Hear The New B&W 800 Series Diamond Now At Lyric

NOTE: The arrival of a new 800 Series, designated the 800 Series Diamond and described below, has led us to reduce prices substantially on the few speakers from B&W’s previous 800 Series still in our inventory. If you’ve always wanted to own these wonderful loudspeakers but were unable to afford them, click on the blue On Sale Now box at the right hand side of this page and see which models are still available.

Three decades ago, B&W introduced its original model 801 loudspeaker, a long leap forward for the firm and its customers but a mere first step in the creation of what has since become a heralded model range that continues to improve.

B&W unveiled the newest generation of 800 models, the 800 Series Diamond, at the January 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. The speakers are manufactured entirely in the UK and mirror a long tradition of painstakingly produced British luxury goods — Rolls Royce and Bentley automobiles, outerwear by Burberry and Barbour.

For the first time, the company’s diamond dome tweeters are built into every 800 Series model. Now, even the stand-mounted 805 provides the clear, uncolored, distortion-free sound the dome has become known for.

Naturally, B&W’s 800 Series Diamond speakers incorporate an entire array of advancements over predecessor models, including new motor assemblies for bass drivers and tweeters. These reduce distortion to new lows and result in even smoother sound.

Improved driver design has allowed B&W to employ a superior crossover network, one that has been upgraded for cleaner signal passthrough. Signal quality is also enhanced by new, B&W-designed input terminals, which are fabricated of oxygen-free copper, a better conductor than brass.

These improvements will endow your favorite recordings with added layers of sonic excellence across the frequency spectrum while subtle aesthetic changes will make B&W 800 Diamond Series speakers look better than ever in your home.

800 Series Diamond speakers are now at Lyric for you to audition, so come in soon. Their clarity is comparable to that of a flawless gemstone, nothing short of dazzling.

Learn More About the World’s Best-Known High End Speaker Brand

B&W user surveys have shown that the firm’s customers are especially serious about recorded sound and consider home music and movies significant lifestyle enhancements, pleasures they want to enjoy as fully as possible.

Combine that information with the fact that nearly all the owners queried in an independent poll said they would buy B&W again — an overwhelming 98% said they were satisfied with their purchases — and you’ll know why the audiophile speaker brand ranks either number one or two in dozens of countries around the world, most of the nations where it's sold.

B&W also ranks high on the list of speakers favored by recording professionals. To cite just one example, B&Ws have long been fixtures at London’s Abbey Road studios, where they’ve been used while recording The Beatles, U2, David Gilmour, Michael Nyman, Groove Armada, The Thrills, and Pet Shop Boys, to name just some performers.

Halfway around the world, in California, B&W 800 Series models are used in surround-sound configuration at the famed Skywalker Sound studios, the state-of-the-art Marin County facility that specializes in creating memorable movie sound tracks.

Research Provides B&W Owners With Many Rewards

B&W has an insatiable passion for research. The company was the first in the industry to make extensive use of computers when designing and analyzing speakers.

The results of the firm’s systematic investigations into sound are audibly apparent in all its speakers, especially the flagship 800 models, which employ tried and true technologies that the company has improved upon again and again since introducing the landmark Matrix 801 in 1979.

These include B&W’s specially-braced Matrix bass cabinets, developed in-house and patented in the 1980s. They remain essential to the dynamic capability of 800 Series units.

Another important B&W innovation is the Kevlar midrange driver, which the firm enhances with an outer cone support often referred to as surroundless. The support is a superior wave terminator that significantly enhances the natural quality of reproduced sound, especially in the part of the frequency spectrum that contains the human voice, a musical segment where the ear is especially sensitive.

Every 800 model now features a diamond dome tweeter, which results in astounding transparency. B&W’s research has revealed that diamond more closely approaches the hypothetical ideal for a tweeter material — it would combine infinite stiffness with zero mass — than any other substance used to date.

Along with acclaimed sound, B&W 800 Series Diamond speakers offer a noteworthy lack of fussiness in regard to placement, appealingly distinctive shapes, and exquisitely-finished cabinets.

Meet John Bowers, B&W’s Guiding Force

B&W’s achievements began with the vision of one man, John Bowers, who remained a beacon for the company until his death in 1987.

In the 1960s, John began building speakers in the back of a little electronics store called Bowers & Wilkins in Worthing on England’s southern coast, just a few miles from the well-known resort town Brighton. He and a partner named Wilkins, an army friend, had opened the store together, but John ultimately decided to focus on designing and manufacturing speakers.

In 1966, John and a Bowers & Wilkins staffer named Peter Hayward spun off a firm that would do just that.

John said back then, “The best loudspeaker isn’t the one that gives the most. It’s the one that loses the least.” B&Ws continue to mirror that credo.

If B&W’s humble beginnings make John sound like a tinkerer, rest assured that he was, in fact, a probing, detail-oriented perfectionist and a genuinely multi-faceted man in the bargain.

During World War II, he served in Special Operations, gathering intelligence by radio from espionage agents working behind enemy lines. His contacts included the esteemed Violette Bushell Szabo, an extraordinary young woman who had managed to re-establish a decimated French resistance network and who routinely passed critical information about Nazi activities on to John. (Captured, interrogated under torture and executed at age 23, she was posthumously awarded the George Cross by the British and a Croix de Guerre by the French.)

John was also an avid photographer, and the quality of his work led to a firm friendship with a fellow lensman named Antony Armstrong-Jones, known as the Earl of Snowdon after marrying Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II.

John treasured classical music, and his wholehearted commitment to its reproduction, both in homes and in recording studios, led him to establish a research and development laboratory in 1976. It's located in Steyning, a town just a jog north of the firm's Worthing factory.

That facility, the first to take significant advantage of computers in loudspeaker design and analysis, was unprecedented at the time, and it continues to provide the products engendered there with cutting edge benefits that every B&W buyer will appreciate for many years to come.