Best Speakers $10k-$20k Series: Bowers & Wilkins 804 D4 Review
- REVIEW
- by Tom Martin
- Mar 01, 2025
This review is part of our series looking for the best speakers in the $10k-$20k price range. Other reviews in the series are or will be on The Absolute Sound YouTube channel and on this web site.
The Bowers & Wilkins 804 D4 speakers have a rather different sonic profile to most of the high-end speakers on the market. As a result, the 804 may satisfy a need that other speakers can’t, at least in this price range. Let’s examine this idea.
Bowers & Wilkins is a venerable manufacturer of loudspeakers, dating back to the mid-1960s. John Bowers had an innovative streak, which led the firm to try many new technologies over the early years, including Ionovac tweeters, electrostatic midrange/tweeters, Kevlar woven materials for cone construction, transmission line loading, phase linearity and matrix cabinet construction. Bowers & Wilkins was also an early adopter of sophisticated test and measurement capabilities, building its own anechoic chamber and employing laser interferometry along with powerful-for-the-time mainframe computers. The firm was also an early and consistent user of professional industrial designers.
Bowers and Wilkins is well-known for supplying its speakers to some famous recording studios, notably Abbey Road. Many other monitor brands appear to be more focused on this market, with specialized product lines. It seems likely that Bowers & Wilkins speakers, when used, are more a part of the mastering phase than earlier in the process.
Product Overview
The 804 D4 is the smallest floorstanding speaker in the top 800 Series line (the Nautilus still exists but is a single product not a core line). The 804 is priced at $15,000 per pair. The speaker is 42” tall, 12” wide and 15” deep, weighing 81 lb each. They are available in 5 different finishes, along with the common denominators of leather-covered aluminum top and brushed aluminum tweeter housing. The tweeter housing is now 12” long to better manage the tweeter resonance and the whole assembly is decoupled. The cabinet is a primarily a single piece of curved wood, with an aluminum spine and top and bottom plates on a plinth to allow port venting near the floor.
The driver complement consists of a diamond tweeter, with tweeter-on-top ported and isolated mounting, an FST matrix 5” midrange, and two 6.5” Aerofoil cone bass drivers. Sensitivity is 89db for 2.83 volts at one meter with a nominal impedance of 8 ohms and a minimum impedance of 3 ohms. This is the same as saying 89 db at 1 watt/1 meter. This is slightly above average sensitivity, but the relatively low minimum impedance means you will want an amp with good low impedance capability.
Sound Quality
I can’t reason well, and most of you can’t reason well, from technical features to sound quality. So, we listen and note our objective observations with the absolute sound (real instruments in real space) as our reference. We then try to describe the type of listener or listener who might like the resulting deviations from that reference (since these always exist to one degree or another).
As I said in the opener, the 804 D4 follows its own muse. Let’s start with what I think is the big win here: imaging.
The imaging and soundspace presentation of the 804 is the best I have heard thus far in the under $20k price range and better than most in the next price range up. The thing I need to point out is that this isn’t simply a matter of degree. Often, when we review speakers in this range, I attempt to describe imaging and how speakers differ. But almost every speaker I’ve tested at this level is a variation of the miniaturized stage model. What I mean is that you can draw a mental rectangle from the left speaker to the right speaker about 2 feet high and imagine that the performers are arrayed on that virtual stage. Some speakers expand the stage a bit more vertically. Some present the performers on a somewhat U-shaped stage, with left and right performers farther toward you than other performers. Some speakers present a better sense of front to back layering. So, there are differences worth caring about.
But the 804 pretty much goes up a level from this miniaturized stage model. First, and I think very importantly, the 804 gets the image off the left and right speakers more dependably than the competition. This is more believable, especially because there isn’t the discontinuity of front to back positioning as you get hard left or hard right. The performers with the 804 seem to be on a regulation stage with a linear front edge. Of course, bad (especially very old) recordings don’t have the phase information to allow this. Second, the 804 has a better, less “windowed” vertical cutoff of the image. Images just seem to fade out gradually in the vertical dimension as they tend to in real life. Third, the 804 complements this with very good depth portrayal, though I must note that this imaging domain is one that some recordings don’t attend to as much as others. And finally, the 804 has a more believable sense of the sound space which nicely complements the larger stage and lets you mind believe you are in a real performance venue.
There are speakers at higher prices that do this sort of thing, particularly from Linkwitz and MBL. They probably go farther. But the very good speakers just above this price class aren’t automatically ahead in imaging. So, if you count yourself as a spatially-sensitive listener, you will want to check out the 804 if it is in your price range.
Voicing
Continuing its march to a different drummer, the 804 has a different voicing than any of the other speakers I’ve tested recently.
Let’s start in the bass range. I measured good response into the upper 20 Hz range, which is about the limit of my room because the lateral null is at 22 Hz. More important for many listeners will be the mid-bass balance. I would characterize this as slightly reticent, sounding as if the mid bass were perhaps 1-2 down from the midrange. Interestingly, this behavior shows up as a “shelf” below about 80 hz, not a rolloff, and may reflect Bowers & Wilkins assumption that the 804 will be used in a smaller room with bigger bass modes than my 4000 cubic foot room with a significant quantity of bass traps. The other side of this point is that a speaker like the 804 might be ideal for use with separate woofers applied to smooth the bass and control the level, more than to go subterranean. We will be testing this idea next month.
In any event, the 804 as it stands, depending on room behavior, seems more aimed at the 20% of listeners who prefer to avoid elevated or boomy bass. Since the 804 can go pretty low, it won’t toss the music aside, but boom may be vanquished.
The lower midrange of the 804 is clear and clean and nicely presented. Remember, this is the range of most musical fundamental tones, so while it looks like a minor part of a graph, it is musically important.
Then we get into the distinctive voicing area of the 804. Basically the 804 has an elevated upper midrange and treble delivery. I would say from about 500 Hz up, the output rises by about 1 db per octave. The impact of this varies with the recording. On some recordings with very clean high frequencies the 804 has a sense of clarity and openness and snap that is rather special. On other recordings the sound is simply brighter than normal for our reference. But there is also the issue of digital distortion which can arise in the decimation process that leads to the master file and/or in the D/A conversion process. The 804 emphasizes these distortions more than some other speakers because its area of treble emphasis coincides with the frequencies where digital artifacts often reside.
I should put this voicing into a bit more context. There is some research work measuring concert hall frequency response, and other work asking listeners to stereo equipment what they prefer. Both of these type of research suggest a roughly -1 db per octave tilt as frequency goes up (a “downward sloping curve” from left to right). Many speakers follow this approach at least until the mid-treble (say 8 KHz) where they sometimes begin a rise or bump to generate some sparkle outside of the basic range of instrumental fundamentals and low harmonics. But the 804 goes a different direction.
If you prize clarity and definition and snap, the 804 may be just the ticket. It is, in a way, slightly reminiscent of the much-loved Martin-Logan CLS electrostatic from the late ‘80s. That speaker had incredible transparency and definition and was a dream speaker if you could overlook a treble rise. I should say that the 804 might be the ticket for vinyl lovers who crave transparency, as the LP can eliminate or mitigate digital distortions.
If you are what I have labelled a ‘tonal beauty’ listener (you prefer a sound that could be described as a ‘warm glow’, avoiding harshness and edge), I think the 804 probably goes too far. You might think that you could manage the upper ranges with a special amplifier, and perhaps you could. But it seems odd to choose a speaker that has a defining characteristic that you have to try to eliminate.
Dynamics
The slightly reticent bass means the 804 probably isn’t ideal for power pop and rock, although it performed surprisingly well with bands like Metric. Perhaps the advantage of the 804 is that it doesn’t tend to overload the room. I also felt it handled lower volumes and big dynamic swings well, although I can’t say the latter are obviously superior to other competitive speakers, assuming a big enough power amp. But the big dynamic win offered by the 804 is an excellent sense of transient quickness and life that it brings to a lot of music.
Summary
Outside of some electrostats, I haven’t anything quite like the Bowers & Wilkins 804 D4. If “an electrostat with deep bass” sounds ideal, this might be the ticket. Beyond that, anyone who wants superb imaging and soundspace presentation may find the 804 to go farther than you previously believed possible.
