Raising the flag

Nick Tate auditions the smallest floorstander in the company’s illustrious new flagship range and is suitably impressed

- Nick Tate

Luxury lies not in the richness of things, but in the absence of vulgarity,” as Coco Channel famously said. That’s certainly the approach taken by Bowers & Wilkins designers, who have come up with an extremely elegant-looking new floor standing loudspeaker. It’s dead modern but doesn’t go over the top into bling territory. The result is crisp and classy, and that’s just the start of our journey into the 804 D4.

The 800 Series is B&W’s flagship range and the 804 is its entry-level floorstander. Often thought the poor relation of the bigger and more expensive 800 models, this latest D4 is certainly no longer there to just make up the numbers. The original 801 dates back to 1979, where it was adopted as a reference speaker in Abbey Road Studios. The 804 model line first appeared with 1998’s Nautilus 804, but the 804 Diamond of 2005 was the first properly modern-sounding version. 2010’s 804 D2 was further tweaked, and 2015 804 D3 was better still, eschewing the old Kevlar midrange cones for new Continuum types of lower distortion.

The new 804 D4 has been heavily revised over its predecessor. In the outgoing D3 series, the top-end 800 models got B&W’s ‘reverse wrap’ enclosure, but this now trickles down to the 804 D4. Bowers says that the old model with its more conventional front baffle created various issues, which have been solved by the new continuously curved front profile, one that swoops around back to a central rear aluminum‘ spine’. This, says spokesman Andy Kerr, reduces resonance due to it being a more inert and stiffer structure with less baffling around the drive units to aid dispersion.