Are Bowers and Wilkins speakers overpriced?

paulgardner

Another + vote for the 805 model. I owned a pair from the generation prior to Diamond Tweeter series.

Happy Listening!

Lots of speakers are over priced.

then again, to those whom are blessed with a great job, and an amazing income, it is a non issue.
regular blue collar who make 38-50K a year, it’s an issue.

im in the blue collar range, just an average American hardworking patriot.  I search for deals, ......

if you. Have the scratch, hell yes I would enjoy some nice Dynaudio C4’s, probably not in this life.   Maybe after retirement I can start saving and work a week here and there to save for a wicked pair of speakers.   

Im VERY happy with what I have now.
ive never been happier than the two stereo systems I use nowadays.

I don't know that ALL are overpriced.
I'm pretty sure I got a fair shake when I bought my ESLs from 2 different brick & mortar dealers. The 10" 2 ways for $240, the 6' 3 ways for $900.
You'd have to pay ME to replace them with B & W's.
If THAT is too much then just do without and quit baby ballin'.

To the Bolsheviks on this forum, consider the mouths that are fed on the retail dollar. Markups at every level support the workers in the field of Hi-Fi!  The design engineers at their CAD workstations, the woodworkers, the machinists, the Packaging company, the warehouse men, the shipping people, the importers, the schleps at your local dealer, the sales people and the owners that pay them to demo for you and handle your business,...all make their living on the retail price of whatever speaker you’re buying. So if you look at the parts cost of the drivers, crossovers, and guess at what the cabinet is worth and come up well South of retail, well...don’t be surprised. 
If you want professionally designed, beautifully built, well supported products, you have to pay for all that is required to create them. All this, by the way, is why I built my own!
I am a Bolshevik too. 

if you want to talk about egregious pricing take a shot at cables. in terms of cost of product vs retail price i think cables win the prize. One example i can easily think of is I have a pair of Wilson Yvettes(25k). A single 2.5m Odin 2 power cord lists for 24k. I strongly doubt that the power cord has the inherent manufacturing cost that the wilson speakers have. of course there are a million examples. i spend way too much on cables often thinking how mindless it is when i look at the cost of the things in my house. in one hand i have a cable and in the other a high end tv which cost less than the cable. mind boggling if you think about it. i think people like me are the root of the problem bc we still buy the uber expensive cables knowing that they are grossly overpriced. Consider that 1000 american dollars for a pair of cables is no longer considered anywhere near the top. no one to blame but myself... but i do love great cables. that’s the problem.