Soundcraft Hifi
Sales@soundcrafthifi.com 40 High Street Ashford Kent TN24 8TE
Tel: 01233 624441
Fax: 01233 624445 Email View map
Bowers and Wilkins Loudspeakers
Soundcraft are privileged to be authorised dealers for the entire B&W range, including the world renowned 800 series.
Throughout his lifetime, John Bowers, the founder of B&W Loudspeakers, strove relentlessly to get as close as possible to a transparent reproduction of recorded sound.
Born in 1923, near Worthing on the south coast of England, John spent the war years as a special operations executive in clandestine radio contact with allied resistance operatives in occupied Europe. He specialised in electronics and radio-transmission and after the war he opened a retail hi-fi store in Worthing with his business partner Roy Wilkins.
One of John’s passions was classical music. An avid concertgoer, he was disappointed by the sound reproduction that the best equipment of the day offered and set about improving the quality by modifying existing loudspeakers. Eventually, he started building his own designs in the workshop at the back of his hi-fi store.
At this time, much of the interaction between loudspeakers and their surroundings was not well understood. The basic motor principle and electric circuits were common knowledge, but what happens to a cone under dynamic conditions was unknown because the movements were too small and rapid to visualise. John hired extremely talented engineers and invested in the development of diagnostic tools and measurement equipment and in 1976 he opened a dedicated R&D department with a team of specialist acoustic and electronic engineers who had a wealth of modelling, testing and design tools at their disposal.
Throughout his career John enjoyed a close relationship with recording engineers who provided vital feedback on how loudspeakers could be improved. As a result of this relationship, B&W’s famous 801 was launched in 1979 and soon became the reference speaker in nearly all of the world’s classical recording studios, including EMI Abbey Road, Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.
