sharbatgula

Another mistery that comes to my mind is why on so many two ways including the 600, CM and partly even PM1 I notice that as notes on pianos start to reach the fifth octave (or second if counted from the first in the middle of the piano), the bottom end of the tone crushes and those notes in that octave sound as if coming from an instrument with tiny box, not a large soundboard. It's hard for me to find the proper words, but the sound becomes thin and tinkly, totaly unconvincing compared ro real piano in a room. As the notes depart away up or down the sound becomes much more convincing. I don't have an idea if this has something to do with the midrange hump, but the only exceptions from this are some dome midrange based speakers and a couple of ribons/air motion two ways, but never two ways with cone mid od midbass. The best of them in piano reproduction was a Gauder Arcona. What could be source of this problem? Is it something inherent to cone shape, breakup (too low frequency to be true), low order crossover or maybe phase distortion? Anyone experienced the same thing?

Thank you RFP. I have no doubt about the competence of the B&W engineers, but with the crossover frequency so high, I don't understand what is the gain, other than maybe cost savings (which would be miserable if true for such high-end speakers) of employing first order networks? Is it really that better sonically to justify a tiny hot spot?

Wow, I stumbled upon a great forum full of knowledgeable people and plenty of useful information! I apologize for not hitting the target 100% about the topic (800 D series), but the observations I post are related to the observations that some of you discuss. In the corner of the world where I live, I never had a chance to audition a Diamond range of speakers, but I find that hump present across the 600 S1 and S2 and the CM series. Also measurements from many respectable other vendor's speakers show that hump more or less. I always wondered why? My measurements of my 685 S1 show a huge hump in that range and bar for the female voices I dislike that behaviour as piles of other music sounds out of balance to me. And from there started my quest for speakers that have the positives of B&W, but without the invasive lower mids. Enter B&W PM1, the only B&W speaker (that I could audition) behaving differently is the now discontinued PM1. From what I auditioned and the very hard to find measurements (Stereoplay, Kompakt-Lautsprecher B&W PM1 im Test - connect), this speaker is much less forward, but still detailed and nicely balanced. There is small hump at about 1.2 kHz, followed by a dip at about 1.8 kHz and from then on the energy in the highs is rising, giving it a feeling of airiness and much welcome elevated highs for my aging ears. Do you think that the smaller size of the PM1 midbass cone (4.5" without the surround) sufficiently moves the breakup much higher above the crossover point (4 kHz, simple cap and coil design)? Do you think that the smaller midbass size also contributes to larger sweet spot, i.e. less lobing problems, lesser sensitivity to vertical positioning of the ears? It's hard to find reviews of PM1 and people on forums report excellent integration of the units, despite the first electrical order crossover. My preference is musical, neutral sound while still preserving detail, but not analytical and detail for the sake of it. I like to listen for hours, often off the hot spot. PM1 sounded pretty good to me and I'm inclined to pull the trigger and buy the only remaining pair. But it bears risks as for my circumstances it is still very expensive and home auditioning is not allowed. I'm afraid that in-house, kevlar and the high crossover frequency could still show the bad face. Any experience with PM1s. Am I safer with the smaller cone size? Thank you!