A Boenicke day in Gent, May '19

[bart]

Wow Bart, thanks for this post. I heard the Boenicke W8 for the first time at THE Show in Long Beach this weekend. Boenicke weren't officially in the show but were used by CAD (DAC/server) an exhibitor and powered by the new Aesthetix Mimas Integrated amplifer. For me it was the unexpected surprise compared to some if the heavy hitting rooms which, by in large couldn't hold my attention. I suspect the W8's took a lot of credit for the excellent demo they were placed closer to the front wall and the bass was full and satisfying for the music selections used. Boenicke speakers are def on my radar for a future audition.

Thank you for the kind words.
And I love your speakers! :thumbsup:

 

[bart]

Fantastic writeup Bart! Thanks for sharing!
Have been following Boenicke speakers for a long time and would love to hear them some day.

Thanks for the fantastic pictures and insights into the Boenicke lineup.

Time permitting do lookup the story behind the SPEC amplifier.
That is a very interesting piece of gear made by some remarkable folks from Japan.

Regards



.

Hi Nikhil,

Thank you and yes, it was the first time I heard these SPEC amplifiers, but they surely left a very good impression on me.
Powerful, and very natural.
Absolutely not sterile like some class D designs are.

 

[bart]

I have heard the W8 in Stockholm in a mid size room and the W13 in Warsaw in a very big room. Both performed extremely well IMO, with the W13 one of the best sounds of the Warsaw Audioshow. I consider the W8 a great performer in its price range so I am a bit more positive than Bart here!

I could live with the W8s, but I would need a pair of subs then.
Which brings them in the price range of the W13s, and that is where my preference would lie.

 

[bart]

Thanks for the report!
I have a personal experience with W8SE+ as a really good friend of mine owns them. In his room which is of "normal" sized living room they sound fantastic.
His initial amp was Accu e550 which make them play very nice but two weeks ago we made a huge and I mean huge improvement as we tested them with Einstein The Preamp and Acoustic Invader D class power amp and this combo just raised the bar so significantly that it was amazing. Guess I don't need to mention that Accu was send to the box immediately.
I believe that with w8 particularly, as they are power hungry, D class is needed while bliss is achieved with nice/great tube preamp ...
Guess you will also notice Sven speaker cables

Your friend has a nice system and a nice room!
I've never heard of the power amp. Will look into it.

 

[bart]

Heard these (W11SE and I believe the W13SEs on 2nd or 3rd day) in Munich. Their speakers were small compared to the huge room
and the setup was not uber-$$$; I remember being blown away by what the speakers were conveying in the room, kept looking around
for surround speakers of some form, dual subs or other tricks of which there were none. This is one of the all-time best surprises in my
entire audio journey and easily one of the best speakers I've ever heard. It made one hell of impression....

Mark, if I were shopping now for new speakers, they'd be in my top 10 list.

 

[puroagave]

He poked in the midrange driver in a way that made us hold our breath...

You wouldn't do that with aluminium drivers...

.

Point of fact, that's actually a mid-bass driver. Boenicke's designs are consider wide banders, the silver cone driver is actually the mid-treble unit (explains why the w5 and w8 sound so much alike). I believe we covered this in a separate thread last year with Kouppis' report at one of the German shows. The only tweeter used is rear mounted for ambiance and 'sparkle' covering the range above 10 khz or so. The wood cone driver covers the range between the mid-bass and hands off to the low bass driver. One could say these are actually a 4-way speaker except the silver driver covers the broadest octave range and is devoid of a band pass filter for mid range. Sven's design approach is clearly 'outside the box' and probably the most copied and talked about speaker on the DIY 'boards that i've seen in recent memory.

 

[bart]

Point of fact, that's actually a mid-bass driver. Boenicke's designs are consider wide banders, the silver cone driver is actually the mid-treble unit (explains why the w5 and w8 sound so much alike). I believe we covered this in a separate thread last year with Kouppis' report at one of the German shows. The only tweeter used is rear mounted for ambiance and 'sparkle' covering the range above 10 khz or so. The wood cone driver covers the range between the mid-bass and hands off to the low bass driver. One could say these are actually a 4-way speaker except the silver driver covers the broadest octave range and is devoid of a band pass filter for mid range. Sven's design approach is clearly 'outside the box' and probably the most copied and talked about speaker on the DIY 'boards that i've seen in recent memory.

Thank you for this clarification!
I'm not very technical, I just describe what I hear.
And see...