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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
mikez OP
9 posts
 
It worked. We all learned something here didn't we? I Borrowed a pair of N 805's and paired them with a dynaco 80 amp, an audioresearch pre-amp, andRega cd player. It sounded nice, not my cup of tea, but I could have lived with them. We also learned that B&W and Levenson don't work well together. And that's what it is all about, us growing as audiophiles.
void
7 posts
 
Certainly not high-end to my ears (except for the original Nautilus Prestige). In my opinion the Nautilus line is tonally impressive (except for the forward, metally sounding tweeters) but not very musical/coherent, soundstaging is below average and way overpriced. Sounds like they're designed on a computer to be tonally correct, but they lack a heart and magic like JM Reynaud for instance.
jazzdude
332 posts
 
Blackie,

The Tannoy Definition and B&W Nautilus series have a similar sound, that sound that belies thier studio monitor heritage. However the Tannoy Definitions are superior in almost every way. The Tannoy's have higher sensitiviy, can be driven by tube amps, much better in low-level detail retrieval, and they don't have the tizzy highs of the B&W Nautilus line.
viggen
838 posts
 
I think B&W are great speakers. But I can't imagine owning one, for the same reason I won't ever own a Sony television. Both are high quality products, but I think both of these products are saturated with a "technicolor" effect. Neither of these components are very natural in their presentation of sources. This is coming from someone who loves Brit speakers such as KEFs and Tannoys.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
I think B&W has gone downhill in their crossover design in the current line. This is partially because they changed the way the make them. In many cases they mass produce them on separate circuit boards and then plug them in. They use to make them indivdually in each speaker. This helps production in larger quantities; but it looses something in changing how they traditionally designed them. They are a victim of their own success I guess.

One of my systems has a pair of the original CDM-1. It has a first-order crossover not found in the CDM-1SE or CDM-1NT. I have heard the newer versions and they are not quite as musical. They probably work better for HT though. The original CDM-1 was the one that won all the audio awards including Loudspeaker of the year in Europe, but they don't tell you that in their marketing materials; they make it sound like the current models are award winning.

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