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Crucially, this 150mm cone version replaces the original Kevlar cone material – long a staple of B&W engineering – with a softer woven material called Continuum. The sound quality and the in-room far-field measurements both attest to the superiority of the new material, which apparently spent some ten years in development. One advantage of using a woven material is that its stiffness varies according to whether this is measured along the warp and weft or across the diagonals between them. Because of this variation, the outer edge of the cone starts to cancel and the source therefore effectively reduces in diameter as frequency rises, smoothing the breakup and substantially retaining the distribution. Other innovations in the midband include an aluminium chassis that has been optimised through finite element analysis (FEA), a tuned central ‘bung’ to damp any remaining resonances, and a new, more effective and less costly means of decoupling the unit from the box.

The tweeter here is a new development, partly because the diamond dome used in the 800 D series is simply too costly for use in the 700-series. Instead we have a metal dome that has extra reinforcement from a 30µm thick vapour-deposited carbon ‘skin’ on the front, and a 300µm thick carbon ring on the rear. This combination apparently extends the first breakup mode point to 47kHz, which is well short of the 70kHz claimed for the 800 D3’s diamond dome but still comfortably above the 38kHz used by the double aluminium dome in the 600 series, or the widely accepted 20kHz top end of the audio band. A bonus found only in the two ‘tweeter on top’ models is that said tweeter is mounted in a hewn-from-solid aluminium billet that weighs a full 1kg.

There’s innovation in the (three) bass drivers too, as each of the 165mm units uses an aerofoil-section cone that varies in thickness in order to maintain stiffness with good damping. This is made of paper skins surrounding EPS damping in the case of the 702, saving costs over the carbon-fibre-over-foam used by the current 800-series models.

The net result of this rather extensive range of innovations is a loudspeaker that gets remarkably close to an 802 D3 soundwise, yet costs only a fraction of the price. It’s a very impressive allround package considering the reasonable enough price-tag, helped by mass production at a new factory that B&W has built in Zhuhai, China.

Measurements only tend to confirm the impressive performance, with an in-room frequency balance that’s held within tight limits across most of the audio band – roughly ±2.5dB from 60Hz to 15kHz. The Continuum cone shows some reduction in the presence band suckout that Kevlar used to demonstrate. And the top end remains well maintained, even though it appears to lack the smoothness of the diamond dome (dipping a little at around 4kHz). Output is actually a little strong below 60Hz, though it’s also quite even and well extended.

Sensitivity is a generous 91-92dB, though this is rather heavily compromised by an impedance that drops to around 3ohms at around 110Hz. Although the bass end is ported, the port itself is tuned to a very low c.22Hz, so its effect on music is likely to be marginal.

The dimensions part of the specifications refer to plinths that weren’t actually included with our review pair. In fact an earlier B&W model did include just such a plinth, which had been included to satisfy European ‘tilt test’ requirements, and I suspect that it’s unlikely to affect performance in any way. In practice I merely fitted spikes to the 702 S2 in the normal way, and then mounted each on a spring-suspended Townshend platform to decouple the speaker from the suspended wooden floor. This arrangement seemed to work very well.

The 702 S2 comes in three alternative finishes: gloss black, satin white, and rosenut; the latter now has rather more grain structure than earlier examples. Brass strips are used to link the bi-wire crossover network.

Soundwise the 702 S2 was thoroughly impressive. Indeed, it was quite difficult to tell the sound quality difference between the 702 S2 and the 802 D3, despite the considerable price differential. Reason does point to the 802 D3 having a wider dynamic range, which is probably true, and a younger pair of ears at the initial listening session did find the top end a little sweeter when the diamond dome tweeter was doing its thing.

However, conversely, in strict comparison terms I actually found the imaging of the 702 S2 marginally superior to the 800 D3, as it seemed to have a slightly tighter midband focus, though both are very good in this regard.

Above all, I simply slotted the 702 S2s into the locations from which I’d removed the 800 D3s, and although the bottom end somewhat lacked the grip and purposefulness of the senior model, its midband seemed very much on a par, and the top end seemed fine (to these ears anyway!).

A major strength of this speaker is undoubtedly its very even overall balance that ensures fine tonal neutrality at all times. There’s no denying that the Continuum FST unit is a worthwhile improvement over its Kevlar predecessor, largely because the lack of presence band aggressiveness has been well controlled alongside a more open sound balance.

During the time I spent listening to the 702 S2, some visitors from Rega came over to install a Naiad turntable. I contemplated changing the speakers as the Naiad costs some ten times that of the 702 S2s, but actually didn’t bother as the speakers seemed perfectly able to distinguish between the turntables and indeed the phono stages we had available.

This is a particularly fine loudspeaker, especially considering that it costs so much less than the 800-series models, yet offers a standard of performance that can certainly give the 802 D3 a run for its money. The latter will manage to beat this upstart over the long haul, but the sonic difference between them is nowhere near as large as the pricetag differential might suggest.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Drive Units: 1x25mm (1 in) Carbon Dome tweeter: 1× ø150mm (6 in) Continuum cone FST midrange: 3×165mm (6.5 in) Aerofoil Profile bass
• Bandwidth: -6dB at 28Hz and 33kHz
• Frequency response: 45Hz – 28kHz ±3dB
• Sensitivity: 90dB spl (2.83VRMS, 1m)
  Distortion 2nd and 3rd harmonics (90dB, 1m) <1% 86Hz – 28kHz, <0.5% 110Hz – 20kHz
• Power Handling: 30W–300W
• Finishes: Gloss black, white, Rosenut
• Size (W×H×D): 200 × 994 × 337mm
• Weight: 29.5kg
• Price: £3,300 per pair

Manufactured by: Bowers & Wilkins

URL: bowers-wilkins.co.uk

Tel: 0800 232 1513 (UK only)

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Alon Wolf of Magico is currently on a bit of a world tour with the new A3. Last week, it was the UK’s turn, and a select group of journalists fell upon KJ West One in the heart of London’s West End to see if the loudspeaker would live up to its potential.

The A3 itself retains a surprising amount of Magico DNA. Like its bigger brothers, the new three-way, four driver design features a fully-braced, sealed, anodised enclosure that is made of aircraft-grade 6061 T6 aluminium. The crossover still features Magico’s ‘Elliptical’ design, an enhanced variation on the 24dB/octave Linkwitz-Riley network, which bristles with high-end components, too. This feeds carbon nanographene cones with neodymium magnets for the 152mm midrange and two 177mm bass drivers, and the 28mm dome tweeter. Here, the tweeter uses a diaphragm of pure beryllium instead of diamond-coated-beryllium. Something of a first for Magico; the drive units are replaceable in the field, rather than necessitating a return to the San Francisco factory, and the 50kg, 112cm tall loudspeakers are shipped in boxes rather than crates.

The blurb from Magico described the A3 as a “simplified Q Series design” (in terms of the enclosure at least) but this didn’t accurately describe how close these come to their bigger brothers in performance. This is a smaller loudspeaker than something like the S3 Mk II (probably the closest product to the A3 in the existing range), but in the context of the sort of listening room a £12,000 reasonable sized tower loudspeaker might wind up being used in, the A3 might just be well-nigh perfect.

It was an all-too-brief listening session, about 20 minutes all up, so deeper impressions of the loudspeaker should be tempered by that, but even in 20 minutes you can hear where something fits on ‘The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly’ continuum, and this was clearly on the side of the Good. It had all those Magico properties of precision and accuracy of stage, focus, detail, and micro-dynamic resolution, just in a package designed for more real-world listening use. On first listen at least, this window into the music could have easily passed for a much bigger, much more expensive loudspeaker. On first listen, I want a pair!

Putting a scoop of audio journalists in the same room is like herding cats but getting them to agree on something is practically impossible. But for once, there was consensus. The technocrat loved the engineering. The rhythm-kings loved the way the sound ‘timed’. The penny-pincher loved the idea of getting a £28,000 sound in a £11,998 package. The Magico fans found their new entry-level to high-performance audio. Even the curmudgeonly tech scribe who doesn’t normally deal with high-end audio was impressed.

This is an important loudspeaker for Magico, as it puts the brand in front of a new audience who hitherto could only aspire to the company’s products. But perhaps more importantly, it’s an important loudspeaker for high-end in general. Yes, we heard it on the end of some extremely high-end equipment (dCS, D’Agostino, Transparent, and Artesania) but it is designed to be used with more affordable partners (Alon mentioned Hegel’s big H360 integrated amplifier more than once, suggesting it had been used as part of the test platform). That means Magico is looking to the A3 as part of a system costing the right side of £17,000, with all the performance that loudspeaker brings to the table. OK, for many that’s still a lot of money, but I honestly can’t think of a system that will deliver more for less.