Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield.

Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

In Reply to: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. posted by DZE on September 24, 2001 at 12:27:13:

I don't listen in the near field, but I also thought the 602's were a little on the bright side and have been working on that. Here's what I've found to date:
Bi-wiring made them brighter and I thought less coherent. So back to Uni-wired. I went from 12 gauge very fine strand cable to 12 gauge with heavier gauge stranding. This helped a lot. Solid core would be the ultimate in this trend. I have long runs so I need 12 gauge to meet B&W's criteria of 0.1 ohm speaker cable resistance.
I use and NAD C350 integrated amp. I tried various pre out/main in jumpers and ended up with the factory ones.
I use to have an Arcam 7SE, but found it to be bright. So I went back to my older Sony XA1ES with 1/2 meter low capacitance cables.
I have the speakers on 24.5" stands and they were toed in. I recently tipped them back about 7 degrees to get my ears off of the tweeter axis and then found that I did not need them toed in to get a good image, so they're back to straight ahead. With your very short listening distance, tilting them back is probably not going to do it, so I'd suggest raising them to put the tweeter above your ears by a few inches. You definitely want to get your listening position off axis.
Overly bright speakers seems to be the curse of the high end these days. Probably a result of the morons running around looking for more and more detail. My son-in-law and I have learned to avoid products which are listed as "detailed" or "revealing". They have become synonyms for "bright". I have my 602's well under control at this point and do enjoy the clean smooth sound I get. Although on some CD's I have to use the treble control to cut the highs a bit. They are a stretch as a nearfield speaker, something like the BBC designed LS3/5a with a small sub would probably do even better. They were specifically designed for nearfield and worked wonderfully in tight spaces.

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - DZE 12:27:13 09/24/01 (10)

Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - Teejay 21:02:05 09/25/01 (0)

Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - John K 18:18:30 09/24/01 (0)

I prefer the 302's to 602's - Scott Woebcke 16:31:55 09/24/01 (0)

Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - Bald Iggle 16:23:56 09/24/01 (0)

Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - redfly 14:02:27 09/24/01 (0)

Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - Magnetar 13:59:50 09/24/01 (4)

hang a single ply tissue over the tweeters<nt> - Al the Vegan 10:08:47 09/25/01 (3)

So thats what they mean when they say the highs are a little veiled! - DZE 11:13:39 09/25/01 (2)

Re: So what's it mean if highs are "crappy" ? NT - Bruce Righter 20:43:50 09/25/01 (1)

TP - Magnetar 07:29:50 09/26/01 (0)

Follow Ups

Re: B&W 602s2 in the nearfield. - Bald Iggle 16:23:56 09/24/01 (0)

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