Bowers & Wilkins 600 Series Anniversary Edition Lineup Review

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Bowers and Wilkins is one of the most world-renowned speaker companies on the planet. You’ll find their speakers in recording studios and mixing facilities around the world. The BBC, Abbey Road, and Skywalker Ranch are just a few of the places that rely on their truthful sound. B&W also spends more on R&D than any speaker company we know of with a huge facility in Steyning England, home to a huge team of engineers and all kinds of exotic speaker measuring equipment. The real beauty of B&W for the vast majority of music lovers comes from their trickle down technology from their $30,000 plus speakers.
This new 600 Series Anniversary Edition offers two bookshelf speakers - the 607 and 606, a tower speaker - the 603, and a matching center channel. All of these employ technology in the speaker components that just a few years ago could only be found in their $6,000 a pair and up speakers. Similar to the new 700 S2 series, with the new 600 series anniversary edition, B&W has added even more trickle down tech from their top of the line 800 series, with the most serious improvements to the crossovers. You can now get even more of the similar technology from the 800 Series from speakers starting at $700 a pair, almost 1/10 the price of where the 800 Series starts!
B&W had used Kevlar for decades in its midrange speaker drivers in the 800 Series. Their engineering team was given the task of inventing a better material that would offer significant improvements over their Kevlar drivers. It took over eight years, but they came up with a new material called Continuum. Continuum was totally developed by B&W and is only found in their speakers. The improvement in midrange transparency is stunning. Continuum, when used in a midrange driver, does not need the typical surround you see in most midrange speakers either, which contributes a lot to this new level of openness. Another factor is a great reduction in distortion. If you ever get a chance to visit their R&D facility in Steyning, you’ll see all kinds of lasers used to analyze speaker cone distortion. They used this high tech in the development of Continuum which is now part of the 600 series.
Many years ago, B&W invented a tapered tube that sits behind the tweeter. In the original 800 models, it sits proudly on top of the speaker. As years have passed this design has been refined and in the 600 Series Anniversary edition it shows up as their Decoupled Double Dome. If you were to take the tweeter apart, you would see this is a very accurate description of the tweeter. The combination of the decoupled dome and the tapered tweeter tube for the rear wave of the tweeter result in a tweeter that can extend out far beyond most tweeters on the market before any distortion or break up occurs. The range actually goes out to 38khz which is twice as high as anyone can even hear. The sonic improvement is a more open top end that is very smooth and sweet with never a hint of harshness.
B&W has always paid a great deal of attention to reducing cabinet resonance. B&W engineers use their laser systems to measure the cabinets and design ways to make their speaker cabinets as inert as possible. They don’t make a big deal about this in the 600 Series Anniversary Edition, but I have to say, the cabinets are extremely solid for the price point. The front of the cabinet is a matte finish composite material about ½” thick. By mounting the speaker drivers to this material, then coupling it to the cabinet, resonance virtually goes away. When you rap your knuckles on the new 600 Series Anniversary cabinet, you know they got the cabinet right! I also like the hidden magnetic design for the grill system making it easy to go for a look with or without the grill. The rear of all the speakers have very solid connections capable of either bi-wiring or single wiring. These types of connections are not very common on speakers in this price range, but normally found on models costing far more.