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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
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.

jayt's avatar
jayt
11 posts
 
Speakers are very room sensitive. That's why even if you use exactly the same set up as your other friend's, they can either sound better or worse in your room. Manufucaturers/designers can fool some people some times ( when they bring out a new product for marketing reasons ) but they cannot fool all the people all the times. Good or bad, B & W has been around many many years. They must have done something right in order to stay afloat all these years. It's one thing to condemn a line of speakers, but it's also another for you to reflect how well can you put together an audio system with good synergy and good environment. Spend sometime to understand your environment and learn how to maximize it, you'll be surprised how much better the same speaker can sound and how unfair you've been by saying all these negative things about certain line of speakers until now !
Take this as an advice, not criticism. Good luck.
danheather
108 posts
 
"They must have done something right in order to stay afloat all these years."

Jayt...I guess we could make the same argument about Bose too, right? *They've* been "afloat" for a long time. Perhaps we've just never heard them setup with the right electronics, in the right environment, with the optimal barometric pressure....

I'm picking up a pair of 901s right away!! I'm sure that they'll be great...one day...when I find that perfect synergy. What a glorious day that will be.
hindemith
21 posts
 
Keymetric, we agree with you. We own the Nautilus 805's
with REL stadium III for the bottom end. We love what
we hear. The speakers disappear. The sound stage is
huge. We get every bit of detail which the amplifier
is capable of delivering.
ohlala
1,252 posts
 
Is the consensous among the 'mid-fi' camp that the Nautilus line sounds worse than the Matrix, that other manufacturers that are now making better speakers, or that B&W was never particularly good?
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