B&W Formation Duo

Bowers & Wilkins might have arrived rather tardily to the multi-room party, but at least it made a big entrance. Here before us is the B&W Duo, a pair of wireless active speakers and a highlight of the company’s Formation family of multi-room products, which includes a soundbar, a subwoofer and a spiritual successor to the iconic Zeppelin.

Idiosyncratic but stylish

With its trademark decoupled tweeter on top, the B&W Duo won’t be everyone’s cup of tea aesthetically, but there’s no denying that it has style. Available in either black or white, the cabinets are sculpted from two pieces of a polypropylene/wood fibre-based material known as Formi, fused together from front to back in clamshell style with a dampening element in between.

The cabinet is further braced by an internal matrix structure, which is designed to reduce unwanted resonance from a cabinet.

Powering each speaker are two internal 125W digital class-d amplifiers. The drive units are a paired combination of other successful B&W products. The 165mm, woven, Continuum woofers are modified from those within the five-star B&W 805D series. The carbon-dome tweeters are adapted from the 705s and, of course, decoupled from the main cabinet to help reduce vibration interference from the mid/bass unit.

That mid/bass has been redesigned to work within a sealed cabinet, as there are no reflex ports on the B&W Duo. That second point makes the Duos less fussy than typical rear-ported designs when it comes to placement near to walls.

In fact, you’ll find little else around the backs of the cabinets because the B&W Duo speakers are wireless. Of course, they aren’t totally wireless in the sense that each speaker still needs a mains lead to power it, but there are no other cables required. There is a USB port on each one for firmware updates and an ethernet port in case you need a physical connection to your home wi-fi – unlikely given that Formation products work on their own, exclusive wireless mesh network.

This is a big advantage. It means that the fidelity of multi-room connection and the quality of playback are not affected by whatever else is going on with your home network. Performance will not suffer because someone is streaming 4K Netflix or playing online games in another room – so long as your overall internet bandwidth isn't maxed-out.

Reception and transmission

There is a pair of 2.4GHZ receiver/ transmitters for communication with the music source, another pair working at the 5GHZ bandwidth for multi-room communication with other Formation products, and Bluetooth as well. We find that the wireless systems work well, with no dropouts or interference throughout our test.

The only other external features you’ll find on the Duo are the trio of buttons at the base of the speakers for manual volume control and pause/play. There’s also a single Formation button for cycling through inputs.

Beneath all this you’ll need some stands. The dedicated B&W Duo stands (£699) aren’t cheap, but they complete the look beautifully and can be massloaded with sand to improve stability.

There is a dedicated B&W Formation app but it’s really just for set-up and EQ use. Open the app and it searches for any Formation products in pairing mode and allows you to name the space they’re in (living room, kitchen or whatever).

If you want to go down the multiroom route, it's well worth considering the Formation Audio (£599), which connects to your existing hi-fi system, integrating all of your traditional wired sources (such as a CD player and turntable) into the wireless network.

The Formation app isn't designed to handle the day-to-day control of your music, though. For that, B&W recommends Roon, a £97-per-year music management subscription service (see p36), which ties all the inputs and outputs under one app while also giving you access to the music on any Roonready devices you might already own.

It largely works really well, although things can still get a little complicated at

times – name zones in both Roon and the Formation app and they won’t necessarily line up. You can also group products in Roon in a way that won’t show up in Formation but, given that Formation is needed for the set-up and maintenance of your system, you can’t just go with Roon.

We would like to see a stronger, more comprehensive Formation app to take care of everything. You shouldn't really have to pay for a third-party service to get the most out of your expensive new wireless speakers.

Strictly speaking, you could avoid Roon if you really wanted to. Both Spotify Connect and Apple Airplay 2 are built in, so the Duos will appear in Spotify and (if using an Apple device) most other streaming apps. If you're using an Android phone or an app that's not Airplay-compatible, you can still send music to the Duos using Bluetooth, right up to the higher-quality aptx HD standard if your player supports it.

Energetic delivery

From the first bars of Seeya by Deadmau5 (feat. Colleen) it’s clear that these speakers have real energy. The spring of the bass guitar, the razor-sharp hand claps, the high hats and buzzing electro-synth samples time so beautifully together that it’s impossible not to nod along.

Excellent dynamics make them punchy performers and by the time Colleen snakes her vocals so coherently through the sounds, any worry about wireless lag between the two speakers evaporates. The Duos sound gorgeous.

We switch to something more delicate with 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon and, again, we’re blown away. The intro shows off the easy agility of the Duos once more but it’s the bass that takes us by surprise this time. It punctuates the rolling snare with the tightest of double hits to the kick drum.

Grippy and with the kind of authority and punch you’d expect in high-quality floorstanders, it’s the ideal backdrop to the artful lead guitar and vocal detail every time Simon and his backing singers kick in. Each movement of his fingers up and down the fretboard, each sound as he changes chords takes you right into the studio.

There’s an even tonal balance as the song skips from gentle verse to upbeat chorus. With little audible sound from the speaker cabinets, there’s incredible clarity to the notes and a transparency that quickly makes us fussy about the quality of what we choose to listen to, the 24-bit/96khz wireless transmission more than enough to deliver the goods.

While the Duos deal admirably with Spotify’s MP3S and Tidal’s FLACS, these speakers will show up any lack in quality from the source material. So, we start ripping CDS by the dozen to get back to WAVS and enjoy every track. You really need good-quality source material to appreciate the benefits of what these talented standmounters can do.

With Ariel Ramirez’s mass Misa Criolla, sung by José Carreras, these speakers prove that there’s no need for any wiring. Their stereo imaging is as on-song as the Spanish tenor. We close our eyes and the broad soundscape is as clear as a picture. It’s easy to forget that it’s just two boxes making the sound. The cabinets themselves are quiet and their largescale dynamic ability brings huge drama to the live composition. They are capable of great power in the loud moments and a soft beauty for the quieter passages.

Old smoothies

By absolute standards, you might notice that the Duo's character is slightly over-cultured and arguably a little too smooth in moments when the music demands more grit. They’re not quite there for the full authenticity of sound in the White Stripes’ Ball And Biscuit. Even so, for their class, for their features and functionality, for their delivery of stylish, convenient, wireless, multi-room mastery, the Duos are peerless.

This is a great wireless product and nothing comes close to it right now. The Duos are deadly precise speakers with excellent precision and a speed of performance that makes you want to dig out tune after tune.

“The spring of the guitar, the razor-sharp hand claps, the high hats and buzzing electro-synth samples time so beautifully together it’s impossible not to nod along”