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

I know that title sounds pretencious. By all means, everyones taste is different and I can grasp that. However, I find B&W loudspeakers to sound extremely Mid-fi ish, designed with sort of a boom and sizzle quality making it not much better than retail quality brands. At price point there is always something better than it, something musical, where the goals of preserving the naturalness and tonal balance of sound is understood. I am getting tired of people buying for the name, not the sound. I find it is letting the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In these times of dying 2 channel, and the ability to buy a complete stereo/home theater at your local blockbuster, all of the brands that should make it don't. Most Hi-fi starts with a retail system and with that type of over-processed, boom and sizzle sound (Boom meaning a spike at 80Hz and sizzle meaning a spike at 10,000Hz). That gives these rising enthuists a false impression of what hi-fi is about. Thus, the people who cater to that falseified sound, those who design audio, forgetting the passion involved with listening, putting aside all love for music just to put a nickle in the pig...Well are doing a good job. Honestly, it is just wrong. Thanks for the read...I feel better. Prehaps I just needed to vent, but I doubt it. Music is a passion of mine, and I don't want to have to battle in 20 yrs to get equipment that sounds like music. Any comments?
mikez
karls
332 posts
 
I think they generally offer good value for the money. A lot depends on the particular model and on the partnering equipment; without these caveats it's impossible to generalize. Having said that, I've never bought any of them myself, as I haven't ever been emotionally moved by them. They seem technically good but lacking in "life" to me.
lucynbarney
45 posts
 
From my perspective (I own N803s) B&W is an established speaker manufacturer. Their business is speakers. Their focus is speakers. They have knowledgeable staff that DESIGN speakers. They release the results of their design into high-end models and filter the technology down to lower-end speakers. It is not a 'fly-by-night' outfit that throw things together and hope the result sounds good. Hence my conclusion is that the speakers they release are designed to do what they do, at a given price point (component quality, cabinet quality). They're neither awesome value for money nor money no object designs (except for the original Nautilus). They do what they're supposed to do. So if you pick a hi-fi range they'll be hi-fi, and if you pick a mid-fi range they'll be mid-fi.

Anyway I, for one, think it's very silly to get excited about awesome products from competing manufacturers where marginal performance differences seem to count for so much. There's much more important things to do like enjoy the music rather than 'the system'. End of rant.

ps. At least your post generated some interest !
bowbow
123 posts
 
It seems strange to me that the two posters who dislike all B&W speakers are both new member who just signed up and are making their first posts. I wonder if they are existing members who set up an alias to hide their identity?
kheart
13 posts
 
Is it ridiculous to state an "opinion" in a forum? Is it in poor taste to attempt to gather other opinions to perhaps shed some light on your own? Taste are, indeed, relative, and "validating" ones opinion seems a relatively healthy thing to do. I am sure that we all do this to some extent... I have owned a number of B&W speakers and have mixed reviews overall on the quality of their sound. Let me just say that since moving on to other higher quality speakers (Audio Physics, JM Reynaud, Gershman) I have been able to feel the music and hear things previously unavailable to me via the B&W line of speakers. My system is comprised of a Rogue Magnum 99 pre-amp, Antique Sound Lab Monoblock 845 amps, JM Reynaud Trente speakers, Audio Aero Capitole CD player and Mapleshade speaker cables and interconnects.
garfish
1,840 posts
 
Well.......it's just that calling B&W speakers "mid-fi" is a tremendous insult to many, whereas merely saying that he doesn't like B&W sound characteristics would be much less insulting-- and more clearly a personal opinion. The poor choice of thread wording is HUGE here, IMHO;>). Your thread title is not so much pretentious as it is insulting. B&W is a well respected high end company. Someone once implied that my speakers were "mid-fi" too, and I blew up-- on line-- but I'm over it. Cheers. Craig
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