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
My Keilidhs sound better with my TT than my CDP - though I do mostly listen to CD's. I listen to a lot of small scale chamber music, jazz, tango, folk, orchestral, as well as electronica, wall-of-sound rock like Radiohead and Pulp, and occasionally pounding ambient electronica like Leftfield, underworld, faultline and even some metal like tool. They sound as good playing vinyl with fast beats and lots of deep bass as they do playing solo piano or a baroque chamber ensemble. Right now I am listening to Dvorak's Symphonic poems (on CD) with some very loud complex passages. The sense of scale you can get from a full scale orchestra played on big full range speakers is lacking in terms of thundering bass, but they still do well in other respects. They don't try to do anything that a speaker in this range can not realistically achieve.

Ohlala what would you recommend to someone with my tastes that would outperform the Linns for a similar price. If I could afford them (and if I didn't move around so much) I would probably look for a pair of big Pro-ac response 2.5's, Aerial 7's, Joseph's, or Audio Physic Virgos, but with my relatively modest budget don't you think that these beat the competition hands down? (at least when comparing apples to apples) (Please don't mention B&W's because I've been down that road and they just don't cut it for me.)
What did the Linn Keilidhs cost new? Let's compare retail-to-retail prices--even though the Keilidhs are now discontinued (right?).

Otherwise, we should be comparing used Joseph prices to used Linn prices.
"Ohlala what would you recommend to someone with my tastes that would outperform the Linns for a similar price."

That was my point. If your taste is Linn and alike, then it easy to say they are The best speaker. I bought Hales instad of Ninkas, but not because of your version of my preconceptions. Although they have their drawbacks, the Revelations use a smaller stamp. In a small room, however, the Ninkas probably have an advantage. Also, if you get a chance, listen to a pair of Magnepans. And BTW - ProAc floorstanders are also quite high on my to-buy-when-I-start-making-real-money list.

Maggies are an astonishing speaker but there is something about electrostats that....okay, perhaps I should practice what I preach and get used to them before I say they aren't my cup of tea. When I heard them I was truly amazed and they were on my list, but I felt there was something missing with electrostats vs. conventional driver speakers - something to do with impact maybe.