Description
These are true sleeper bookshelf speakers and an incredible value for their sound quaility. I really enjoyed testing and listening to them.I was impressed and now understand all the great reviews. I have to admit that you will not find a better sounding speaker in this price range. I have the specs and reviews pasted below. They sold new in 1997 for $250.00: Thats $478.27 in todays dollars. These are in excellent all original condition. Fully tested and are impressive for their size. These are a very lightly used 1 owner pair. Original box, packaging and manual. They only show very minor signs of age and use. Consecutive serial #s A 077107 & A 077108. Please look very carefully at all the pictures for their exact condition. B&W DM302 loudspeaker SpecificationsDescription: Two-way, reflex-loaded, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1 (26mm) soft-dome tweeter, 5 (130mm) pulp-cone bass/midrange driver. Crossover frequency: 3kHz. Frequency response: 72Hz-20kHz, ±3dB. Sensitivity: 91dB/2.83V/1m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms (3.2 ohms minimum). Power handling: 25-100W continuous.Dimensions: 12 5/8 H by 7? W by 8? D. Weight: 9 lbs.Finish: black ash.Serial numbers of units reviewed: A032759/60.Price: $250/pair. What kind of speaker can you get for $250/pair? The most tightly contested sector of the speaker market in the UK is right around that price. If you want to be competitive in Old Blighty, you have to offer something pretty special in that range—and because the stakes are so high, the competition is fierce.Of course, when youre selling speakers for approximately $100 apiece, youre not going to make much profit unless you can eliminate every possible manufacturing inefficiency. Thats why most of the speakers competing for a market share in this range are made with automated milling machines—or, as in the case of the B&W DM302, injection molding equipment. Its pretty obvious why this can lead to ease of manufacture, but, as the 302 demonstrates, it can also aid in controlling cabinet resonances and internal standing waves.Well, I hear some audiophiles sneering, thats what the manufacturer says, but thats just an excuse for making the speaker out of plastic.Perhaps theres some justification for such cynicism, but Im not sure that, at $250/pair, buyers expect to have the same furniture quality that, say, Avalon customers demand. And theres no getting around it: The B&W DM302 sounds awfully refined and musical for a speaker that costs so little.Lets get smallThe B&W DM302 takes advantage of molding technology by casting the cabinets front and rear baffles out of plastic. The front panel incorporates a wide slotted port, said to enhance low-turbulence venting. This, according to B&W, permits complete freedom from audible port noise. Extensive cross-bracing, molded into the baffle, is also said to stiffen it and contribute to the 302s remarkable absence of coloration.The rear baffles inner surface is a complex configuration of randomly arrayed tapered pyramids, said to resemble the walls of an anechoic chamber. B&W calls this Prism, and claims that it eliminates standing waves within the cabinet and enhances both bass definition and speed. From the outside, this panels honeycomb of rectangles looks like a waffle iron.The DM302 uses a 1 soft-dome tweeter clamped internally to the front baffle. The faceplate has a tapering profile to reduce front-panel diffraction. The 5 bass-midrange driver employs a long-throw motor, a doped-paper cone, and a rigid steel chassis. The crossover point is 3kHz.The 302s five-way binding posts have plastic nuts, but can be tightened firmly onto a spade-lug if proper care is exercised. I found their position—inset into the honeycombed rear panel—awkward for my sausagelike fingers, but no more so than on many other speakers, including some hideously expensive ones. A bigger problem was that the posts are oversized and did not accept the small spades on my AudioQuest Dragon speaker cable. I feel strange complaining about this, since the larger spades are more common on better, more costly cables. But thats the point—I cant imagine that most people installing the 302s are going to use custom cables. Some Straight Wire banana plugs solved my problem.Small wonderAs with most small monitors, placement of the DM302s is everything if you want to make them sparkle. First, you have to compromise between bass extension and midrange clarity. For me, theres no contest—its midrange clarity every time. I wound up with the speakers about 20 from the wall, about 6 apart, and angled in so that the front baffle was all I saw as I faced them. Having said that I had to compromise bass reinforcement to obtain greater midrange clarity, I must add that the DM302s sounded remarkably full-bodied for a speaker their size—amazingly full-bodied. Dont let the posey fool ya; these guys arent wimps.I once wrote what I thought was a rave review of a pair of compact monitors in which I felt duty-bound to report that, like all compact loudspeakers, they didnt play stupid-loud, and that they lacked a certain physical impact in the bass. The US distributor reacted as though Id told him his sister was ugly: What do you expect from a small speaker? he demanded. I guess he had a point, but I still feel I need to make some things clear.You wouldnt expect a speaker the size of the DM302 to play stupid-loud, and it doesnt—if you insist, it gets congested, even screechy. However, you can play Mahler or the Stones at very satisfying levels without stressing it. (Given its 91dB sensitivity, you can play it fairly loud even with low-output integrateds and receivers.)You wouldnt expect to reproduce organ-pedal tones at pants-fluttering levels from a speaker the size of the DM302, and, again, it doesnt. But when I perversely played Michael Murrays Bach at Zwolle anyway (Telarc CD-83085), I was stunned at how powerful and solid the organ sounded—it may have lacked impact in the bottommost octave and a half, but I was clearly listening to a magnificent instrument, and the 302s did a superb job of rendering the space in which Murray was playing: the St. Nicholas Church in Kampen.B&W claims a 6dB down point of 60Hz; the speaker can play the fundamentals of most instruments cleanly, save perhaps the E-string of a string bass, the lowest keys on a grand piano, or those organ pedals. As a result, despite their diminutive size, the 302s do a fine job of reproducing the body of the music—they dont reduce performers to ghosts of themselves.You might not expect speakers this size to totally disappear and re-create the original performance, but they do. While small cabinet loudspeakers are known for imaging well, the DM302s throw a soundstage that consistently startles with its openness and ease. You dont get merely a taste of what the full-bore high-end speakers do, you get way into serious audiophile territory.While breaking the 302s in, I played Paul Desmonds Bossa Antigua for a few days (Japanese RCA R25A 1045, CD)—no master plan, it was just the first disc that fell under my hand. When I finally listened to the disc and heard how large a room it was recorded in, I was surprised—I knew for a fact that it was recorded on Webster Halls stage, with the curtains closed. But as I continued to listen, it was obvious that the quartet was in a big, open space. Ive never heard distortion work that way, although Ive certainly heard big rooms made to sound small. So I looked it up. The B&Ws were right, my memory was wrong: Bossa Antigua was recorded in RCAs Studio A, not Webster Hall.Desmond, by the way, sounded wonderful through the DM302. His alto was sweet but not cloying, and the B&Ws tweeter captured that metallic edge that gave him that dry martini sound. Another detail the 302 captured was Jim Halls tone. Here, clearly, was an electric guitar recorded acoustically—Hall was playing through an amp, and that amp was recorded within the studio, just as Desmond, Gene Wright, and Connie Kay were. Boy, I wish people still recorded guitar like that!But this disc also pointed to a downside of small monitor speakers. Gene Wrights string bass—which is buried in the mix even when played on very large speaker systems—had so little impact that it no longer seemed to kick the songs along, but merely accompanied them. This can be ameliorated to a certain extent by turning up the volume. Once the 302s energized the room, they really opened up, and the low end snapped more into focus. The problem with this was that I had to play a recording somewhat louder than my normal tendency.This posed no problem on the Desmond disc, as it doesnt have a particularly broad dynamic range. But on large orchestral works such as Mahlers Third (as usual, I was listening to Bernstein/NYP on DG 427 328-2), I ran into a problem when I adjusted the loudness to the point where I had a believably fleshed-out New York Phil: the upper mids tended to sound splashy during crescendos. No big deal, but there it was—with really big dynamic shifts, I had only a limited range in which the speaker could sustain the illusion of re-creating the event.On the other hand, I found it easy to simply lose myself in solo piano recordings, such as Ivan Moravec Plays Beethoven, Vol.2 (VAI 1069). The piano was reproduced with startling clarity and openness. The 302s floated Moravecs Steinway between them with a fullness of body that belied their size—that was a full-size piano floating between them.Nor did I have any complaints about the way the B&Ws reproduced rock, such as MoFis fabulous reissue of the first Velvet Underground album (UDCD 695)—John Cales bass sounded punchy and tight.All speakers great and smallOverall, I was consistently surprised by how good, how clean, how big the B&W DM302s sounded. Thats exciting, because hi-fi has become the 20th-century equivalent of gout—a rich mans disease. Thanks to companies like B&W, it doesnt have to be.So what kind of speaker can you get for $250? One that disappears, leaving you alone with the music; one that tells you whats on the recording with surprising accuracy; one that shows you what all this audio brouhaha is about. True, you dont get a lot of low-end information—although most listeners will be surprised at how much is there—and there are limits as to how loud you can listen. But these are minor quibbles. When you consider that even the most expensive loudspeakers are compromised, its amazing how much performance B&W has wrested from a $250/pair, small monitor speaker. I wholeheartedly recommend the DM302.Wes Phillips compared the DM302 with the Polk RT5 in April 1998 (Vol.21. No.4):The $299/pair Polk isnt the only affordable option out there. B&Ws DM302, at $250/pair, is even cheaper. Since Stereophile awarded the B&W an Editors Choice award in 1997, it seemed incumbent upon me to compare the RT5 with the B&W in a level-matched joint audition. For the comparison, I used a system comprising the Mark Levinson No.39 CD player, the Conrad-Johnson ART preamp, and the Krell FPB 600 power amplifier. I connected everything with Kimber KCAG and Black Pearl speaker cable. Both pairs of speakers were Blu-Tacked to sturdy speaker stands spiked to the floor and leveled.I enjoyed listening to both speakers enough that it was hard work to compare and contrast—I wanted to extend the listening window every time. Were lucky to have two such choices at the entry level. If I had to choose just one, Id go with the B&W—it had greater inner detail, especially when reproducing solo instruments or voice. On the Ruth Laredo disc, for instance, I heard more of the sound of the piano reacting with Tarrytowns Music Hall—much more of the high notes bouncing off the wall.On the other hand, the Polk gave the piano more weight and warmth—less accurate, perhaps, but certainly not to be scoffed at.Listening to Emmylou Harris Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town (Warner Bros. 3141-2), Harris sounded more controlled on the DM302—again, the Polk seemed to emphasize certain vocal notes more than others, which gave Green Rolling Hills a different delivery.Yet, while the B&W may have been tonally more accurate, the Polk had its own truth to tell—Harris voice sounded less waiflike through them and had more throb—by which I mean more pure country emotion. Yes, this could be considered editorializing, but the best editors do make the material sound even more like the author.Over the course of comparing the two monitors, I felt the B&W was leaner and more revealing of low-level detail than the Polk—but not by so much as to embarrass the latter. Some listeners might chose the other way, preferring the Polks warmth and musical amiability—qualities rare at any price, but who suspected they were available for $300?—Wes Phillips Chasrock Services is proud to be: ( ISTA 6-FEDEX_A Protocol Certified ) This is a registered certification in electronic packaging. We are approved to safely ship any electronics up to and including 150 lb. packages. The ISTA 6-FEDEX A Protocol is an earned certification. This is achieved by packaging and shipping electronics to the FedEx packaging laboratory, in Collierville, Tennessee They put that package through rigorous testing including the following: Shock Test: (10 random drops from 30 Inches) Compression Test: The package is then tested in a press at 976.94 lbs. of pressure. Vibration Test: The package is then put on a vibration table and violently shaken for 45 minutes. You must pass all three tests without any damage, cosmetically or functionality. These will be double boxed, surrounded in foam to insure safe undamaged delivery to your home or business. Yes, the shipping cost is a little high, but electronics are fragile and do require a lot of packaging and time to get them done right. I think its worth a few extra bucks, because they cant be replaced. A note for you eBay global customers: ( I will get it to your door safely and insured.) P.S. My posted shipping price is always the total! I pride myself on extreme over protective packaging. (Please see my feedback!) I will only ship to the 48 contiguous states and I encourage eBay global shipping. Payment is expected in 48 hours of purchase and on the same token they will ship on the next business day. If you need more time, just send a message and we will work something out.
Live search