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
Some brands like B&W might be a victim of their own success to a certain extent in that many are sold at various price points and probably only a small percent are ever really set up properly to maximize their potential.

Hifi has always been this way to a certain extent. People spend a large % of budget on the "best" speakers they can afford and the rest suffers in comparison due to insufficient budget, lack of knowledge, low expectations, etc.

I've owned B&W, and while not my preferred, line I could probably do what is needed to be able to live with them if needed.

So teh line is NOT mid-fi, but the end results in many cases may end up that way for the reasons above.
Well we are custom builders and just completed a line of speaker that we have branded the Intimidator-2, because replace his complete 7.1 speaker system with our 2-way bookshelf speaker. Don't know if they would be considered mid grade but I do compliment the Intimidator speaker model by E.C.S. Anyone interested I can send photos and specs.
Layman has critiqued the B&W sound quite intensively within the last decade or so.