The 705 S3: precision engineering in milled aluminium
Bowers & Wilkins refines its tweeter on top speaker with a newly machined aluminium enclosure and enhanced acoustic performance. The distinctive design sits atop a rich wooden cabinet, embodying the craft of high fidelity sound.
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The elegance of the elongated tweeter housing milled from a solid block of aluminium sits plain to see in these photographs, mounted atop a deep rosewood cabinet. At 235mm long, the housing is deeper than earlier 700 S2 models, which has reduced distortion, and the added length creates what the brand refers to as extended tube loading: the chamber within that aluminium body opens the top frequencies with greater clarity and precision.
What makes the engineering particularly effective is the isolation. The tweeter housing is mounted with two compliant fixings designed to decouple it from the cabinet beneath, meaning it exists as a separate acoustic entity, free to vibrate without transmitting that energy through the speaker structure. The 1-inch decoupled carbon dome tweeter at its centre benefits from this mechanical autonomy, and the carbon coating on the aluminium dome increases stiffness, pushing the first breakup point to 47kHz.
Paired below sits a 165mm midrange cone made of proprietary Continuum material, the same material found across Bowers & Wilkins’ finest instruments. The cabinet itself, finished here in rich rosewood, presents the speaker not as technology but as an object worthy of the room. The detail lies in restraint: metal, wood, and the precise geometry of that elongated sphere, each element contributing to what arrives at the ear.
Imagery courtesy of Bowers & Wilkins (@bowerswilkins).