So this is where the rubber hits the road. It’s decision time. It all started back in December of last year, when I reviewed the Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signature loudspeaker. As you can tell by that review, I was blown away by the experience. I said it before, and I’ll say it one more time: These were the best speakers I’ve yet had in my room. Huge bass, outstanding imaging. A unique sonic signature with a rising top end, yes. But so clean, and so pure-sounding that I just couldn’t get enough.
And yet, the 801s eventually had to move on to their forever home, and I hope whoever buys them appreciates them as much as I did. As I mentioned in my follow-up, I embarked on a project to replicate the sound of those big, pricey 801s (US$60,000, CA$72,000, £47,500, €55,000 per pair) for a smaller budget and with a more room-friendly look. The 801s are a bit too large for my room, and it got old having to shuffle sideways past one of them to get to the back door. So I hit up Bowers & Wilkins for a pair of 805 D4 Signature standmounts (US$14,000, CA$18,000, £11,500, €13,500 per pair) with matching stands (US$1600, CA$2000, £1350, €1500 per pair), and a pair of the company’s DB2D subwoofers (US$5800, CA$5100, £3000, €4300 each). My intent was to try to capture the 801s’ magic in a smaller, more affordable package, which totaled out at US$27,200.
I know—there’s nothing groundbreaking about a subwoofer-satellite configuration. The idea of reinforcing a standmounted speaker’s low end with a subwoofer is almost as old as stereo. But it made huge sense to me at the time, and now I want to let you know that, yes, this approach can near-as-dammit achieve the same sound quality as a pair of 801 Signatures.
Let’s get the obvious details out of the way first. As I said in my review, the 805 D4 Signatures sure as heck recreated nearly all of the magic of the floorstanding 801s. So close was the sound of the 805s alone that honestly, I could happily live with those speakers sans subwoofers.
But holy hell, that pair of DB2D subwoofers! The 805 does great bass—tight, controlled, and well-defined. It’s a superstar athlete in its own right. A quick, agile gymnast. An Olympic fencing gold medalist.
But adding those subs changed everything. Suddenly music came alive in my room with breathtaking depth and solidity. Now there was a sumo wrestler in each corner. The Olympic fencer had replaced his wispy foil with a saber. I heard power, majesty, and enormous weight.
Let’s back up a bit. As I mentioned in my initial look at the DB2D subs, the Bowers & Wilkins DB Sub app allows you to tailor the crossover frequency and slope either manually or automatically, via a drop-down list of the company’s speakers. So I chose the 805 D4 Signature from the list and then only had to play with volume. And here’s the best part—the DB2D is equipped with an easy-to-use room-correction tool. I made full use of that option, which you can read about in my setup editorial.
The DB2Ds were incredibly well behaved. They turned on instantly at the start of every listening session and were nearly invisible in my room in their glossy black lacquer. They were sonically invisible as well.
I’ve been listening to the 805s with the subs for a while now, and for 95% of my listening, I must say that I preferred this combination to the 801s. There. I said it. It’s all down to this one statement: I preferred the 805s with the DB2D subs over the 801s.
It all comes down to the bass. While the 801 employs the same woofers as the DB2D—two 10″ Aerofoil drivers in each cabinet—the addition of room correction to the DB2D makes all the difference. I’ve always been aware of a big-ass 35Hz hump in my room response. It’s quite large—about 8dB or so—but over the years, my mind has installed a correction filter and I no longer hear it. When a piece of music hits that one note, my internal rumble filter kicks in and knocks it down.
The DB2D’s room correction took care of that for me. At first, it seemed like there was missing information in the bass response, and I overcorrected by bumping up the gain on the DB2Ds. Over the following weeks, I gradually lowered the gain, eventually arriving at a sweet spot where there was more bass everywhere in my room, right down into the subsonic, tooth-rattling frequencies. It was smooth, too.
Classic rock was one benefactor. Maybe that big room mode at 35Hz polluted the higher bass frequencies that are the domain of olde-tyme studio rock, rendering much of it as thin-sounding. But with the two DB2Ds reaching down to bedrock, I heard linear, clean, deep bass that provided substantial weight to kick drums and bass guitars.
I just gave Pink Floyd’s The Wall another full, end-to-end listen, this time with my British pressing (LP, Harvest, SHDW 411). I played side 2 through twice, once with the DB2Ds powered up, and again with them unplugged. The difference was not subtle. While the 805s were good down to about 35Hz in my room (and you’d wouldn’t expect there to be bass much below that on a crusty, late-1970s record), the DB2Ds opened up the entire front of my room. The subs added such power and weight to tracks such as “Empty Spaces” that it didn’t seem like the same record.
The 805 D4 Signature has a rising top end that’s overt. It’s clear and easy to hear, but as I’ve repeatedly said, it’s so unforced and grain-free that it’s a joy to listen to. And that’s an unqualified rave—both with and without the subs.
In truth, this combination—the 805s, with their clarity in the midrange and up through the treble, along with the DB2Ds—brought me so close to the music that I found myself drawn in, unable to ignore it. The images that the 805s threw were hyper-real. Combined with the tight grip that the DB2Ds exerted on the atmosphere, the very air itself, the result was a whole-body experience.
Going back to The Wall, listening to the operator trying to place Pink’s collect call, to the groupie’s exploration of his hotel room, culminating in the existential pit that is “One of My Turns,” the 805/DB2D setup created an enveloping, emotional, collapsing star of sadness. This setup made listening to music an event, immersing me in the recording.
I experienced this level of immersion through numerous system changes: the Hegel Music Systems H30A/P30A pre/power combination, the Marantz Model 10, and now, the VinnieRossi Brama integrated. The 805s let me clearly hear the differences in these amplification chains, but unfailingly, they remained musical. The Marantz was a touch more tipped-up in the highs than the Hegel combo, but the 805s remained clear and pure. The VinnieRossi (review coming very soon) was more relaxed and warm, but the 805s kept it all open and let the juiciness of the tube front end shine through. Seeing the trend here?
Then I’d plug the DB2Ds back in and—oh my. Back to a room full of life-sized musicians.
Before you rush out and throw down for this exact system, I’d like to draw your attention to the qualification I made at the start of this article. I said that for 95% of my listening, I preferred the 805/DB2D combination to the 801s.
What about that remaining 5%? Let’s examine that. First and most importantly, the 805 plays full range. With the 801, the midrange is protected by a high-pass filter—it doesn’t have to work down into the low bass like the midrange–woofer in the 805. I rarely noticed any issues with the bass interfering up into the midrange with the 805s, but I could make it happen. Take “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes” from Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (LP, Constellation CST075). There are only two musicians on this track—Stetson’s fusion-powered bass saxophone and Shara Nova’s ethereal vocals. It’s a terrifying experience listening to this song at high volumes, so obviously that’s what I did. Both the standalone 801s and the 805/DB2D combo energized my room with a weight that made me physically nauseous, but the 805s couldn’t quite take the strain. At really high levels, the low frequencies inflicted an overt warble in the midrange that affected Nova’s voice.
This Stetson track was the only one where I heard this specific effect, but I was always acutely aware that I couldn’t push the 805/DB2D combo quite as hard. The upper limit, the highest volume, was lower with the sub-reinforced 805s than with the 801s. At no point in my listening to the 801s did they ever knuckle under. They were always clear and unfazed by whatever I played, no matter how loud. And let me tell you, when my neighbors were out on both sides of my townhouse (I’d check out the window for their cars), I’d crank the bejeezus out of those things.
Same with the 805s and the DB2Ds. I played them really loud when I could, and really cranked, I could hear some strain in the midrange. I didn’t want to send blown speakers back to Bowers & Wilkins, so there we are.
I’d say that’s another 3% covered. The last 2% is just the absolute tiniest smidgen of midrange purity that’s missing from the 805. It’s so small that after I’d played the 805s for a week or so I never really thought about it again. But it was there. The dedicated midrange of the 801s lofted an image in the way that no other speakers had ever done in my room. It was effervescent in its purity—a portal to another world. Please take a listen to Koby Israelite’s Orobas: Book of Angels, Vol. 4 (16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC, Tzadik / Qobuz)—specifically, the first track, “Rampel.” What’s ostensibly a straight-ahead klezmer number is sent into orbit by weird, floaty sound effects, and both the 801s and the 805s swirled that stuff right the way around the room, in an almost 3D, effects-laden manner. It was enchanting, captivating. But the 801s did that swirly thing just a smidge better than the 805s. So small was this difference that I hereby declare that it’s certainly not worth an extra 33 large.
Or is it? Are we chasing “Sound to the Xtreme,” as it says on the SoundStage! Ultra masthead? If so, then yes, the 801 is better. If—a big if—you’ve got the money and the space, and for sure if you can room-correct that bass, then by all means load up on the 801 D4 Signatures and don’t look back.
However, if the difference between $60,000 and $27,000 is meaningful, and you’ve got a smaller listening space, then I think you’d be just as happy—maybe even more so—with a pair of 805s, backed up by two DB2Ds.
Either way, you can’t go wrong. These speakers, both the 801 D4 Signature and the 805 D4 Signature, are magnificent. This is the sound I think I’ll be chasing for the rest of my audiophile life.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
