Are Bowers and Wilkins speakers overpriced?

You can have better speaker in that price or even lower.

IMHO all audio devices are overpriced. The industry make from HiEnd the luxury commodity. Well... since I have no respect for money then I give a crap. After all my life span is very short.

a few thoughts.

either you like them or you don't. looks and/or sound. If you like them, realize, you are buying years of engineering and production development, as well as the resulting fabricated pair.

if you don't like them, then, they are very overpriced, their engineering/publicity .. is all BS, their looks are designed for marketing ... and you might need to say bad things about them to justify not buying them rather than feel someone might think you cannot afford them.

IOW, you always have to consider the source of both good and bad comments.

I'm 70, set in my ways now, however I was very active when the 801's were announced, oh my, the big deal in the magazines, before they hit the stores. I couldn't afford them, just wanted to be amazed by their sound. They hit Harvey's, audio shows, .... I went away without great enthusiasm, never could explain why, I certainly would not say negative things about them.

+1 4425

My opinion only but if there’s one piece of a system where you just can’t afford to compromise, it’s the speakers. Of course I’m not saying everything else doesn’t matter but nothing matters more in terms of the dramatic difference in sound you get than speakers.


Here’s what I my mean. Take a price level. Let’s say $5k for sake of argument. Now go listen to 20 different $5k speakers. It is amazing how different they sound.

Do same with amps or source at a fixed price level and variance nowhere near as large.
So for time-challenged folk (aren’t we all?), the one thing you absolutely have to get right is the speakers (if u must prioritize due to other life attention stealers).

So if you love BW, stretch to get them even if they may cost a little more than comparable speakers. Get what sounds best to you.

PS - Electrocompaniet was brand I couldn’t remember


in my search (hundreds of hours), I probably spent 80% on speaker search, 18% on amp search, 1% on source search (at this point I was worn out and just blindly went with dealer recommendation) and 1% on everything else. 

I don’t recommend that but it worked out well for me. Got lucky on source I guess....

elliottbnewcombjr
I was very active when the 801’s were announced, oh my, the big deal in the magazines, before they hit the stores. I couldn’t afford them, just wanted to be amazed by their sound. They hit Harvey’s, audio shows, .... I went away without great enthusiasm, never could explain why....

the 801m were, and still are, a mainstay in many studios, and one of the reasons why, IMO, was nailed by some comments made by Stereophile in their review. I reflect on this, based on my personal experience with them in the past.

All things being equal, this will make the speaker both a little too revealing of recorded detail and somewhat fussy when it comes to the quality of source and amplification components, just as LL noted in his auditioning comments.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/bw-matrix-801-series-2-loudspeaker-measurements

The 801m speakers have excellent target objectives for studios to hear everything - but will become a nightmare for the novice (all dealers when they were introduced), especially anyone, who brings these puppies home and places them on a suspended wood floor, and leaves them there on their factory castors. A design feature to allow movement in the studio.