A Nice British audio company is 50 years recent and to celebrate that anniversary it’s releasing another of its Signature product. Since the last massive anniversary 10 years ago was marked by a set of Signature speakers referred to as 800 D3 that sold for £eleven,000 a pair, you would possibly imagine this new unharness, a pair of deluxe headphones, can be correct dear, too.
However the company has modified a lot over the past decade, developing additional cheap audio gear that has been terribly favorably received. There was the Zeppelin speaker which remains the foremost immediately recognizable standalone audio product of recent years and has developed from being an iPod-only system into an accomplished digital music speaker.
And the corporate’s portable Bluetooth speaker, the T7, remains one in every of the foremost attractive (visually and conically) of its kind. There are masses of well-loved headphones in the B&W vary, so what makes the new ones, known as the Bowers & Wilkins P9 Signature, special?
Andy Kerr, Senior Product Manager at Bowers & Wilkins, told the Independent last week that the decision to create the newest anniversary product a set of headphones was to form something that was a lot of democratic, while still sticking to the no-holds-barred ethos of the corporate’s Signature items. “Every element is custom, from the cross-hatch finish on the Italian Safiano leather to the drive unit that is angled instead of flat, to enhance the angle of the human ear. That provides the impression the sound is slightly in front of you, like you’re paying attention to a speaker. With Signature products we tend to have no constraints on the engineering method, every aspect is investigated. We have a tendency to’re a personal company – with Signature we tend to attempt to please ourselves.”
There’s conjointly a gimbal mount for the ear pads to separate them from different vibrations and influences like, you know, the $64000 world. There’s a new memory foam in the ear pads for a higher seal that aims to be comfortable and noise-isolating.
All of that should contribute to what Andy Kerr describes because the house sound which relies on the principle of “losing the smallest amount of the audio signal”.
Therefore what are they like? Well, they certainly look the part with a hanging design that’s elegant and original – the quality of the leather and aluminium components is obvious at 1st glance. Pick them up and that they’re reassuringly heavy, though they don’t weigh you down when you place them on. The angled drive units feel great, fitting your ears differently from regular cans. The leather cups and headband are comfortable and pleasantly close-fitting.
Cables in the box embody one with an inline remote, one without. And in the approaching months B&W will offer a Lightning cable for customers who have registered, therefore iPhone 7 users are catered for.
All of that would mean nothing while not tight sound. Connected to an iPhone 6s, the playback was extraordinary: rich in that I’ve-never-heard-that-detail-before manner, with wide, beefy power that didn’t drown out gentler notes.
There’s a spacious feel to the music and a bright, deep clarity to the sound across completely different music genres and styles. Voices were potent and intimate, all the way down to the breaths, even the mouth-noises of Lou Reed at his throatiest in Vanishing Act from the album The Raven.
Signature merchandise are premium-priced but the £sixty nine9.99 price ticket on these headphones seems pretty keen to me – the build quality, high-end materials and spectacular sound ought to justify this to audiophiles.
