B&W CM1

The B&W CM1 mini-monitor was designed and developed in tandem with the 805s from the 800 Series and shares that model’s driver and crossover technology, along with its remarkable musical ability. It continues a long and distinguished line of compact and inherently accurate monitors that have an uncanny ability to re-create an utterly convincing portrayal of music’s dynamics, color, energy and beauty.

The driver line-up of a 130mm Kevlar® cone bass/midrange and 25mm Nautilus™ tube-loaded aluminum dome tweeter endow the CM1 with a striking ability to resolve fine musical detail and its first order crossover topology, made possible by the remarkably wide bandwidth of the drivers, ensures it makes music as a seamless, cohesive whole. The Nautilus™ tweeter also extends the CM1’s frequency response to above 50kHz. Despite its small size the CM1’s low frequency performance balances perfectly its transparent and extended midrange and high frequencies. Flowport™ technology to minimise turbulence, and a bass driver featuring magnet system technology that reduces distortion, mean that CM1 bass is deep, fast, tuneful and always under control. An optional port sleeve that modifies the low frequency response shape allows positioning of the speaker right up close to room boundaries without musical compromise.

The CM1’s cabinet is a classically manufactured and exquisitely veneered expression of the cabinet makers’ art and provides a visually understated and mechanically rigid enclosure for the drivers. Real wood finishes in Wenge, Rosenut and Maple are available. And removing the magnetically attached black or dark grey fabric grille to view the drivers reveals no unsightly grille mounting features. Shelf or wall bracket mounting is perfectly feasible for the CM1 but a matching floor-stand, the FS 700/CM, is available and provides optimal performance.

Some of B&W’s cutting-edge technologies 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.