mode and monitor the headphone’s charge levels, the company said. In a future upgrade, the Music App will add the ability for users to stream their chosen music directly from their mobile device to their Px7 S2s, the company said.

B&W is trying to reduce the number of apps it offers users, said Kerr. When the company introduced the Music App, it ran parallel with the company’s Formation line setup app, requiring customers to use the setup app for product configuration and the music app for content, he said. The company combined the two apps in later generation Formation multiroom products, the Zeppelin desktop system and the Panorama 3 sound bar.

With headphones, “we didn’t want to add yet another app into the mix,” Kerr said. Now, the Music App is used for setup and configuration of features such as mapping a function to a “fast-option button” on the earcup, whether that’s choosing a voice assistant or setting noise-cancellation preferences, Kerr said. In the future, the company plans to bring music streaming capability into the Music App for headphones, he said.

Consumers who use the Music App with home audio products are accessing the app via Wi-Fi, with the smartphone acting as a remote control, instructing the music system to pull music from the cloud, Kerr said. Headphones work via Bluetooth, he noted, saying the company wants the “endgame” of the consumer experience to be the same. The "dream goal" is for consumers to use their headphones while out of the house and then come home and interact with its wireless audio products "in the same way as they did when they were out." The Px7 and Px8 will be introduced into the Music App over time, he said, along with other headphones that support an app-based music experience.

Battery life of the Px7 S2 is given as 30 hours on a charge; a 15-minute quick recharge can provide up to seven hours of listening time, Kerr said. The Px7s and Px8s have Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive wireless technology, which, coupled with B&W’s digital signal processing, results in up to 24-bit/48 kHz hi-res sound quality, he said. Neither the Px7 nor Px8 supports spatial audio, Kerr said. The headphones also don’t support Dolby Atmos Music decoding from Tidal, Kerr said. B&W is working on including the higher resolution version of Tidal into the Music App for home products; Qobuz is the only hi-res music service currently available in the app. The headphones are stereo only, Kerr said.

The 40mm custom-designed drive units in the Px7 S2 are said to offer fast response with low distortion. They're angled inside the earcups to ensure a consistent distance relative to the listener’s ear from every point across the driver for a more natural and immersive soundstage, the company said. B&W’s noise cancellation technology uses six upgraded mics: Two measure the output of each drive unit, two react to ambient noise from the outside world and two are dedicated to voice clarity with enhanced noise suppression, it said. The Px7 S2 is being sold at select dealers and at Bowerswilkins.com.