Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) is promising “studio sound” with its new 700 Series range of speakers. There are eight in the line-up including three floorstanding, three stand-mount, and two dedicated centre channel speakers.
The new Bowers & Wilkins 700 Series includes many of the same technologies found in the brand’s flagship range, the 800 Series Diamond. This means everything from the cabinet design to the construction, finish, key acoustics, and mechanics have been improved.
In a first for the 700 Series, the new range introduces slimmer cabinets featuring a curved front baffle and drive units mounted in external ‘pods’ that form a direct visual and technical link to the 800 Series Diamond range. This revised form dramatically reduces the impact of the loudspeaker baffle on sound quality, says B&W, by minimizing the ‘cabinet diffraction’ effect.
The new cabinet forms are now also offered in a new Mocha finish in highly grained wood, along with the usual Gloss Black and Satin White finishes previously offered. A fourth Rosenut finish will also be offered exclusively in Asian and Pacific markets.
Bowers & Wilkins now offers its solid body tweeter-on-top technology in four models in the new 700 Series, representing half the range in total. The 702 S3 and 703 S3 floorstanding loudspeakers, the 705 S3 standmount model, and the HTM71 S3 centre channel loudspeaker include tweeter-on-top.
The Tweeter-on-Top form itself has also been re-engineered in the new range. Machined from a single, solid block of aluminum, the new 700 Series tweeter-on-top enclosure has been significantly lengthened, reducing distortion and ensuring an even cleaner presentation, says B&W. This longer form is further enhanced by the introduction of improved two-point decoupling that better isolates the assembly from the loudspeaker cabinet, ensuring a more free and open soundstage.
Beyond these mechanical improvements, the tweeter-on-top diaphragm retains the Bowers & Wilkins Carbon Dome tweeter, with its 47kHz first break-up performance, coupled to improved, vented voice coils with new, upgraded magnets. Models that feature tweeters mounted in the baffle, which include the 707 S3, 706 S3, 704 S3, and HTM72 S3, benefit from all these changes, alongside a significantly elongated tube-loading system that, as with the tweeter-on-top, works to reduce distortion and ensure a cleaner sound.
In all three-way loudspeakers in the new range, Bowers & Wilkins has introduced its biomimetic suspension, first revealed last year in the new 800 Series Diamond range. Replacing the conventional fabric spider found in the suspension of almost all loudspeakers built over recent decades, the biomimetic suspension reduces unwanted noise from the output of the spider as the midrange cone operates. Used alongside all of Bowers & Wilkins other proprietary midrange cone technologies, including decoupling for the entire midrange assembly, an aluminum drive unit chassis featuring tuned mass dampers for reduced resonance, FST surround-less suspension and the Continuum cone material. Models with mid/bass drive units – 707 S3, 706 S3, 705 S3, and HTM72 S3 – have been upgraded too, with new motor systems and improved chassis for cleaner output.
Bass, meanwhile, uses the latest generation of Bowers & Wilkins famous Aerofoil Profile bass cone technology, based around a composite ‘sandwich’ of materials with a carefully formed variable profile aimed at delivering cleaner, lower distortion bass.
Ensuring that these drive units are given the best possible platform to succeed, the new 700 Series range introduces upgraded, 800 Series Diamond-inspired speaker terminals that feature more substantial contact connections and are better laid out for use with spade-terminated speaker cable. These feed carefully upgraded crossovers that continue to use Mundorf capacitors as before, enhanced with multiple bypass capacitors and improved heatsinking for even cleaner performance.
All models in the range feature updated, larger diameter Flowports that offer a more substantial output, ensuring a bigger and more expansive sound. In the 702 S3 floorstander, that approach is taken even closer to the configuration of 800 Series Diamond floorstanding loudspeakers thanks to the re-orientation of its port to fire downwards on its integrated plinth.
Finally, all floorstanding models feature significantly upgraded spikes to anchor them to the floor. On
704 S3 and 703 S3, stainless steel M6 spikes are included with their integrated plinths: on 702 S3, heavy- duty M10 spikes are provided. Even stand-mount models in the range benefit from similar mechanical upgrades, thanks to the FS-700 S3 floor-stand, which has been visually upgraded to match the slimmer, curved profile of the new cabinet design, while also offering acoustic improvements thanks to the introduction of those stiffer M6 spikes.
“We’re hugely proud of our new range,” says Andy Kerr, Director of Product Marketing and Communications for Bowers & Wilkins. “By introducing some of the reference- quality technologies of our 800 Series Diamond range into the latest generation of 700 Series, we’ve made studio-quality sound more accessible than ever.”
The new 700 Series range will be available from September 21st. Models and prices in Canada are as follows: 702 S3 floorstanding speakers ($4,499.50 ea.), 703 S3 floorstanding speakers ($3,899.50 ea.), 704 S3 floorstanding speakers ($2,499.50 ea.), 705 S3 standmount speakers ($2,249.50 ea.), 706 S3 standmount speakers ($1,499.50 ea.), 707 S3 bookshelf/standmount speakers ($1,199.50 ea.), FS-700 S3 stands ($499.50 ea.), HTM71 S3 centre channel speakers ($2,999 ea.), and HTM72 S3 centre channel speakers ($1,999 ea.)