Upgrade B&W 602.5 to 603s3: any good?

johnsm78

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It seems this is a great place to discuss hifi-gear! :thumbsup:

I'm currently using B&W 602.5s3 as my front speakers, driven by a 50W/ch NAD receiver T742. While listening in stereo, I rather like it without using the sub (B&W ASW600). I feel more comfortable listening in stereo by using only the front speakers, i.e. without the sub. But I can't help the feeling that those speakers 602.5 does'nt handle bass very well; they don't have enough "punch" for me, and bass definition isn't that good.

Therefore I was thinking about upgrading to the 603s3. Will this give a major improvement in bass-performance, bass-depth, and bass-definition, and will they give enough punch in the stomac???

I wass also wondering if my 50W/ch NAD will be sufficient to drive those 603s3 properly? My room is about 5m * 5m.

Any appreciations? :lease:
Cheers,
John
 
johnsm78 said:
It seems this is a great place to discuss hifi-gear! :thumbsup:

I'm currently using B&W 602.5s3 as my front speakers, driven by a 50W/ch NAD receiver T742. While listening in stereo, I rather like it without using the sub (B&W ASW600). I feel more comfortable listening in stereo by using only the front speakers, i.e. without the sub. But I can't help the feeling that those speakers 602.5 does'nt handle bass very well; they don't have enough "punch" for me, and bass definition isn't that good.

Therefore I was thinking about upgrading to the 603s3. Will this give a major improvement in bass-performance, bass-depth, and bass-definition, and will they give enough punch in the stomac???

I wass also wondering if my 50W/ch NAD will be sufficient to drive those 603s3 properly? My room is about 5m * 5m.

Any appreciations? :lease:
Cheers,
John

Hi John,

I used to own the B&W 602.5 and was in the same situation you are in now, in that i thought i wanted more bass and that the 602.5's were not good enough :rolleyes:

Basicaly i went out and bought the 603 s3 and my room was not too far off youre's 6m x 4m and i thought that they would fill it nicely, well they did but they were just too much and whatever i did i could not get them to sound right and infact it just made me realise how good the 602.5's sounded in my room in the beginning, anyway i sold the 603's to a friend and put the 602.5's back where they were and was happy again. :)

I hope that helps a little, this was a good few years back and i now have completely different systems but i thought i would share that experience with you.

Regards
John
 
Hi John,

Thanks for your help.
Mmmm... it seems that I first have to go and listen again in the HIfi-shop to
compare the 603 vs 602.5. 'What Hifi' said somewhere that the 603 were almost too bassy at times, maybe this was propably what you encounterd in your room.
Because of my room size, I did choose the 602.5 over the 603, and also because I have the ASW 600 sub to take care of deep bass.

Maybe the 602.5 aren't that bad after all, after hearing your story. Could you please tell me what amp/receiver you were driving them, back then?

Cheers,
John
 
Maybe your problem lies with integrating the sub properly? remember the sub sould have a smoth transition from the main speakers, such that you can't actualy hear it only the bass goes lower than without, if that makes anysense.
 
johnsm78 said:
Maybe the 602.5 aren't that bad after all, after hearing your story. Could you please tell me what amp/receiver you were driving them, back then?

John - I was useing all Harmon Kardon electronics which was the AVR5500 and DVD 25 at the time, and the amp which was pretty powerful as it had alot of current to feed the speakers so sounded pretty good from what i remember.

gazbarber said:
Maybe your problem lies with integrating the sub properly? remember the sub sould have a smoth transition from the main speakers, such that you can't actualy hear it only the bass goes lower than without, if that makes anysense.

I would tend to agree with what gazbarber is saying and it may be worth you're while playing with the sub a bit more and it could be that the intergration is not as good as it could be !

Regards
John
 
John and Gazbarber, thanks for the info :smashin: .

The other night, I listened to some cd's in stereo-modus, using both the front speakers 602.5 and the ASW 600 sub. While it certainly doesn't sound bad after all, I listened at rather low listening levels (because of not disturbing the neighbors at night), and from time to time, the sub shut itself off :thumbsdow because it wasn't getting a good bass-signal (because no bass-guitar/ kick-drum was playing on the music track for a couple minutes).

When the sub was "on" the sound was good; you could hear a full, warm sound, also at those low volume levels, and suddenly because of a quite passage in the music, the sub shut itself off, and... the sound was thin :(
Every time I have to raise volume control on the receiver; and then the sub starts to play again. When I raise volume on the sub itself, it gives too much bass at higher listening levels :confused:
Also when I set the crossover level on the sub higher, this doesn't prevent the sub shutting down at low volume.

Because of avoiding this, I was thinking about upgrading to the 603s3 as front speakers, so I could listening in stereo whithout using the sub.

Has anyone some ideas to avoid the sub shutting down at low listening levels?

Thank you guys for your help!
John
 
Hi John,

It sounds like you have an Auto mode on for the sub, i would disable this feature and just leave the sub on constantly as i never use that feature for exactly the same reason.. :)

Regards

John
 
Yea auto can be a pain, just manualy turn the thing on and off will do the job and save you a few hundred, unless you really want those speakers, and any excuse will do :)
 
There are two things I've done in the past to stop the sub going into standby:

1. connect the lead from receiver to sub into a Y adapter and then plug that into both the left & right inputs.
2. Turn the volume of the sub output on the receiver up and then the volume down on the sub itself to get the required volume.

I had a set of 603s3 speakers for front and 602.5s3 for surrounds. My room is about 6m x 3m and as I had a separate amp for stereo the sub was not used and the 603's did a great job IMO, but they do need a lot of space around them. Mine were about .75m away from any walls and this worked well in my room.

When I had these speakers there were several posts on this forum stateing that the 602.5's were the poor members of the family and should be avoided as they were badly designed compared to the others, and that the 602 standmounts were better. I disagreed that the 602.5's were poor, but the 603's were better in my room as I did try the 602.5's up front to check them out.

Mark.
 
THank you guys for all your advice!
I'll just have to think about it what to do.

To Mark E19: I will first try to do what you did to stop the sub going to standby-modus.
Hopes this will help!

Cheers,
John
 
With a good musical Sub I would advise the 602s3...
 

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