Inside the 700 Series technology: from studio to home

The 700 Series is defined by elegance and driven by performance. Merging our most advanced technologies with beautiful design and svelte proportions, it’s engineered for one purpose in particular: to bring studio-quality sound seamlessly into your home.

With eight loudspeaker models to choose from in the 700 Series, it’s the most extensive range Bowers & Wilkins makes. These include the floorstanding 702 S3, 703 S3 and 704 S3, which are perfect for larger listening rooms and home theatres, the stand-mount 705 S3, 706 S3 and 707 S3, which deliver exceptional sound from a compact design, and two centre channel models – the HTM71 S3 and HTM72 S3 – which add even more clarity and detail to your home cinema setup.

While they are a joy to look at, thanks to their striking designs and luxurious finishes, what’s so impressive about these loudspeakers is their level of performance. Each in the series is crafted with technologies engineered for our revered, flagship 800 Series Diamond range – known globally as Abbey Road’s loudspeaker of choice – but made more accessible. This means, when you listen with the 700 Series, you really do get iconic, studio-level performance at home. Many of the technologies used to monitor, record, and master some of the world’s most famous music and movie scores are now in front of you, playing them back to you at your command. 

The Bowers & Wilkins model is straightforward – build the best loudspeaker possible and then determine how to integrate these cutting-edge technologies into more attainable models. That’s exactly what we’ve done with the 700 Series, so you can benefit from the joys of True Sound.

So, what goes into making the 700 Series – a loudspeaker with the demanding task of sounding so incredibly accurate and precise while remaining sleek, elegant and home-friendly? This deep dive into the technical elements of the range should answer any questions – and more. 

A design filled with high notes: Carbon Dome tweeters

The 700 Series is renowned for accurate and lifelike sound thanks to its beautifully detailed high-frequency reproduction. Behind this is our Carbon Dome tweeter – purpose-built for the range. Crafted from a traditional 30-micron aluminum dome but reinforced by a carbon coating and carbon outer ring, it’s incredibly thin yet rigid. The carbon coating and additional rim add even more stability and support to the tweeter while keeping it lightweight. The rigidity of this hybrid structure pushes the breakup frequency to 47 kHz, meaning sound is delivered with less distortion and even more accuracy. 

A house for high frequencies: Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top

In half of the 700 Series models, specifically the 702 S3, 703 S3, 705 S3 and HTM71 S3, this advanced tweeter technology is elevated further by its housing.

The Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top is one of the most striking design elements of the 700 Series – and other Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers such as the 800 Series Diamond. It’s milled from a single block of aluminium and decouples the tweeter from the main cabinet, giving the Carbon dome its very own space to work its magic on high frequencies. By isolating the tweeter from the cabinet vibrations and diffraction, it improves imaging, openness, and transient clarity, which all contribute to the 700 Series’ beautiful soundstage. 

Midrange that moves you: Continuum cone, FST, Biomimetic Suspension

Complementing these beautiful high frequencies is our midrange driver technology. Directly inherited from our 800 Series Diamond, the 700 Series features the all-important Continuum cone drivers for midrange brilliance.

Much of what we hear, such as voices and instruments, falls within the midrange audio spectrum, so ensuring this sounds accurate and precise is paramount for lifelike performance – especially when it comes to delivering True Sound. The Continuum cone is crafted from a woven composite material that provides optimal stiffness, low mass, and excellent self-damping, resulting in exceptional control over breakup and coloration. The result is a more open, neutral performance that delivers voices and instruments with precision and transparency.

The exceptional performance of the Continuum cone in each three-way loudspeaker in the 700 Series is further enhanced by a few key Bowers & Wilkins technologies.  

The first of these is the Fixed Suspension Transducer, or FST for short, which is derived from our 800 Series Diamond. Unlike traditional speakers, which use a rubber surround that connects to the periphery of the drive unit, the FST design replaces this with a compressed foam ring that keeps the outer edge fixed – hence Fixed Suspension Transducer. This allows the Continuum cone to move and flex more naturally, reducing unwanted resonances and providing purer sound, especially in the upper midrange.

Next is the Biomimetic Suspension – a technology first seen on our 800 Series Diamond range that directly revolutionises midrange cone performance. For this, we turned our attention to another crucial element in the loudspeaker cone, the fabric spider. This is the flexible disc behind the cone that centres and controls its movement. And although it’s a suitable method for many loudspeakers, it adds mass, creates air resistance, and stores mechanical energy, which can lead to distortion.

To combat this, we developed the Biomimetic Suspension, which features a minimalist polymer framework that’s radically more open, allowing air and sound waves to pass through freely. By replacing the conventional fabric spider with our proprietary Biomimetic Suspension, unwanted air pressure and coloration are significantly reduced, delivering midrange transparency you wouldn’t believe possible. 

Powerful and precise bass: Aerofoil™ Profile bass cone

Whether you’re using the 700 Series to listen to music or as part of your home cinema system – or both – you can expect powerful and precise bass from any song or movie. After all, the technology that enables the 700 Series to sound so exceptional is directly inspired by the 800 Series Diamond, which plays a crucial role in the creation of many of these songs and movie scores at Abbey Road.

The Aerofoil Profile bass cone was developed using advanced computer modeling techniques to ensure it has variable thickness, providing stiffness and rigidity where needed most. Inspired by the shape of an airplane wing, hence the name aerofoil, its cone is thicker in the centre and thinner at the edges. This dispersion of thickness allows faster response and better damping of internal resonances, making the bass cleaner and more defined.

The details that make the difference: Speaker terminals, crossovers, Flowport

Of course, great sound is about more than just drivers. Every element of the 700 Series cabinet has been considered to deliver the best possible performance. The speaker terminals are precision-engineered to provide a secure, low-resistance connection, ensuring the signal remains pure from amplifier to loudspeaker. Inside, carefully designed crossovers use the highest-quality components to preserve that signal and guarantee a seamless handover between drive units.

At the rear, our signature Flowport™ technology helps to reduce turbulence by incorporating a dimpled surface, similar to that of a golf ball. The result is bass that is cleaner, tighter and more controlled. And on the outside, the curved baffle and carefully sculpted driver pods don’t just add to the 700 Series’ refined appearance – they also reduce diffraction and enhance cabinet rigidity, helping the loudspeakers sound as elegant as they look.

700 Series: True Sound, studio to home

The 700 Series has one of the most demanding roles in our line-up: it has to look elegant and versatile enough for a living room, while delivering performance that can live up to its studio-born heritage. From stereo systems in studies to multi-speaker home cinema setups, it’s designed to adapt – always without compromise.

Take the 702 S3, for example: its midrange unit is identical to that found in the 802 D4 from the 800 Series Diamond – a loudspeaker costing nearly three times as much. The only difference is the cabinet it lives in. That makes the 702 S3, in our view, the best-value loudspeaker we make.

This trickle-down philosophy is what makes the 700 Series so special. It takes the pinnacle of loudspeaker engineering – trusted every day at Abbey Road Studios – and distils it into a sleeker, more attainable form. In short: the sound of the studio, beautifully realised at home.