Bowers & Wilkins 700 manual Sound Quality, While this treble strength did seem likely to

pioneered by the more upmarket Nautilus models, and which provides one of the better reasons for adopting the extra complexity of a three-way, as distinct from the two-and-a-half- way configuration used in the 704.

In the vast majority of three-ways, the midrange driver is either the same as, or a

B&W 703 loudspeaker [ Review ]

“The 703 is much less laid back than the Signature, and actually sounds much more upfront than any B&W in recent memory.”

scaled down version of, the bass driver. However, the essential difference between a midrange-only unit and any unit required to produce bass (whether bass-only or bass/mid) is that a mid-only driver doesn’t undergo significant cone excursion.

Whereas the rubber roll surround at the edge of a driver cone normally has to centre the cone, absorb edge-of-cone vibration and permit generous fore ’n’ aft excursion, a mid- only driver has no need for the last of these. B&W has therefore come up with a midrange driver with a heavy but unfixed surround that locates the cone but ignores excursion in order to optimise the vibration absorption characteristics, by using a heavy rubber gasket in place of the usual roll. The result, allegedly, is improvement in dynamic range resolution.

Thanks to relatively new Klippel distortion measuring apparatus, all the drive units have undergone significant improvements over their predecessors. B&W calls the techniques it has used to make the drive unit magnetic fields more symmetrical and minimise variations in inductance ‘balanced drive’. The high frequency extension of the external tube-loaded tweeter has also been improved, avoiding any need for a ‘super-tweeter’.

There are two bass drivers here, port-loaded and operating in tandem, and each with

Kevlar-reinforced paper cones 120mm in diameter. The FST midrange has B&W’s familiar yellow woven Kevlar cone, 140mm in diameter, while the tweeter has a 25mm alloy dome. Just two pairs of terminals are fitted, conveniently low down near the floor.

SOUND QUALITY

Not unexpectedly, in-room measurements pointed towards free-space siting for this substantial floorstander, though the bass alignment is relatively dry and bungs are provided should close-to-wall siting be unavoidable for domestic reasons.

First impressions came as a bit of a surprise, especially as the Signature 805 (see p62) was on site at the time of its arrival, allowing immediate comparisons. The 703 is certainly much less laid back than the baby Signature, and actually sounds much more upfront than any B&W in recent memory.

Indeed, the initial judgement was that this speaker was a little too bright and edgy for its own good, with a touch of aggression and harshness that bordered on the unacceptable. This opinion was reinforced by the visible peak at around 4.5kHz, near the bottom end of the tweeter’s operating range, which was clearly visible on the far-field in-room traces.

While this treble strength did seem likely to

MULTICHANNEL OPTIONS

B&W makes centre and surround speakers to fit in-between and around the 703/4/5 stereo pairs for multichannel sound. The £450 HTM7 (for ‘Home Theater Monitor’) is the centre-front. Retaining the curved top and external tweeter, this two-way appears bulky, but voice-matches the 703 well enough, albeit without the latter’s slightly bright top end. (It matches the 704 even better – probably because it shares the same drivers.) One crucial thing to note – the HTM7 should not be placed on top of a large-screen TV set, as close proximity to a large flat surface adds a ‘honky’, thickening coloration in the midband. Coming soon, the £900 per pair DS7 surround speaker looks potentially even more interesting. It’s switchable between dipole and monopole modes (the former best for movies, the latter for music), and the change can cleverly be effected remotely via a 12V ‘trigger’ signal from the receiver.

pose a problem at first, after a few days the tendency towards harshness and aggression seemed to have mollified quite significantly. Our samples had apparently had a couple of days of running in before being shipped, but presumably this is a speaker that needs at least a week to get properly settled down. P

november 2003 HI-FI CHOICE