The Sound
Contents
We know the Bowers & Wilkins 702 S2 quite well. However, it has never really grabbed us. There is something off with that speaker. An imbalance between mid and high. This is also measurable. Now we had expected the 705 S2 to also be present. Fortunately that is not the case. This Signature is a lot better than we had initially thought.
Air
The first word that comes to mind with this Bowers & Wilkins 705 S2 Signature is air. It’s also truly a hallmark of modern B&Ws. Anyone who still associates The British Bowers & Wilkins with a warm sound may not have heard modern Bowers & Wilkins speakers. Certainly the D3 line has a very tight and open in sound. Partly because of the hump in the high frequencies. And some enthusiasts love it. Others don’t. That is a matter of taste.
Now we don’t want to say that the 705 Signature sounds cool. Not at all. There is a rich and clean midrange with loads of detail. By the way, we are already used to that with the Continuum units. That’s a real gem, after all.
In this case, the unit also tackles the bass and is thus equipped with a surround (the flexible edge / suspension around the unit). This is in contrast to the 3-way systems where the bass is picked up by a conventional woofer and this Continuum unit lacks the surround. That bass also comes out nicely and should continue to about 50 Hz at -3 dB. That’s pretty much in line with our measurements.
In focus
The imaging is beautiful. It’s big, stable and natural in size. Voices are not ‘two by two meters’ and a grand piano is not a wine box in terms of size. The Bowers presents everything pretty much neatly to scale. And it is particularly precise in both the horizontal plane and in depth and height. That is not a given standard in this price class.
Edges
What is striking compared to the ‘regular’ Bowers & Wilkins 705 S2 and the 702 S2 is that the rough edge on the treble is gone. The tuning is no different: the bump is still there, but the refinement has improved; there is no roughness in the high frequencies. Perhaps due to the extra treatment of the tweeter and better quality filter components? We think it’s quite audible and without a doubt an improvement over the regular version. But yes … you do pay extra for it.
Bowers & Wilkins 705 S2 Signature
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