CI800 In-ceiling is the result of an extensive project by Bowers & Wilkins engineers. Their considerable challenge was to deliver the exemplary quality levels associated with the reference quality 800 Series Diamond – the speaker of choice of major recording facilities such as London’s Abbey Road Studios – in loudspeakers designed to fit into walls and ceilings. The flagship CI800 Series sets a new standard for installation loudspeaker performance. Delivering audiophile quality to people who demand high-resolution audio, but don’t want to see any loudspeakers.


Could we do even better?
Inspired by what we’ve learned about diamond, we wanted to see if we could do even better. The result is an entirely new type of tweeter dome that was first seen in Bowers & Wilkins high-end PM1 loudspeaker and is the sweetest sounding tweeter yet heard in a custom installation speaker.

  • By bracing the dome with a ring of filament-wound carbon fibre, we’ve raised the break-up frequency of aluminium to 40kHz.
  • The result is an incredible tweeter for the finest details and sound.

Extremely high-quality acoustics.
CCM8.5 is a two-way in-ceiling loudspeaker, which offers high quality acoustics in an incredibly discreet package. It features a Carbon Braced Tweeter and a single 180mm (7in) bass/mid Aramid fiber driver, with antiresonance plug.

  • Drive units are located in a continuously rotatable central baffle, for ’toeing’ in the loudspeaker.

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Just the way the artist intended you to hear it.
The tweeters in all CI800 models are Nautilus™ Tube Loaded designs, and are fully de-coupled from the rest of the speaker assembly, as in the 800 Series Diamond.

  • This ensures that any vibrations from the LF units do not create unwanted colouration to the tweeter performance.
  • This adds to the audiophile performance of this remarkable custom installation range.BW_800inceiling-tegel1280x855-4-min

Simplicity.
A crossover’s construction speaks volumes about the quality of a speaker. What to look for is simplicity. The rule is, the better the design of the drive units, the simpler the design of the crossover can afford to be.

  • The quality of the CI800 drive units is such that we’ve been able to make the speaker’s first-order crossover one of the simplest – and best – we’ve ever produced.
  • Using the same exceptional, handpicked components found in the flagship 800 Series Diamond.BW_800inwall-tegel1280x855-2-min