B&W DM10 Speaker System Review

The B&W DM10 is the lowest-price addition to the product line of the well-known British speaker manufacturer. Most B&W speakers are priced in the upper-middle to higher brackets, and the DM10 now brings their essential qualities to a much broader market. A two-way bookshelf system with a walnut-veneer cabinet, the speaker is especially well suited to shelf mounting, either vertically or horizontally. Optional pedestals are available from B&W for free-standing operation.

The woofer of the DM10 is an 8-inch unit designed specifically for this system and employing B&W’s proprietary impregnated-fiber cone structure. Unlike other B&W speakers, the DM10 uses a vented enclosure. The company’s advanced computer techniques, which have been largely responsible for the outstanding performance of their more expensive speakers, were used to develop the woofer, enclosure, and crossover network of the DM10. Its tweeter is the same 1-inch dome type used in a number of other B&W speakers. The crossover, unlike those of most comparably priced speakers, is a third-order Butterworth filter that gives an 18-dB-per-octave attenuation outside the operating range of the drivers.

The rated frequency response of the B&W DM10 is 75 to 20,000 Hz ±3 dB measured at a 2-meter distance (anechoic measurement). It is nominally an 8-ohm system whose impedance is said to remain above 6.4 ohms in the audio band. The rated sensitivity of the speaker is 87 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) measured at 1 meter when driven by 1 watt. The DM10 is suitable for use with amplifiers rated between 10 and 75 watts per channel, and it can generate a maximum SPL of 106 dB at 1 meter at 1,000 Hz.

Laboratory Measurements

Splicing the smoothed room-response curve to the close-miked woofer curve resulted in a very flat and smooth composite frequency response over the larger part of the audio range. The output between 150 and 600 Hz seemed to depend more on speaker placement than is usually the case, although that may have been merely a reflection of the unusually smooth response at higher frequencies. Depending on whether we installed the speaker against a wall or on stands a few feet from a wall, we observed variations of as much as ± 5 dB in that frequency range. These are really very minor modifications of a speaker’s response, and we mention them only because drawing an average between those extremes resulted in a composite frequency response within ± 2.5 dB from 45 to 13,000 Hz, or ±3.5 dB from 45 to 20,000 Hz. There was a high-frequency peak of about + 6 dB at 16,000 Hz. In the bass, the response maximum was at 90 Hz, and it fell off to —4 dB at 30 Hz.

Quasi-anechoic measurements with our INDAC FFT analysis system confirmed the general shape of the speaker’s live-room response curve, although it differed in detail from the room measurements (not being affected by the room boundaries). At a 1-meter distance the response was within ± 1 dB from 200 to 5,000 Hz, dipping to a minimum at 6,000 Hz and rising to +6 dB at about 16,000 Hz.

The bass distortion of the DM10 at a 1-watt input was under 2 per cent down to about 75 Hz, rising to about 6 per cent at 40 Hz (measurements were made at the port for frequencies under 80 Hz, which was the effective acoustic crossover point between the port and cone radiation). A power-input increase to 10 watts resulted in higher but still acceptable distortion readings of 1.5 to 5 per cent down to 70 Hz, but they rose very rapidly at lower frequencies. The speaker impedance was a minimum of 5 ohms between 7,000 and 10,000 Hz, but elsewhere it never went below 7 ohms. Its sensitivity was exactly as rated, with a measured SPL of 87 dB at 1 meter when we drove it with 2.83 volts of midrange band-limited pink noise.

Comment

We compared the B&W DM10 extensively with our reference speakers and with comparably priced bookshelf systems. We also listened to them in both wall and pedestal mounting locations. What we heard was generally consistent with what we had measured. The high-frequency peak, since it affects only frequencies well above the musical range, did not color the sound detectably. The lower-midrange variations, which we had found to be sensitive to both position and room, tended to impart a slightly warm or full character to the sound. This was clearly audible when we compared the DM10 to other speakers, but it was not at all obvious when heard alone. The bass was surprisingly strong and clean, despite the low-frequency power limitations evident in our distortion measurements. One would hardly expect to use a speaker of the size and cost of the DM10 for heavy-duty, high-level reproduction of deep bass frequencies, so we do not see this as any real limitation on its overall performance. At any listening level that most people would reasonably use at home, it was completely clean.

In a highly competitive price bracket such as this ($150-5200), the differences between speakers are not large. They are nonetheless real, and each buyer must make a decision based on personal preference if he has one. To us, the sound of the DM10 was easily the peer of that we heard from any speaker anywhere near its price, and it did remarkably well in comparison to some costing many times as much. The small size and weight of this speaker, which make it practical for installations that could not accommodate a larger “bookshelf” speaker, could conceivably combine with its sonic properties to make it the preferred choice in many cases. Its distribution is somewhat limited compared with that of some better-known brands, but we would strongly recommend making the effort to hear the B&W DM10 before buying any speaker in its price range. It is unquestionably one of the better speaker-system values in today’s market.

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