B&W 686

The 5-inch diameter Kevlar' cone bass/midrange is based on a tried-and-trusted B&W design, but its new fixed center bullet helps to smooth the response in upper frequencies. Also, by setting the bass/midrange closer to the tweeter than in equivalent earlier speakers, B&W has improved the integration and vertical dispersion of sound from the two units. The Nautilus' tube-loaded, aluminum dome tweeter, featuring a new surround material to improve spaciousness and imaging, adds needle-sharp top end all the way to 50kHz and beyond.

The improvements to the drive units in the new 600 Series make it possible, for the first time, to introduce a minimalist crossover to the range. The use of components that are fewer in number but higher in quality ' hand-picked in exhaustive listening tests ' reduces the degradation of the signal significantly. So, whether you're enjoying hi-fi or home cinema, what you hear is that much closer to what was recorded.

Visually, a refreshed, contemporary design language and a widened choice of wood finishes allows the 685 to fit in effortlessly with any interior.

Some of B&W's cutting-edge technologies in this new 600 Series speaker include:

Kevlar
The midrange is where the real musical action is invariably found, and a smooth midband is an invaluable loudspeaker quality. Enter Kevlar. It's been B&W's cone material of choice since 1974, and with good reason. The basic woven fabric is first impregnated with a stiffening resin that cures during the cone forming process. The cone is then further treated with a polymer coat, which seals the fibers and adds damping. The result is a semi-flexible cone, which exhibits a peculiar style of break-up behavior, not found in more conventional materials, that maintains a more constant dispersion pattern at all frequencies in its range and transmits far fewer delayed, time-smearing sounds to the listener. Not only does it deliver a cleaner sound, it can do so to a wider group of listeners.

Flowport'
Car designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure their vehicles slice efficiently through the air. If they don't, not only does turbulence reduce performance, it also increases wind noise. So it is with the reflex port in a loudspeaker cabinet. If turbulence occurs as the air moves in and out of the port, you'll hear extraneous noise and, as you turn the volume up, the bass won't be as tight and well timed as it should be.

B&W's Flowport' minimizes turbulence in the same way as a golf ball. Dimples on the surface generate tiny eddy currents over which air can flow smoothly and, above all, silently. It's a perfect hole (but don't use it for putting practice)/

Crossover tuning
The parts of a speaker doing the hard, mechanical work, the drivers, act on the signals distributed to them by the electrical processing part: the crossover. The thing to look for is its simplicity. Some speakers demand complex crossovers to compensate for the shortcomings in their drive units. The better the mechanical design, the simpler the electronic design can be.

We are still working to understand fully why and how certain components influence the sound of a speaker. Different manufacturers' versions of nominally the same component significantly alter the character of the sound; the only solution is to put our trust in our ears and to choose what sounds best. We carry out exhaustive listening tests rigorously assessing the performance of each component until we find the optimum component for each position in the circuit. Fine-tuning by ear is only possible if the crossover is simple and the section of the crossover that perhaps benefits most from our policy of listen-and-learn is the part handling the signal for the tweeter. In most B&W speakers, it is carried by a single, ear-chosen component that preserves the very finest detail.

Nautilus' Tapering Tube
The sound of silence. Not all sound generated by speaker drive units is good sound. The kind that emerges from the back of a working driver, into a conventional box cabinet, can bounce around and make a mess of the good sound coming out of the front. B&W's trailblazing Nautilus' speaker found a way around boxes. Tapering tubes filled with absorbent wadding soaked up the wayward sound energy and reduced resonances to an insignificant minimum.

Nautilus' Tapering Tubes are fitted to nearly all B&W speakers, even when they're not visible to the eye. Sound is channeled through a hollow pole magnet, away from the diaphragm, and disappears into the tail. So all the sound you hear is good sound.

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