What are your general thoughts of B&W speakers

Baranowski,

Exactly the point I have made in earlier posts. This thread and others like it are useless without full descriptions of model and amps driving them etc.

I have heard many speaker systems sound bad. Many of those times it was not the speaker that was bad. You are only as good as the weakest link. A great speaker under powered or over damped will sound at best average.

Even the ZR1 would be slow if driven by a blind person, or driven in the snow, or across a ploughed field. Come on people. Lets have proper information.

Chadeffect ,I totally disagree with what your saying.."What are your general thoughts of B&W speakers" is what was asked.We dont need to know room size,amps,preamps,cables,treatments etc to give thoughts of the brand.Personally I wouldnt take em if free assuming I couldnt sell them and get what I consider better.The way I read it are comments on the B&W line,pretty simple to access!

Missioncoonery,

"General thoughts" on a speaker would assume the speaker is being used with equipment of similar quality. I did not mention room or cables.

So from your comment ( missioncoonery- "Personally I wouldnt take em if free...") we are to deduce you think they are bad. But some of the finest recording studios on the planet would disagree. So now who do we believe? Your opinion or the opinion of gifted professionals?

So with no insight into the way they are being used either you are deaf or the pros are deaf. Ummm... Which amp were you using?

They can be nice with the right amp and setup but often that is not the case when you hear them. In general, I tend to prefer PSB, Focal and Totem when I hear them these days.

I owned B&W P6s for about 10 years which were a good value in their day.

How many manufacturers offer diamond tweeters? They are certainly at the fore front of technology.

Perhaps because it is not superior to Berrilum Tweeters. Steve Mowry says in the article "The Whole Truth About Beryllium Diaphragms: -

"For a given geometry the first bending (break-up) frequency is proportional to the material Speed Of Sound, where the speed of sound within a material is defined as the square root of the Young’s Modulus divided by the Mass Density, (m/s); the higher the better. However, the Mass of the diaphragm must also be considered. Then the ratio of the Speed Of Sound to the Mass Density can be used as the materials’ acoustic figure of merit, (m4/kg/s); the higher the better."

After that he shows values of "Acoustic Figure of Merit" for different material (higher the better)in m4/kg/s

Berillum - 6.97
Diamond - 4.92
Aluminum - 1.86
Titanium - 1.13
Steel - 0.63