Not a fan of how these look (subjective) but am generally a massive fan of B&W speakers. They are a class apart. Truly stunning sounding. You can listen for hours on end with zero fatigue. My bro has has pair of bookshelf (CDM1?) hooked up to Arcam pre and power amps and the sound is out of this world.
History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
11–20 of 174 posts
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#12I recently made my own speaker box and it seemed shockingly easily. Are there a 3000% markup on these objects?
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#13I used to work in boutique audio retail. One of the big challenges of the business is how big and heavy good speakers are. In the old days we would need to crate the speaker to customers’ house for audition as every room has a different acoustic, and try a few different speakers with more crates with a upfront fee/credit to purchase, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often anymore. Showrooms nowadays also mostly do not…
I work in high-end AV. Perceptually, in a good space, those fantastic speakers often do not make the sound people associate with "loud", no distortion, no top end becoming hissy, just the concert-level bass to clue you in to how loud it is. People who have paid a lot for their system want that "wow" factor that immediately makes anyone think it's loud. The other issue is that different listening material definitely n…
As an audiophile (without the madness), I can understand you. On the other hand, with a pair of good speakers and a nice amplifier with bass, mid & treble knobs, you can almost dial the tone which's best for a genre.
A 2x10 band eq is better, but I prefer to listen pure-flat instead. In my setup, only vinyl needs loudness + tone circuits, the rest is happy with pure flat.
Of course music and sound is a subjective taste, but 90% of the road can be traveled with just basic, but good components IMHO.
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#14Perhaps the primary goal of Nautilus as a product is to sell other B&W speakers. It is so extraordinary and easy to remember that it can be the reason for people to choose a pair of normal looking and affordable speakers from B&W. Nautilus was for sure how I have first encountered B&W.
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#15Perhaps the primary goal of Nautilus as a product is to sell other B&W speakers. It is so extraordinary and easy to remember that it can be the reason for people to choose a pair of normal looking and affordable speakers from B&W. Nautilus was for sure how I have first encountered B&W.
It's a show of engineering prowess. It's like Nikon's f0.95/50mm lens. Almost perfect, but impractical for most.
Moreover, these kind of show pieces allow technology creep to lower levels, allowing the know-how to practically improve other products down the road. I think it's necessary to have products like these.
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#16Never heard these myself, but I remember that Nautilus speakers were used in an MP3 listening test by the German c't magazine in 2000[1]. Conclusion:
> In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD, no difference could be determined, on average, for all the pieces. The testers took the 256 kbps samples for the CD just as often as they took the original CD samples themselves.
This article made me (1) never worry about "lossy audio encoding" again and (2) ignore everyone starting about "better equipment" wrt compressed audio.
Granted, they used the cheaper Nautilus 803 rather than the 801 in the test. But they also had Sennheiser Orpheus available in the listening test.
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#17Never heard these myself, but I remember that Nautilus speakers were used in an MP3 listening test by the German c't magazine in 2000[1]. Conclusion: > In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD,…
After a certain point, lossy compression doesn't create any perceptible loss in audio quality as long as the rip is done well (with a good encoder, etc.), and you don't know every part of the piece in question.
e.g. in classical music, you can tell subtle differences if you've listened the piece live or performed it inside an orchestra. However, that's a pretty edge case. There are always differences if you know where to look for, otherwise it's pretty insignificant.
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#18Perhaps the primary goal of Nautilus as a product is to sell other B&W speakers. It is so extraordinary and easy to remember that it can be the reason for people to choose a pair of normal looking and affordable speakers from B&W. Nautilus was for sure how I have first encountered B&W.
Commonly called a halo product, like the Audi R8, Mac
Pro / Display XDR, Tiffany’a gigantic diamonds etc.
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#19I haven't listened to the Nautilus but I have listened to the B&W 800 (RRP £23500) speakers and they really have to be experienced to be belived. I was listening in a studio environment that had just installed them, as an upgrade from the already very nice Quested setup they had. When we switched to the 800's the effect was profound. The speakers just disappeared leaving this seamless soundstage where noises just hap…
You can DIY high-end speakers, saving thousands. Sounds weird, but its true. Here is one example that is popular, there are others: http://www.donhighend.de/?page_id=3212
Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
#20I'm surprised there's no mention of the cochlea in this article... I always assumed the design was inspired by it. Surely there's some analogy in how the human ear breaks down frequencies in the cochlea and how a speaker produces them in a similar shape?
> Surely there's some analogy in how the human ear breaks down frequencies in the cochlea and how a speaker produces them in a similar shape? A false analogy, at best. The sound is produced entirely by the speaker, which sits at the front of the speaker; the "nautilus" shape is simply a resonant chamber.
> the "nautilus" shape is simply a resonant chamber.
From what I've read, it's the opposite of a resonant chamber, it's filled with wool to absorb any sound which could be reflected from enclosure. It's special shape ensures that each frequency emitted by driver is absorbed at different place to ensure no harmonics, THE only sound emitted from this speaker is made by front of membrane.