B&W 800D3 & Room Size
 

Hi B&W UK said that for the 800D3 you need min 16feet x 24feet room. What room sizes do you have for this speaker and does it work well? Thanks

My room is 13.59 x 16.38 feet (4.14 x 4.99 m; 20.68 sqm). Room height is 8.39 feet (2.56 m).
The speakers are prominent pieces of furniture.

Distance between central line of speakers is 7.79 feet (2.37 m). Listening distance from front of speakers is 10.68 feet (3.26 m); this is at the upper limit and should be slightly shorter.
The speakers are towed in. The straight lines pass by the ears and are crossing behind the listening postion, but before the back wall.

Ear height at listening postion is 3.4 feet (1.03 m).
This requires some tilting forward of the speakers.

Minimum distance from center line of speakers to side wall is 1.88 feet (0.57 m). Minimum distance from front center line of speakers to back wall is 2.92 feet (0.89 m).
Some damping material on the side and back walls may be required to dampen early reflections. Alternatively an electronic compensation of early reflections may be used (Trinnov ST-2 only).
Placing equipment between speakers should be kept to a minimum (i.e. TV and power amps only). Do not place the whole electronic system between the speakers, because this will negatively influence sound quality, especially imageing.

Please keep in mind, that the smaller the room, the higher the frequencies of the room modes.
This requires electronic room compensation (e.g. Trinnov ST-2).

The quality of the electronic system should be on the same level as the 800 D3s.
There is a lot of good electronics on the market, but unfortunately only very few of it is good enough for the 800 D3s.
And with the 800 D3s you will always immediately hear the difference.

Extremely careful speaker placement, absolute top grade electronic equipment plus room compensation will most likely lead to excellent results.
Overall, I can say that I'm very satisfied with the sound of my 800 D3s in my relatively small room.

Martin

Brilliant insight ! So when you say bass management units do you mean behind the speakers or in front.

Room modes create peaks, which you can dampen by using bass traps behind the speakers, and dips, which you can only correct ("fill up") with electronic room compensation.
Since peaks and dips vary depending on the location within the room, the compensation should be done primarily for the listening position / area.

You can use your PC with the free Room EQ Wizard (REW) software and a relatively low priced measurement microphone to measure your room playing back the signals via your system.

I currently use electronic compensation only (Accuphase DG-58, Trinnov ST-2 Pro is planned).

Martin

Hi, I will try to supply the info the same way Martin did for my room.

I have a dedicated sound room with GIK Corner Traps x8 and 3 4"x 4'x8 Art panels on each side wall. Only other items in the room are the audio rack mid left wall, 2 amp racks behind speakers and my albums in 8 Per Madsen record racks center back wall.

My room is 17.25' x 23.13' (399 Sq Ft). Room height is 8.54 feet (2.56 m).

Distance between central line of speakers is 10' 8" (tweeter center to tweeter center). Listening distance from front of speakers is 11' 5'. That is if you drew a line from tweeter to tweeter and then a perpendicular line from that to back of my head.

Not sure exactly how Martin calculated distance to his listening position. Also curious where he found that 10.68 is at the upper limit. I called B&W tech support and they had no insight.

Hope this helps. Absolutely love these speakers. I also had the 802D3 which are also incredible. If you are concerned about the size of your room to handle the 800D3's I think you would be thrilled with the 802's. I had them in a 17 x 13 x 8 room and was thrilled. Feel free to ping me if you have any other questions

I measured the distance to my listening position (using a small laser distance meter).

Basically the listening position is supposed to be at the peak of an even sided triangle.
However one can extend the length of the perpendicular line to max. 1.33 x the distance between the tweeters.
Doing Pythagoras calculation (half distance between speakers / 90º angle / perpendicular line forms the triangle) results in a direct listening distance to each speaker of 1.42 x distance between speakers, hence the calculated upper limit in my case would be 11.06 feet (3.37 m).

Having the listening position too far away will result in imageing errors: far left and far right (signals coming from one speaker only) will remain the same, whereas all signals from between the speakers (signals from both speakers together) will tend to concentrate towards the middle between the speakers.
When the listening position is about correct, all signals from between the speakers should be evenly spaced from left to right.

IHMHO the 800 D3 is quite a different animal compared to the 802 D3.

Martin

My experience... yes, atleast 16x20

Again Thanks for this.

Thanks for this, yes I did extensive demos of the 802 versus 800 and not sure why, I became very enamoured with the 800 midrange, obviously the bass as well.

I have a 16'W x 14'D room that has a 17' ceiling and the house is open concept. My audio room is open to the kitchen, hallway, living room and large upper loft. Actually lots of open space. Would this work for 800 D3's?