Price Paid:  $1500.00 from Kaohsiung City, TAIWAN

Summary:
The highs of 605S2 is guaranteed by the use of metal tweeter descended from the Nautilis blood line. The mids and lows are balanced and OK, just like what I expected from the audition of 604S2. The reason I bought 605S2 is for the claimed sub-woofer space-saving feature. With the actively amp-ed bass, you can recruit the bass speakers to do what you usually need with another separated sub-woofer. Acutually I bought the 605S2 after auditioned the 604S2 because the local audio store did not have the 605S2 on hand. During the stereo playing, you hear what is expected with balanced highs and lows. But during the movie playing, the LFE effect is now activated. You can feel rather than hear the lows of the LFE sound during some explosive, crackling, earthquaking and shaking scenes. Because of the directionality of the LFE, the placement of one sub-woofer may let you feel very discomfort as you "see" the LFE coming from the sub-woofer whichever place you positioned it. Now with 3 sub-woofers including the 605S2, you feel the air-mass pumping towards you without the feel of directionality. Furthermore the air-mass moved is much more than only one sub-woofer. I have auditioned the bioplar Mirage OM-7 and Definitive Technology 2000 for comparison of sound stage created by the bipolar and conventional non-bipolar speakers. Maybe because the positioning and listening environment were not fine-tuned, I found the bipolar speakers not very pleasing during the demo sessions at the audio-stores. The lows of Definitive Technology 2000 (with it's 15" woofer) is good while the lows of Mirage OM-7 is average. But in the light of Performance/Cost value, I give 5 stars to B&W605S2.

However, during the fine-tuning of the 605S2, I found that the flow-ports(the vented bass tube) were dislodged very easily while I moved the heavy(31kg) boxes with the aid of inserting my fingers into the ports as an achor of weight-lifting at re-positioning. I fixed this myself by applying carpenter's glue to the ports.

At final rating, despite the fact that the flow-ports dislodged easily which can be avoided by careful handling with 2 persons working together during fine-tuning of position. I deem B&W 605S2 as the best medium to low-buget home-theatre/stereo main speakers. The high priced Hi-end B&W 800 series is just too expensive and far-reached at the top of the sigmoid curve of P/C value for the ordinary audiophiles. You can taste the good stereo sound with 604S2 but not the movie sound without 605S2.

Strengths:
Balanced as expected.

Weaknesses:
Flow-port dislodged easily.

Similar Products Used:
B&W 604 S2.

Summary:
A wonderful listening experience. They are ultra detailed, making the mid and top end dangerous to listen to with a screechy or bright sound. After listening to them, I knew that I had to have them. The powered bass is nice, and well suited to 2 channel audio. Drive them flat, and use their tone controls to adjust bass, and you'll be pleased by these small mushroom cap 7's even for deep, deep bass. Just don't freak out with equilization to enhance the bass, these puppies don't need it, and you'll just sacrifice the tight punchy nature of the bass on these. Drive them in a biwired configuration, and make sure you use a warm, musical amp. I use the
Acurus A100
Acurus RL-11
Rotel RCD 955AX
All of these were chosen for their smoothness and musicality
making them perfect to drive a speaker so revealing as the 605 S2.

Strengths:
tight, refined bass, excellent dynamics, and very detailed

Weaknesses:
needs a really nice amp to drive them or else they can sound harsh

Similar Products Used:
JM Labs, Monitor Audio, Paradigm, definitive, polk

Summary:
My first real loudspeaker was a B&W, and was never intended to be a audiophile. Im a musician, and are obsessed by music, tones, and instruments. Now I am 3 years further and are also highendaudio obsessed. In my opinion is a B&W speaker, the only speaker that can really touch you inside. All B&W speakers I heard sounds so naturual. a violin sounds like a violin. The only thing i allways missed in B&W speakers was the upper bottemend in bass. Especially with organmusic I
wanna feel the upper registers of this great instrument. But also with popmusic I wanna feel the kick of the bassdrum.
I was happy when I read the specs from this new speaker.
My first listenopinion was disapointed!, The mids and highs sounds cold and a bit agressive. but when I switcht the amplifier for a NAD silverline Pre/main combi, everything sounds open, warm and musical. also the bass sounds much better. The speaker has a real lowend that I only heard by big highend speakers that cost 10 times the DM 605. The DM 605 had a verry deep soundstage! with a perfect placement. Every cd was a big suprrise in the lowend. I heard things in the low I never heard before.

This product is fantastique. I love the DM 605 for music.

Strengths:
Fullange frequency responce.Fantastique lowend.

Weaknesses:
For this price absolutly NONE!

Similar Products Used:
B&W Matrix 3 serie2, B&W 603 Serie1

Summary:
I bought a pair of B&W DM605 S2s after auditioning many speakers within my budget of £1500. Although B&W market the 605 as a home theatre speaker, I don’t (yet) run a home theatre setup. My primary objective was to find a speaker that could produce the most realistic sounding music.

Of the models I auditioned the 605s are neither the most detailed nor the most refined, those honours going to the Dynaudio Audience 70 and Veritas 20 respectively. What makes the 605s so attractive is their wide frequency response and phenomenal dynamics. The active subwoofers take the bass down to 25Hz without relying on resonance to improve the weight, leading to superb control at low frequencies with formidable agility and the kind of slam that I’ve only heard in unaffordable esoteric audiophile designs. The nautilus-derived tweeter extends the treble well beyond the limit of my hearing and is almost painfully revealing and detailed. As with most metal dome designs it can sound a bit hard and strident, so watch out if you have “bright” electronics. The midrange driver is smooth and controlled, and the new bullet dustcap design seems to have improved the focus compared to older 600 series 1 models I’ve heard. Overall the sound is natural and warm, with the active bass giving orchestral works the kind of depth that no other speaker I auditioned could match. With organ recitals you can feel the power chords – wonderful stuff. Listen to a jazz quintet and every instrument is perfectly placed and the balance is just right. With more contemporary material the results are just as impressive. You can crank up the volume to unbearable levels and yet the 605s don’t distort at all.

On a practical level these are big speakers. To get the enclosure volume up while maintaining the 24cm width common to all the 600 series models has meant making the speakers deep. Front to back they measure 45cm. Add to that the 50cm minimum recommended distance from the rear wall and you find that the front is nearly a metre (three feet) into the room. The bass response is electronically tuneable (a nice touch that takes away the hit and miss associated with port tuning), so even though the design is rear ported I was able to break the rules and move the speakers within 15cm (6 inches) of the rear wall.

One last point. If you can’t or don’t wish to play your music at realistic volumes then consider other options. At low volumes the 605s seem to loose detail and you’d be better off with something like the Veritas 20. However if you like the idea of hearing a real live jazz band in your living room then there’s nothing at this price to touch the 605s. Just hope the neighbours are understanding!

Arcam Alpha 9 CD player
NAD 319 integrated amp
B&W DM605 S2 speakers
QED QNECT Silver Spiral interconnect
Nordost Flatline Gold MkII bi-wire speaker cable

Strengths:
bass weight and definition, revealing and detailed treble, excellent overall sound

Weaknesses:
size

Similar Products Used:
Mission 783, Dynaudio Audience 70, Newtonia N8, Veritas 20, PMC FB1, Cura CA21, Jamo Concert 8

Summary:
I've been really impressed with the performance of the 605's. The powered subwoofers eliminate the need for a separate subwoofer in my system and have the punch needed for both audio and movies. The new tube-loaded tweeter design produces wonderfully clear highs to give a very pleasant balanced quality to the speakers. Bi-wiring really helps to extend the range of these speakers even further. I originally got the CC6 as the center speaker but have since upgraded to the CDM CSE which has a greater range and compliments the 605's much better.

Strengths:
Great range and superb bass