Specialized Product Training at B&W in West Sussex, England

This August, Definitive Audio’s John Peters had the privilege of being invited to London and to a tour and training at the B&W (Bowers and Wilkins) design and manufacturing facilities in West Sussex.

“It was absolutely fascinating to see how the core philosophy of B&W manifests itself in every facet of the speakers’ design and manufacture, says John. “Their goal is always to remove as little from the original musical performance as possible.

“That means thousands and thousands of hours of critical listening in different environments, with different music and different associated components. Once colorations are identified, B&W creates measurement tools and techniques to accurately identify the source of distortion and to guide development toward eliminating it. I know of no other speaker company that spends as much on research as B&W. I firmly believe that this combination of human evaluation and scientific validation is the key to why B&W speakers are globally praised for their musical accuracy. “

It was this process which first led researchers at B&W to concentrate on proper driver design. Unlike many speaker companies, which use subcontractors to make their drivers, B&W designs are all made “in house.” These efforts have led to drivers that exhibit vanishingly low distortion. This in turn has allowed the use of simpler and simpler crossover networks, getting closer to the ideal of putting as little as possible between the musical performance and the listener.

John was invited to tour the B&W “skunk works” facility in the village of Steyning. Here leading designer/engineers Tom O’Brien and John Dibb work their magic, which has included the creation of all of B&W’s renowned Signature Series loudspeakers. John had the pleasure of auditioning the latest Signature models (see photo).

At the factory, John was blown away by the fastidious attention to detail given to absolutely every step of assembly. “They measure every single driver and assembled loudspeaker to ensure it meets specifications. If not, back it goes. If the measurements look good, the speaker goes to the final step of being critically listened to by a trained B&W employee.”

John was equally impressed with how B&W supports their products. They strive to have spare parts for every B&W model ever made. If they run out, the tooling has been preserved to make more. And in the highly unlikely event that the tooling is gone, they have the plans to re-build them.

A special highlight of the trip was a visit to the world’s most famous recording studio, Abbey Road. (Unfortunately, the batteries in John’s camera gave out during the visit.) Abbey Road, of course, along with Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and hundreds of other leading recording studios, rely on B&W loudspeakers for monitoring.

Such “total immersion” training as John’s trip is an excellent example of the priority that Definitive Audio puts on product knowledge. All of our sales consultants participate in ongoing product training. That means they have the depth of information necessary to assist you in determining the very best choices for your individual needs and budget.