B&W 686 vs DM 600 S3 - vs the 601 S3 & the 685

B&W 686 bookshelves vs the older DM 600 S3

If you dont want to read the whole thing, heres the Summary:

The 686 is leaps & bounds better than the dm-600.

Why exactly that is, Im unsure because the only thing we're told has actually changed is the crossover & tweeter placement.
Sure, that's enough to cause change in sound, but I cant see how such a substantial change can happen just by changing that much, because if just making such a little change can make the 686 sound so much better, why on earth even bother releasing such an inferior speaker like the 600 S3..!

Its almost like B&W made the 686 first & then decided to muck it up & sell it as a 600, just so that they can sell the 686 a few years later.

Testing details:

All the testing was done with speakers used in fronts, not as surrounds.
They were placed on a large strong wood cabinet.

The critiques among you will argue that I need to use these on $1000 stands, but sorry guys my style of auditioning is that I compare things in standard operating conditions & highlight their differences.
Things don't have to be taken to Abbey road studios each time for a test.
End of the day a good speaker will sound better than the inferior speaker. As long as the testing conditions such as placement, amp, wires, room dynamics etc stay the same & we don't have any background noise, I feel the test is conducted accurately enough.

They were first tested without a sub with the speaker size in the amp was set to large, so nothing would be cut out or cross over.
And then with a sub (crossed over at 60Hz from the amp) with the size set to large, never small.
The sub was a simple B&W AS-1 which I discuss in this post here (set to music mode).

The amp used was not as good as I would have liked but I must say that the Kenwood KRF rated at 140Wpc had plenty of power to drive these & get those vocals out which my lower powered Technics could not achieve, which we connected at the end just for fun to see how much degradation there would be.

But the good thing is that this less than ideal amp, we still got the clear winner, & goes to show you don't need to have a $2000 amp to do the sound test.

On a side note:
This amp sounded much much better than anything out of Yamaha. I still cant see why Yamaha is such a recommended brand, its a good 'fail safe default' but I have yet to actually like any of their hifi products.
Even onkyo which was once considered second class, makes better sounding stuff these days, for cheaper...

First the DM 600 S3

The Good:

The sound is warm. The detail is there & you can tell the instruments apart, but not as much as the 686.
The sound matches nicely with cheaper speakers, like a cheaper centre, the 686 demands you to do better. Yes you cant quite call it a plus I guess because it means the speaker is like a cheaper crappy one, but sometimes if you have a small budget & want to just get slightly better fronts without breaking the bank or having to upgrade everything, this could cut it.
The speaker is longer than 686 but still quite compact & not as deep, this makes it look nicer when close to a TV or wall mounted.
The grills are the older style, far easier to detach than the new tight thin studs on the 68x series that break too often.

The Bad:

The vocals are poor, rather gutless, no real bassline in them, no depth in the vocals, in line with the 685.
The bass overall is very poor, get a sub. Not just bottom end, but even mid bass suffers.
See my previous post mentioning how I disliked the new 685 to the older 601 in comparing the 685 vs 601 here.
The speakers seem less sensitive, I could not hear echos & transitions in the 600 that I can with the 686.

The mighty 686

The Good:

The sound is beautifully detailed.
The vocal are rich, deep, & clean.
The bass is mind-blowingly good from a speaker this small.
Remember we are not talking about just mid-bass, these babies can actually go low enough to not need a sub, if properly placed!
That's amazing, most people tell you to that you will certainly need an ASW 608 with these, but with 685 you might get away. What non-sense, the 686 is infact better!
If you tell me the 686 needs sub, then the 685 needs it even more.
If you want something small, this is it.
Don't bother with the wharfedale 121 which some people love to recommend just because its slightly newer. Check this post here comparing the B&W 686 to the Wharfedale 121 & the Diamond 10, where I discuss how the wharfedale 121 has the most bass boomy bass, but not half the definition & vocal detail the 686 has.

In the B&W world I compare this speaker to the 601, & not the 685, because I feel the 601 is better than the 685.
I discuss why in my previous post comparing the 685 vs 601 here

So its a little less open than the 601 but Id rather have this in a speaker with its tiny foot print then have the same issues in a bigger 685.
I would say that the vocal depth & slight loss of imaging in larger rooms make the 601 a better speaker for the mid vocal detail, but otherwise these 686s are nice.
Again, let me clarify that everything good about the 686 is impressive simply because of its small size.
If these speakers were large, this would be a very different kind of review.

Quite senstive, you can hear sounds that you cant in any other speaker, dare I say not even in the 601 which I also recommend.

The Bad:

The list of bads may seem long, that's just due to the details, very little wrong with it.

The sound is a little less open, so the mid vocals is good but the higher end slightly less so.
Take my numbers with a grain of salt, but it feels like the response is great up to 2Khz, not so good from 2-4Khz, & then good again. This is what it feels like, & quite likely not the fact, please feel free to measure & let me know how far off I am.

You truly are better off using these in small-medium rooms. In a large room get the 601 at least.

The imaging is definitely inferior in larger rooms, making placement rather critical.

Rotation inward toward the centre does not help very much either.
The sound stage they create is not very spectacular & you need to move them further apart in medium-large room while still being close to them (which is difficult) to get anything out of them.
So to clarify, in a room say 5m x 5m, youd have to place the speakers 4m apart, & be only 3m away from them, weird but it works. If you go back to 4m, the sound changes.

The interesting synergy between the 68x & the 60x series

In this previous post comparing the 601 to the 685, I recommended the 601 over the 685.
The opposite has happened here. How could this be?
I cant help but think there is some kind of product development strategy going on here.
Make the 601, goof up the 600 - tick
Make the 686 goof up the 685 - tick
Make the 685 s2 & goof up the 686 s2 - tick
At this rate, next we'll have:
Make the 686 s3 & goof up the 685 s3.
So you could either buy the 685 S2 or wait for the 686 S3 - OR, save the dosh & buy a 686 (not the S2)

The new 686 S2

I did not audition these properly except for a slight listen, & frankly I didn't want to because I fundamentally cant make sense of why B&W did what they did to a good speaker.
Lets get something straight, the whole point of the 686 was to make the speaker as small as it could be, & yet sound good.
Why make it longer, & so long that its the same size as the 685!

You may argue that its not just smaller but also cheaper, but lets be honest, if you can afford a $900 686 S2 then you can afford a $1100 685.
And if you are crunching on a budget, you wont touch the new ones anyway & buy second hand.

Sure, front porting it opened a whole lot of placement options & would improve bass, but as above, the 686 already delivers enough bass from a compact monitor & if you wanted more bass, you would attach a sub anyway, most of us do.
So the design philosophy doesn't make sense to me, happy to stand corrected though.

Sorry Bowers & Wilkins Im ditching a bit of dirt at you folks in this post compared to my other posts, but as much as I like your products, my reviews are very honest & unbiaised.

Sure the new tweeter is a welcome addition, but that has nothing to do with front porting a speaker & making it 2 inches longer. It kills the whole point of having a discrete little surround monitor.

You are welcome to challenge any of my opinions, Im always happy to stand corrected.