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B&W 803S, are they the right speakers for me?

I purchased B&W 803S three years ago after trading up from the 805S. My system currently consists of:
803S
MC352
MC41
Denon 2810 (Transport)
TADAC w/Tele NOS smooth plates
Upgraded Power cords
Tara Lab interconnects
Anticables (recent purchase)

My room is 20' wide and about 30' long, but I have a sofa about 10 feet from speakers (which are 9' apart and 2' from back wall). I do have a fair amount of furniture in the room with little opportunity for room treatments (wife issue). Speakers are very slightly toed in.

Speaker dilema- I have to crank them to get well rounded sound with reasonable imaging. I have tried for three years to make them really work. Where have I gone wrong? Thinking of a great smaller speaker that may be more efficient with better imaging (Dynaudio C1 is being considered).

Your help is greatly appreciated!
dmm53
dmm53 OP
63 posts
 
Played with positioning for the millionth time this weekend. Moved speakers a bit closer together and imaging improved a bit. I'm also enjoying the anti cables which seem to be a bit more revealing in detail.

This system moves from wow to uggghhh depending on source music. The aluminum tweeter can sound spectacular with good instrumental passages and shrill with some female voice (even with the tube DAC). Is it just the source music and the fact that the 803s are revealing?
brianmgrarcom
1,317 posts
 
It could be any of a number of things, somewhere there isn't a match or possibly a room issue; I do not subscribe to all speakers with aluminum twweter guaranteed to sound "hot", it is all in the design/execution of the speaker.
rwwear
2,692 posts
 
One way to help with an overly revealing tweeter is to toe the speakers in where the tweeter crosses just in front of your listening position.
swampwalker's avatar
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swampwalker
5,132 posts
 
You are not going to like this, but the "harshness" or "shrillness" may be from the tweeter. When A'gon member Dougdeacon went from the 803 to the 803D, we all heard a significant improvement in the high end w respect to what you may be talking about. We attributed it to reduced distortion from the tweeter. You may want to talk to him directly. He gets great sound from the 803Ds in a relatively small, multi-purpose space. Luckily for him, his spouse has even more sensitive ears than he does, but last time I was there, they had a big ole flat screen TV in there, plus lots of furniture and it sounded great! As best as I can remember, they use a significant amount of toe-in, FWIW. Good luck.
musicnoise
377 posts
 
If you want to find out if it is the tweeter carefully attach a kleenex over the front of the tweeter with the aid of a rubber band. If you get a decrease in the harshness it's the tweeter, if not, keep looking. One reason I doubt that it is the tweeter is even a soprano is still going to be in the range of the midrange on the 803, not the tweeter. You really aren't getting much out of the tweeter other than cymbals, some lead guitar on the high frets, and some harmonics but the harmonics are at very low levels in comparison with the fundamentals which, in the case of vocals, are below the cutoff freq
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