Bowers & Wilkins 802 D3

802 D3 delivers pristine sound in any environment. Its Diamond tweeter partners with a Continuum cone to ensure sound that will leave you speechless.

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Bowers & Wilkins 802 D3

Studio quality

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The 802 D3 delivers pristine, high-performance sound in any environment.

Its Diamond tweeter partners with a Continuum cone to ensure a revealing natural sound, that will leave you speechless.

Reveal your music

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If you’re looking for stunning realism without the studio-sized footprint, the 802 D3 is the answer.

It’s slim proportions make it a comfortable for both domestic spaces and recording environments. At home or in the studio, it will reveal depth and detail in music you never knew existed.

Welcome to the future

The 802 D3  is a game-changer in terms of technological innovation. From drive units to cabinet geometry, every major component has been rethought and reinvented.

And the rulebook for loudspeaker design has been ripped up and rewritten in the process.

The future of loudspeaker technology starts here.

 Turbine head

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Hear the sound, not the cabinet. That’s the principle behind their separate head units – a feature they introduced when they launched the first 800 Series speaker in 1979.

Now, thanks to a radical redesign, the 802 D3  head unit performs better than ever.

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Constructed from a single piece of aluminum, braced with internal radial fins and with a raised, slimmer profile, the turbine head is remarkably inert, producing a sound that’s free from cabinet coloration.

Solid body tweeter

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Vibration is the enemy of good sound. To minimise vibrations, you need components that are as stiff as possible.

For the 802 D3, B&W created their stiffest tweeter enclosure yet.

The tweeter assembly for the new range is housed in a solid piece of aluminum, while an improved gel decoupling system isolates the tweeter from the effects of cabinet resonance.

The result? Pin-sharp acoustic detail, and new level of insight into a musical performance.

Continuum cone

1bwmidrange1024For decades, they thought that nothing could beat Kevlar as a midrange cone material. But now, following eight years of intensive development, they have finally come up with something even better.

Thanks to its composite construction, the Continuum cone avoids the abrupt transitions in behaviour that can impair the performance of a conventional drive unit. The result is a more open, neutral performance.

And a giant leap forward for loudspeaker design.

Thanks to computer modeling, the design of the 800 Series Diamond midrange chassis has been completely overhauled.

The new chassis is engineered for superior stiffness, while tuned-mass dampers help to reduce unwanted vibrations to a bare minimum.

Aerofoil cone

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Sometimes, new technologies allow B&W to achieve things in engineering that wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.

The Aerofoil bass cone is a perfect example. By using advanced computer modeling and a new syntactic core material, B&W have been able to produce a cone of varying thickness, with maximum stiffness where it’s needed most.

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This optimised shape means the cone displays pistonic behavior further up the audible range, producing bass that’s precise, controlled and utterly lifelike.

Reverse wrap cabinet

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When it came to designing the ideal shape for the 800 Series Diamond cabinet, we did a U-turn. Quite literally. Instead of a flat-fronted speaker with a curving back, they produced a cabinet with a front and sides formed of one continuous curve, held together with a spine of solid aluminum.

Fewer joins make for a stiffer, more inert structure, and a curved front means less baffling around the drive units. So sound dispersion is improved, and cabinet reflection is reduced.

Matrix

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Matrix provides the backbone for their Diamond speakers. It’s an internal structure that works like the bracing of a ship’s hull, with criss-crossed interlocking panels keeping our cabinets rigid and inert.

For the 802 D3, B&W have introduced their most radical rethink of the Matrix concept yet. The internal panels are thicker, solid plywood has replaced MDF, and metal components have been added to reinforce key stress points.

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All together it’s the most solid Matrix system they have ever built.

Plinth

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A great speaker needs a rock-solid foundation.

By moving the crossover from the plinth to the main body of the speaker, they have been able to create a base for the 802 D3 that’s more stable and resonance-resistant than ever.

Replacing the original open-box design, the new plinth is constructed from a solid piece of aluminum weighing in at a mighty 18kg.

This improves stability by lowering the centre of mass and counter-balancing the weight of the turbine head.

The base are fitted with castors to allow you to manoeuvre your speakers into position easily.

Replacing these castors with floor spikes used to be a tricky proposition, involving tipping your speaker on its side.

Not so with new 800 Series Diamond speakers, which come with integrated floor spikes that can be lowered or raised with a simple twist of a cog.

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Diamond domes

Some things don’t change. While almost every component of the 800 Series Diamond has been reinvented, the element that gave the range its name remains unchanged: the speaker’s diamond tweeter domes.

Their diamond domes remain the ultimate in tweeter technology, capable of unrivalled acoustic detail, naturalism and spaciousness.

Diamond: the super-material

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The properties of diamond are prized in highly specialised industrial applications, from neurosurgery to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Its unique stiffness-to-lightness ratio also makes diamond the perfect tweeter material. Developed especially for the 800 Series Diamond, diamond tweeter domes push the break-up frequency threshold to a remarkable 70kHz, resulting in superb clarity and detail.

Making diamond the natural way takes seismic pressures, volcanic temperatures and around two billion years.

Thankfully, science has found a way to shortcut the process. Using chemical vapour deposition, their diamond domes are grown like crystals in super-heated furnaces under laboratory conditions, before being cut to produce the perfect tweeter dome shape.

Technical specifications 802 D3

Technical features

Diamond tweeter Continuum cone FSTTM Anti-Resonance plug

Turbine head

Aerofoil cone bass units FlowportTM

Optimised matrix

Solid body tweeter

Crossover mounted on heatsink at rear

xoverDescription 3-way vented-box system

Drive units

1x ø25mm (1 in) diamond dome high-frequency

1x ø150mm (6 in) Continuum cone FSTTM midrange

2x ø200mm (8 in) Aerofoil cone bass units

Frequency range 14Hz to 35kHz 17Hz to 28kHz

Frequency response (+/-3dB from reference axis)

Sensitivity
(on axis at 2.83Vrms)       
90dB

Harmonic distortion

2nd and 3rd harmonics (90dB, 1m on axis) <1 % 80Hz – 20kHz
<0.3% 100Hz – 20kHz

Nominal impedance 8Ω (minimum 3.0Ω)

Recommended amplifier power 50W – 500W into 8Ω on unclipped programme

Max. recommended cable impedance 0.1Ω

1x ø25mm (1 in) diamond dome high-frequency
1x ø150mm (6 in) Continuum cone FSTTM midrange

2x ø200mm (8 in) Aerofoil cone bass units

Dimensions

Height: Width: Depth:

1212mm (47.7 in) 390mm (15.4 in) 583mm (23 in)

Net weight Finishes 94.5kg

Cabinet

Real wood veneers: Rosenut

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Painted finish: Gloss Black

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Painted finish: Satin White

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802 D3 Prestige £21000.00

Grille

Black grille with Rosenut or Glossblack

Grey grille with Satin White

 

 

Additional information

Colour

Gloss Black, Rosenut, White

Brand

Bowers & Wilkins

Bowers & Wilkins

1960s: Humble beginnings

The sleepy coastal town of Worthing in South England might not look like a hotbed of 1960s freewheeling experimentation, but for audio fans it’s a place that’s synonymous with innovation. Thanks to the first Bowers & Wilkins speakers built here in the early years of the company, music lovers could experience albums such as Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds in new, mind-expanding depth and clarity

1966: Beginings

John Bowers begins assembling speaker systems in the workshop of his electronics shop in Worthing, South East England Following an inheritance of £10,000 from a satisfied customer, John Bowers sets up his own loudspeaker company

1966: P1

The first Bowers & Wilkins loudspeaker. The profit from P1 allowed the company to invest in new calibration equipment

1968: Domestic Monitors

The DM1 and DM3 were launched to bring high quality audio to more customers, at an affordable price point

1970s: A decade of milestones

With the company established and growing fast, Bowers & Wilkins developed its reputation for innovative design backed up by world-leading R&D. They introduced new forms and design concepts including Tweeter-on-Top, new cone materials such as Aramid fibre, and it all culminated in the launch of the iconic 801, soon to become the reference speaker of choice for many of the world’s leading recording studios

1970: DM70

With its curved cabinet, the DM70 changed the shape of loudspeaker design

1980s: The application of science

Extensive investment in research led to the establishment of the company’s dedicated R&D facility in Steyning. The era of MTV pop superstardom and bombastic stadium rock also saw Bowers & Wilkins buck the trend and introduce something small and unobtrusive: the “compact monitor”, or CM1

1990s: Rewriting the rulebook

The 1990s saw the pioneering work of the Steyning research team realised in spectacular fashion with the launch of Nautilus™, a speaker that rewrote preconceived notions of speaker design. It also saw major product launches at both ends of the spectrum, with the unveiling of the highly regarded entry-level 600 Series and the flagship Nautilus 800 Series

2000s: Expansion in to new categories

The decade that brought us iPods and smartphones saw them embrace the new world with the launch of the iconic Zeppelin. They also expanded into the car audio category and transformed the performance of their 800 Series with the development of the Diamond-dome tweeter

2015: 800 Series Diamond

The latest version of their flagship introduced a complete redesign and revolutionary new technologies, such as the Continuum™ cone

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