About The Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 Stand Mount Speakers
The 705 S3 is B&W's ultimate 700 Series stand mount speaker, a no-holds-barred celebration of excellence able to highlight all the subtle nuances in your music that other speakers miss. Its Carbon Dome tweeter is housed in a Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top enclosure evolved from the latest generation of 800 Series Diamond. That joins a new and subtly curved baffle endowed with an all-new 'pod' housing for its Continuum Cone bass/midrange driver, ensuring that you hear less of the speaker's cabinet, and more of the music you love.
Solid Body Tweeter: The 705 S3 features the latest generation of B&W's iconic Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top housing. Its redesigned, more elongated form incorporates a longer tube-loading system to produce an even more free and open sound with high frequencies. The carefully decoupled housing is milled from a single solid block of aluminium to better resist resonance.
Carbon Dome Tweeters: Carbon Dome tweeters are purpose-built for the 700 Series. Delivering a dramatic improvement on the aluminium double dome tweeter, they raise the breakup threshold to 47kHz, for pinpoint imaging accuracy and detail.
Continuum™ Cone: Thanks to its composite construction, the Continuum™ cone avoids the abrupt transitions in behaviour that can impair the performance of a conventional drive unit. The result is a more open, neutral performance that delivers voices and instruments with precision and transparency.
Curved Baffle: The 700 S3 range features a curved front baffle for the first time. This allows the midrange and bass drivers to be located in individual pod-type housings that sit proud of the speaker baffle. When combined with the curvature of the structure, this advanced approach – derived from the 800 Series Diamond – reduces the audible impact of the cabinet, creating a cleaner, more open and more immersive sound.
About The 700 Series 3 Range
The Bowers & Wilkins 700 S3 range of loudspeakers is defined by elegance and driven by performance. Every model in the range is inspired by the recording studio and enabled by cutting-edge technologies first developed for B&W's flagship 800 Series Diamond.
The 700 Series contains eight models: there's a speaker to suit every home and every requirement, whether your passion is high-performance stereo, immersive home cinema or a mix of both. Every model combines slim, elegant proportions with a choice of exquisite finishes.
With the 700 Series 3, Studio Sound comes home.
Precision Sound: 700 Series uses a wealth of state-of-the-art technologies derived from B&W's award-winning 800 Series Diamond range to provide a best-in-class audio experience.
Bring Hollywood Home: With two centre channel speakers to choose from plus the option of matching subwoofers, in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, the 700 Series performs brilliantly in any home cinema set-up.
Meaningful Design: Thanks to its svelte proportions, premium detailing and subtly curved cabinet form – plus the option of an all new Mocha finish – the 700 Series range is both beautiful and effortlessly elegant.
Studio Sound, Your Way: This is B&W's most extensive range: 700 Series range features floorstanding, standmount and bookshelf speakers, meaning you can get precision sound in any size of room, however you prefer to listen.
Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 Reviews
"Considering my well-established predilection for large speakers with extended bass, I didn't expect that much from these small standmounts. I should have expected more. Even though my listening room was not as favorable to the 705s as a smaller, more damped room would be, their performance was rewarding and enjoyable—no apology need be made on account of their size. Their midrange and treble resolution is outstanding, and their bass is musically satisfying. When properly set up, they will readily pull off that little trick and disappear into their own soundstage." Stereophile
"It becomes apparent in reasonably short order that it doesn't matter the source material or, to a lesser extent, its resolution – the Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 are a full-scale, prodigiously detailed and thoroughly engaging listen in pretty much any circumstance. From a bog-standard MP3 of Richard and Linda Thompson's 'The Calvary Cross' [Island] to a DSD64 file of Stevie Wonder's 'He's Misstra Know-It-All' [Tamla], from a compact disc of Patti Smith's Land (1975 – 2002) [Arista] to a 180g reissue of Ride's Going Blank Again [Wichita], these speakers are supremely even-handed – they strive to take themselves out of the equation as much as possible, and let the music do the talking.
The soundstage they create is large and convincing, with palpable depth and notable width. Low frequencies are confidently shaped, robustly textured, and decently rapid – without being pleased with themselves, bass sounds underpin a recording securely. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the frequency range, the tweeter arrangement offers notable clarity, bite, and similar levels of detail – the top end fairly shines but never hints at edginess or hardness, even at significant volume.
In between, the midrange is articulate, eloquent and all the other words that suggest 'communication'. Vocal technique, whether it's the purity of Stevie Wonder or the confrontational perspective of Patti Smith, is given plenty of room in which to express themselves – and the amount of fine detail the 705 S3 reveals makes their character and competence plain.
Cross-over is smooth in the manner of cashmere, and the top-to-bottom consistency of tonality makes the Bowers & Wilkins sound as natural or as processed as the source material demands. The low-end discipline means the speakers express rhythms with genuine positivity and can handle even the show-off time signatures and tempos of Joe Zawinul's The Rise and Fall of the Third Stream [Vortex] without alarms.
There's a similar sort of effortlessness on display regarding the dynamic aspect of these recordings, too. Whether the significant variations in volume and attack apparent in the Zawinul recording or the small harmonic fluctuations perceptible in Richard Thompson's guitar-playing, the 705 S3 identify them, contextualises them and gives them precisely the sort of emphasis they demand. And such is the togetherness and unity of the presentation on offer here, the sense of 'performance', of a loudspeaker that would prefer to get out of the way of your music rather than impose itself on it, is tangible." Hi-Fi+
Our Take On The Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 Speakers
We were big fans of the 705 Signature which took stand mount speakers to the next level in refinement. The 705 S3 leap frogs that model and shows what the Bowers & Wilkins design team can really do. In particular, the midrange transparency on offer here is absolutely world class with a hear-through ability which is almost uncanny. Bass is full and satisfying for a small speaker, especially when used on the matching FS700 S3 stands filled with Atacama Atabites. If full range is important then we would recommend a subwoofer or two to round out the lower frequencies and provide an even bigger soundstage. From top to bottom these speakers really shine, on acoustic music in particular, where their superb tonal balance, timbrel accuracy and vibrant dynamics allow the music to flow easily into the room in an enveloping and appealing manner. These really are some of the best stand mount speakers you are likely to encounter and deserve to be right at the top of your short list.
Main Features & Specifications
- Design: 2-Way Vented-Box Stand Mount Speakers
- Decoupled Carbon Dome Tweeter
- Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top
- Continuum™ Cone Bass/Midrange
- Flowport™
- Drive Units
- 25mm (1") Decoupled Carbon Dome High-Frequency Driver
- 165mm (6.5") Continuum Cone Bass/Midrange
- Frequency Range: 45Hz to 33kHz
- Frequency Response: 50Hz - 28kHz (+/-3dB from reference axis)
- Sensitivity: 88dB (on axis at 2.83Vrms at 1m)
- Harmonic Distortion: 2nd and 3rd harmonics (90dB, 1m on axis)
- <1% 100Hz - 22kHz
- <0.5% 150Hz - 20kHz
- Nominal Impedance: 8Ω (minimum 3.7Ω)
- Recommended Amplifier Power: 30W - 120W into 8Ω on unclipped programme
- Optional Matching Speaker Stands: B&W FS700 S3 (best filled with Atacama Atabites)
- Cabinet Finishes: Gloss Black (Black Grille), Satin White (Grey Grille), Mocha (Black Grille) & Rosenut (Black Grille)
- Width
- 192mm cabinet only
- Height
- 345mm cabinet only
- 413mm including tweeter
- Depth
- 297mm cabinet only
- 337mm including grille and terminals
- Weight 9.6 kg each
- Manufacturer's Warranty: 5 Years
Note: Features & Specifications Subject To Change Without Notice. E&OE.