IGNORE THE HYPE! BOWERS AND WILKINS 606 S2 SPEAKER REVIEW
BOWERS AND WILKINS 606 S2 ANNIVERSARY EDITION REVIEW
As a reviewer, when we get a product for review and absolutely love it - those are the easiest reviews to do. I mean who doesn’t like to talk about something you enjoy? But what happens when you realize that you don’t care for a product? Worse, what happens when the product is from a brand you’ve always been known to love? It can be easy as a reviewer to shrug off a less than stellar product, even choosing not to review it. As someone who has relied extensively on this B&W for both personal and professional use. I feel like I KNOW this brand, like I KNOW their sound - at least I THOUGHT I did, and why I am at a loss with respect to the 600 Series from Bowers and Wilkins.
BOWERS AND WILKINS 606 S2 SPEAKER REVIEW BY ANDREW ROBINSON
B&W 606 S2 SPECS
The 606 S2 Anniversary Edition speaker is the latest iteration of Bowers & Wilkins’ hugely popular 600 Series. Now in its seventh generation, the Anniversary Edition commemorates the Series 25th anniversary - a HUGE FEAT. To celebrate, Bowers & Wilkins has made updates to the speaker’s dome tweeter, utilizing a newer Decoupled Double Dome design, mated to their own Continuum Cone which made its debut in the brand’s costlier 800 Series Diamond some years ago. The updated drivers, along with what Bowers & Wilkins calls an “optimized crossover design” gives the 606 S2 a reported frequency response of 52Hz to 28kHz -though in-room response can reach down to around 40Hz. Sensitivity is rated at 88dB into a nominal 8 Ohm load, though impedance can drop to as low as 3.7 when pushed.
600 SERIES DESIGN
This is normally where I dive into a product’s design. B&W has always had design on lock. So it’s no surprise to me that the new 606 S2 is a real looker. The 600 Series has always punched above its weight class with respect to looks, even going back to the early days, and it has only gotten better -visually -with time. I rarely go for an all-black speaker and yet I think the 606 S2 without its grilles has tuxedo-like vibes that I find very classy!
SETTING UP THE 606 S2
Setting up the 606 S2 is straight forward. Because this is a rear ported loudspeaker, how far or close you position it from your front wall will have an effect on its overall bass quality. Placement doesn’t seem to affect soundstaging or imaging too much, good or bad, so place it in your room where the bass sounds “right” to you, experiment with or without toe in and you’re basically done.
POWERING THE B&W 606 SPEAKERS
Despite its specs, this is not a difficult speaker to drive. In fact, B&W confirmed that this speaker was designed in part using a 30W per channel integrated - something I would have never expected given how power hungry their speakers have been historically. I see this as a welcome change and a positive new direction for B&W.
I can back up their claims as we paired the 606 with everything from a 2 Watt Decware on up to 150 WPC Musical Fidelity M5si - all of which drove this speaker EASILY. I don’t want to get into amplifier pairing too much because honestly, I don’t think it matters when it comes to this particular speaker. But if you’re curious, you’ll find those details noted in the description. Just know that your choice of amplifier isn’t necessarily going to fix what I think is wrong with the 606 S2.
AMPLIFIER PAIRINGS (COMPLETE LIST)
Bluesound Powernode
Canor AI 2.10
Decware Zen Amp
NAD M33
Naim Uniti Atom
Musical Fidelity M5si
Before I go further with respect to my opinions about the 606 S2 AND NOW the 607 S2, there are a few things you need to know. First, Bowers & Wilkins is aware of this review. I have reached out to them for comment and will be sharing their official statements. Second, both the Bowers & Wilkins 606 S2 and 607 S2 speakers used in this review were purchased at retail by me. THESE ARE NOT PRESS SAMPLES. These speakers were purchased at different times and from different retailers in order to eliminate any questions with respect to damage, defects etc. In other words, I am a customer just like you.
HOW DO THE BOWERS & WILKINS 600 SPEAKERS SOUND?
So how do they sound? In my opinion, these speakers are a mess. It is no secret by now if you’re either a fan of Bowers & Wilkins or have been doing your research on this particular speaker series, there is one aspect of this speaker’s performance that more people have thought to bring up than any other; its high frequency performance. While I understand that perceived sound quality is ultimately subjective, and that the only person who has to like the sound of ANYTHING is you, I don’t believe this speaker’s high frequency performance to be good -let alone accurate. In fact, it can be very fatiguing.
Even when listening at moderate levels, for example around 50dB or so, when connected to either a Class A/B amplifier like the NAIM UNITI ATOM, or a single ended triode tube amplifier like the Decware Zen, the highs of this speaker were overtly accentuated, brash, and in no way in line with the rest of the speaker’s frequency response. For those of you scratching your head wondering why did I put the Zen amp to these speakers - A) to prove that power wasn’t the problem and B) the Zen amp has one of the smoothest high frequency presentations I’ve heard and I thought it might help tame some of the 606 top end harshness.
After our initial tests of the 606 S2, we immediately reached out not only to Bowers & Wilkins but their parent company, Sound United with our thoughts. While I was confident the speaker was not broken, I didn’t want to take any chances. At the recommendation of a B&W representative, we ultimately decided that the best way forward was to purchase another sample in the 607 S2 which shares a similar design and the same tweeter as the 606.
Here is what Bowers & Wilkins’ Director of Product Marketing, Andy Kerr, had to say about the voicing of the new anniversary series:
“The component selection, frequency response and final sound of the 600 Series Anniversary Edition – and indeed, every other range of loudspeakers we make – have all been carefully optimized and are in no way an accidental outcome or a by-product of slap-dash engineering. We are proud of the products we make and this is how we want them to sound.”
While I never suggested that this speaker’s sound was a result of poor engineering, it would appear that the voicing of this speaker is purposeful. Taking Mr. Kerr at his word, I find this speaker’s tweeter performance exhausting. Even when listening to the highest resolution recordings, the highs from this speaker are prone to excessive sibilance, distortion and ringing -even at moderate volumes and regardless of the amplifier pairing.
B&W 606/607 TREBLE RESPONSE
While some have said the speaker’s treble response gives the speaker an incredible sense of detail and immediacy -something perhaps Bowers and Wilkins hasn’t historically been known for in the past - the increase in perceived detail comes at the expense of sounding natural. Instead it feels incredibly artificial. The highs are rather full of audible artifacts similar to the type you may associate with poor MP3 compression, at their extremes. If your musical tastes are anything less than audiophile-grade recordings, for example if you like to listen to hard, driving rock - recordings that are often, lets face it - not always the best, the highs can be blisteringly brutal. For example, Audioslave’s Show Me How To Live is a torture test for a speaker’s high speaker’s response and I found it unlistenable through the 606 and 607.
The treble is so aggressive that its effect on the rest of the speaker’s sound is profound. The midrange while still possessing a bit of “suck” is now completely overshadowed. The body, the physical presence of artists is somewhat lost. Sure, aspects of the vocals may stand out but the sense of the singer’s complete presence is missing. (ex Alanis breathing)
THE MIDRANGE
While this sense of detail can be appealing initially, switching to another, similarly spec’d speaker, you realize that the Bowers & Wilkins’ midrange is MIA. Trying to bring the speaker’s treble response more in line with the midrange, I used the tone controls on the Bluesound Powernode, setting the treble to -6dB. While this helped to curb some of the speaker’s aggressive tendencies, it didn’t eliminate it. The midrange with the treble lowered, now sounded more vague, distant and muffled as a result. There’s almost no appreciable transition from one part of the speaker’s frequency response to the next. It is very much a compartmentalized sound of bass...midrange...treble, with seemingly audible gaps between each.
B&W 600 BASS PERFORMANCE
As for the bass, it’s punchy AF. It is arguably more dynamic and more aggressive than any Bowers & Wilkins speaker I have heard to date regardless of price or design. Which I could say, is potentially a positive. This is not a loudspeaker with a reserved or polite demeanor -especially down low -the 606 and 607 S2s are rowdy.
SOUNDSTAGE & DYNAMICS
Soundstage is vast -at least horizontally - provided you sit smack dab in the center between the left and right speakers. Dispersion is not good off-axis as sound quickly bunches up to one side or the other as you move left to right. While the speakers are capable of presenting you with a large scale soundstage, I wouldn’t say the definition within it, apart from the high frequency rendering of course, is particularly sharp or altogether focused. The soundstage presence is definitely forward, projecting well in front of the speakers themselves but not receding back too much making for a presentation that is more wall like -than stage.
Dynamics on the other hand are EPIC. I’m used to needing to play with a Bowers & Wilkins speaker a bit in order to achieve its best sound. Heck, the 702 Signature we reviewed last year required some SERIOUS experimentation in order to get right -especially with respect to dynamics. When we finally got it right, it was amazing which is why we awarded it one of our loudspeakers of the year. The 606 S2 is the opposite of that experience. This speaker wants to rock and rock hard, and it wants to do it 24/7 -even if the artist you’re trying to enjoy is Diana Krall. Dynamics are not this speaker’s shortcoming. Like I said earlier, getting this speaker to dance doesn’t appear to be amplifier dependent. And when asked for B&W’s recommendation on system matching - specifically amplifier power, Mr. Kerr had this response:
“...we have to make the business of getting up and running with 600 Series as easy and as painless as possible, right?...That’s why our initial voicing work was done with a 30w integrated amplifier, and I have plenty of colleagues who continue to use their own 600 Series units at home with amplifiers in that sort of output range, or similar, and they’re all very happy.”
So what you’re left with is a moderately sized, attractive two-way bookshelf speaker in either the 606 or 607 S2 that both can sound positively huge...AND in your face. All the time, with nearly zero restraint.
So who is this speaker for? It’s no secret that people, myself and Kristi included, can and do like a speaker with a bit of top end emphasis. But the 600 Anniversary Series seems to have taken that like to an extreme- well outside the boundaries of my personal tastes. However, and I say this not as an insult but as a statement of reality; as we age our high frequency hearing often changes or fades. In which case, a speaker such as these, ones with a more forward or aggressive treble response may be preferable. Maybe it takes an aggressive rise in the highs to bring back a sense of detail to recordings that father time may have stolen years ago. If you are at all sensitive when it comes to the high notes, I don’t think this speaker is going to be for you.
There’s really no need for me to go any further. I just can’t recommend this loudspeaker for everyone. I know there is a lot of positivity surrounding this speaker online and I would like nothing more than to join in that sentiment. Sadly, that has not been my experience. These are being returned. I’m very saddened by this review and take no pleasure in it. I’m certainly not looking to be your hero. Because Bowers & Wilkins is one of my original hifi loves and it would appear, at least with respect to my experience with the 606 and 607 S2, that, like people, sometimes things change.
