Loads of speaker for your money (B&W DM 602 S2)

Member Name: nickn5

Product:	B&W DM 602 S2
Date:	28/07/09 (350 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great sound, look good, made in UK

Disadvantages: Uncomfortable with some music types, quite large.

I bought these speakers a fair while ago for use in my home cinema system, and have nothing but praise for the sound they produce.

#~~~ WHY I BOUGHT THEM ~~~#

B&W (Bowers-Wilkins) are perhaps not one of the best known speaker manufacturers, but what they do make is built in the UK and is of superb quality, something which helped swing the purchase for me.

These particular speakers are an ideal choice for those reluctant to allocate floor space or sacrifice aesthetics for a floor-standing monster, but who find the average bookshelf speaker a bit lacking, which I certainly have done in the past.

#~~~ APPEARANCE ~~~#

The size of these is an eye catching 49cm height x 23cm width x 30cm depth, you wouldn't really want these on a shelf. I place them on Atacama Nexus stands (www.atacama-audio.co.uk/nexus.htm) which seem an ideal partner.

The casing is a cherry wood veneer look (not real wood), the wood effect is pretty realistic and ensures the speakers fit into your living room rather better than the more common black might. Mine have the wood effect and I've had one or two comments on how nice they look.

Really impressive is the main woofer, with its yellow woven Kevlar backing and little pointy black centre. You hate to leave the front fabric grille on these speakers as it hides this feature, but if you had young children visiting it would be wise to use the grille as that silver tweeter might prove tempting to push...

The small tweeter unit at the top is a silver colour and is apparently taken from B&W's top of the range Nautilus line-up, but for a lot less money in this case. The vent is also on the front at the bottom, which does enable you to place these speakers closer to walls and corners without too much loss of sound quality.

#~~~ SPECS ~~~#

Otherwise, the important bits you need to know are that:
Nominal Impedance is 8 ohms (minimum 4.3 ohms).
Power Handling is 25 - 120W into 8 ohms on unclipped program.
Drive Units are the 1x 26mm (1") metal dome high-frequency tweeter, and the 1x 180mm (7in) woven Kevlar® cone bass/midrange woofer.

The weight of each speaker is 10kg or 22 lbs, which is not a problem when it comes to positioning the speakers onto the stands. I recommend using something like spots of blu-tac or similar as most stands just have a smooth surface, and you wouldn't want these to fall off.

Behind each speaker you have two red and two black banana plug sockets (that's the round type), and a metal bar linking the two, so that you can choose whether to run just one, or the audiophile's dream two, sets of cables from the amplifier. The terminals are gold plated and of a high quality and very robust.

#~~~ PERFORMANCE ~~~#

Now I could go into all sorts of esoteric detail here, but I won't, I shall try and keep it concise and simple. So...

The speaker is capable of producing some jaw-dropping low rumbles in cinema use, so much so that I didn't bother buying a subwoofer for a long time, as I thought it unnecessary. However the speaker does not seem to produce thumping rock bass as well as some of its rivals - I would suggest this is more of a pop/jazz/classics speaker, which suits me fine as that's my more usual choice.

The speaker has a very refined sound, once you've allowed several hours of use to pass. It's not aggressive or blary, it sounds like something you'd pay much more for. Where it really seems to shine is in orchestral scores and instrumental jazz, and where it perhaps lacks a little is in vocals. Having said that, many of my CDs are vocalists, and I've always enjoyed listening to them. I get the feeling that male vocalists are handled better than the female ones, overall.

I would suggest avoiding placing these speakers too close to a corner position, as they will rumble a bit too much. They are happiest out in the open, and they are also happiest once they've been used for well over 50 hours playback.

As with all speaker reviews, so much depends on the equipment with which it's being used. As my amplifier is a Sony Home Cinema Amp and not a Stereo Hi-Fi one, that has to take some blame for any negative points I have mentioned.

I think the speakers could be summed up for me by saying that I never get tired of listening to them, and that I still have found no desire or need to change them, despite having several years of service to their credit.

Summary: I'd buy them again!

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