Audiophilepure

https://www.hifinews.com/content/bw-801-d4-loudspeaker

By contrast, the big slam of the opening of Yes’s ‘Yours Is No Disgrace’ [The Yes Album; Atlantic WPCR 15903, DSD64] just cannons out from the speakers. The complex keyboards and driving, grumbling bass line fuse with the drums to drive the track relentlessly, and those harmonies are wide-open, as are the words – for good or bad! Yes, the soundscape is huge here, and the low end from those two aerofoil drivers is both punchy and remarkably controlled. These speakers will also go scarily loud with enough amplification driving them, but they remain resolutely clean and clear – a fitting apex to B&W’s latest 800 Series Diamonds.

https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/reference-components/1638-recommended-reference-component-psb-synchrony-b600-loudspeakers

Diego wrapped up his review by asking the question: “What’s not to like about the PSB Synchrony B600?” His answer was “nothing,” and Diego added that the B600 “is one of the most complete-sounding small speakers” he’s ever heard. As a result, the B600 was presented with a Reviewers’ Choice award at the time of his review for its outstanding sonic performance—and that’s also why the B600 is being recognized as a Recommended Reference Component this month.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-diamond-series-804-d4-loudspeaker-page-2

Having visited Bowers & Wilkins’s research facility and factory in England, I believe their engineers can design a loudspeaker to sound and measure any way they wish. From my experience, not just with the 804 D4 but with the 705 Signature—where I wrote, “I was surprised how much I enjoyed having the Bowers & Wilkins 705 Signature in my system … because the speaker’s measured performance implies a somewhat ‘tailored’ sonic character”—both the 804 D4’s measurements and its sonic signature indicate that achieving a classically flat and neutral tonal balance à la Floyd Toole’s writings was not the design team’s primary goal. Instead, clarity, transparency, low-frequency articulation, and the absence of midrange coloration seemed to have had a higher priority.

Even after I had measured this loudspeaker, the issues I found seemed to step out of the way of the music much of the time. Those port resonances seemed to have very little effect on midrange clarity, and while I was occasionally aware that the resonance just below 4kHz was adding some presence-region emphasis, it did not seem to be excited with most recordings. The extreme toe-in recommended in the manual reduced the audibility of the excessive treble, though the speaker’s high-frequency balance will make system matching more difficult than usual. And combined with the speaker’s high impedance in the mid-treble, it will make tube amplifiers sound overbright.

https://www.stereonet.com/au/reviews/fink-team-kim-standmount-loudspeaker-review

Karl-Heinz then tried using a higher resistance inductor and another resistor in series to change the speaker’s alignment even more. “We can switch between 0.5 ohm, 0.25 ohm, and nothing, so this can be used to tailor your speaker to different amplifier technologies. A modern transistor amp has a high damping factor, so you use the larger resistor setting, while more traditional amplifiers like Naim normally use a smaller resistor in series, so the middle position is correct. And the left option is for tube amps; this works well with push-pull designs and helps with the bass.” 

I found the KIM to be unusually easy to position in my room. Standing about 30cm out from the boundary wall on its 6mm carpet-piercing spikes doing their thing, it integrated very well and didn’t boom in the bass unduly. I alternated between the high damping factor and middle positions as I switched between my Rotel Michi X-5 and Exposure 3510 amplifiers, fed from a Chord Electronics Hugo TT2 DAC.