Should you’ve simply purchased a pair of Bowers & Wilkins’ 600 sequence standmounters, congratulations – you’ve carried out the best factor. The child 607 S2 and bigger 606 S2 are a few of our favorite audio system at this stage (the latter are What Hello-Fi? Award winners). At their respective costs, between £449/$700 and £599/$900, there’s little that will get shut in terms of efficiency and engineering content material.
However you already know what? With just a bit little bit of care taken in partnering package and positioning, you’ll be able to fairly simply get the utmost out of them – and why wouldn’t you need to try this? In any case, get the fundamentals (after which some ) proper and so they’ll deal with you to a efficiency past the rest we’ve heard at these worth factors.
Place them on good speaker helps
Each standmounter must be placed on an honest help to forestall their enclosures from shifting. It is sensible when you think about that the motion of the speaker cones generates the sound, and if the cupboard strikes in response, even when solely a little bit, a few of that output is misplaced.
Simply because individuals refer to those audio system as bookshelf designs doesn’t imply that they’ll sound greatest there. In our expertise, a set of inflexible stands is the best way to go. B&W make a devoted pair known as the STAV24 for £119/$200/AU$349 that match each the 607 S2 and 606 S2 properly, and there’s no actual have to transcend these.
Take into consideration room positioning
A speaker’s positioning in a room impacts its sound considerably. It’s tempting to place both of those B&W standmounters, significantly one thing as small because the 607 S2, up towards a wall or, even worse, in a nook. However please don’t; they’ll find yourself sounding unbalanced with an excessive amount of bass.
A number of individuals love bass, so that won’t appear a nasty factor to some, however these lows can be thick and ponderous and can degrade midrange readability. You’ll additionally lose a good diploma of the speaker’s stereo imaging skills, with their presentation turning into compressed and flattened.
Bowers & Wilkins supplies foam bungs with each the 607 S2 and 606 S2, and these bungs are used to dam the rear-firing ports. There’s little doubt that blocking the ports helps with the extreme bass output (when the audio system are positioned near a wall), however we really feel the sound loses an excessive amount of in the best way of fluidity and pure heat to actually fulfill.
Whereas the precise measurement will differ in accordance with your room, we might counsel inserting the audio system no less than 50cm away from any wall to start out with, and experimenting from there. It’s price spending a little bit time taking part in round with toe-in – that’s, the diploma with which the audio system level on the listening place. Should you sit in quite a lot of locations it could be price leaving these standmounters firing straight forward, however in case you have a favorite place to take a seat, angling the audio system in order that they cross a little bit behind your head is a high quality place to begin. Improve the angle and also you’ll discover that the soundstage solidifies and vocals tackle extra focus; go too far and the stereo imaging turns into slim and can lack area.
Associate with care
Each of those B&W audio system are impressively revealing, so it pays to associate them with proficient electronics. They’re not the kindest {of electrical} masses and carry out greatest when pushed more durable. Whereas each will tolerate getting used with low-priced micro techniques, you’ll solely actually get your cash’s price when shifting as much as the likes of the Marantz PM6007 (£499/$599) amplifier with a suitably succesful supply.
You don’t need to cease there, both; so succesful are each these standmounters that we’d say it makes good sense to make use of them with the likes of the Cambridge CXA81 (£999, $1300) or Rega Elex-R (£949, $1700) amplifier. These audio system are clear sufficient to take advantage of such proficient companions.
Making small tweaks can obtain large issues
As soon as the help and partnering electronics are sorted, there are a few straightforward modifications you may make to additional optimise the sound. As with most rivals, these audio system have metallic hyperlinks between their bi-wire terminals. In {an electrical} sense these hyperlinks work high quality: they join the 2 units of binding posts so you need to use the audio system with only a single set of cables. However, in our expertise, for those who swap the hyperlinks with quick items of speaker cable – ideally the identical kind because the one you’re utilizing to connect with the amplifier – the sound improves. Not satisfied? Give it a attempt; we’d be stunned for those who don’t discover an enchancment.
Take away the grilles
The recommendation right here is sort of easy: take the speaker grilles off. Most grilles spoil the sound to some extent, and those used on the 600 Collection are not any totally different. Leaving the sound from the drivers unimpeded is one of the simplest ways to go in terms of efficiency.
Older generations of 600 Collection audio system had uncovered aluminium dome tweeters that had been simply broken, and in such circumstances we might perceive anybody taking the safer method by leaving the primary grilles on. However issues have modified now and this present technology has a metallic mesh to guard the dome, making it much less more likely to come to hurt. The Continuum-coned mid/bass models are fairly sturdy too and can solely actually get broken if somebody is very brutal or clumsy.
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