Am I the only one who thinks B&W is mid-fi?

Very little offence taken. Just the tiniest bit actually. But it's Friday and I'm over it now ! Think I'll put some Wagner on and enjoy my speakers. Actually it's the music I enjoy and the speakers are just part of a enabling tool. Tough to have an emotional attachment to something inanimate. Even if they 'sound' good. But the music ...

Enjoy the music
and
Happy listening
to all!!!

Let me confess to not reading all the posts here. But I have heard numerous B&W speakers, which spread enormously (like Measles?: remember we need to have had the stuff once) in Mexico City, where I write from. In my auditioning experience, for example, Dynaudio beat the B&W hands down -- the latter sounding very ordinary(mid-fi/lo-brow?) at diffrent price ranges. This might also be because the B&W stuff tends to be sold here through chi-chi superstores, which have minimal discrimination (though now AND AGAIN excellent sales-folk). It was the the last who led me to what I do own by way of speakers and amps, Margules Audio, indigenous to Mexico -- super stufff I find, but at least I am not bashing any mark/marca.

I used to work at a dealer that sold both B&W and Dynaudio and I have had ample opportunity to compare these brands. They are both excellent but they are different, one is not "better" than the other. What cannot be stressed enough is that system matching is what makes or breaks the sound and usually if the match doesn't work the speakers get blamed. The old joke is a guy walks into a demo room with unfamiliar gear and says "Nice preamp". If you haven't heard the gear in a familiar context you are judging blindly. The B&Ws are more revealing of any harshness in the electronics while the Dyns can be little more forgiving. We also sold Sonus Faber, which was easily bested by these brands in the lower price points, but once you got up the Signum and above they were on par. On that note, it really just amounts to whether you prefer chocolate or strawberry.

Sometimes I really wonder if most of the "audiophiles" who frequent this board and many like them have ever heard any type of real live music. If you base what a speaker is supposed to sound like on different recordings than you are missing 100% of what an audio system is supposed to be doing. And I don't mean going to a concert either, I mean real live instruments up close and personal in a room that may be not too different from the size of most listening rooms. I know that disqualifies most classical music (I am a jazz fan), but in listening to actual instrumnents in a real space weekly I have come to the conclusion that even dealers have no idea what real music should sound like. Most systems sound like hi-fi and nothing more, including some very well regarded and expensive speakers( B&W, Wilson, and many others.). And to me the argument that you have to hear a 20k speaker system in your home with the perfect components to match in order to really hear it makes absolutely no sense. Dealers are trained to set up the equipment they sell and in the case of my local dealer, a rep from Wilson actually comes down there to set the speakers up. Why are you selling speakers if you don't know how to make them sound great, especially at these prices? To my ears Wilsons are good but not great speakers, I have never believed I was hearing anything like an actual performance. And B&W speakers don't sound anything like music to me, and I have heard ( on too many occasions to count) not only the Signature 800s but the actual Nautilus speaker driven by 8! Mark Levinson Reference 33 monoblocks, an all ML Reference front end, and a Goldmund Turntable all connected with Transparent's top cabling! And I have to say that I was truly impressed by the sound, just as I am when I hear the Watt Puppy 7s driven by all Levinson electronics and amps but it never sounds like real instruments to my ears. And that especially goes for the Signature, I don't know who voices those things but music is not what they sound like in the least. Granted it is almost impossiblt to find a recording that captures music truthfully (try a Mapleshade recorded saxaphone), but still I just don't hear real music when I hear these systems. This is all just my opinion, but I say go out and hear real music in a real space and come home and listen to your system and especially your local dealer's system and do the math.