2. speakers
  3. 1017107530

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

Showing 2 responses by joeb

joeb
121 posts
 
To Spluta,
first of all, no wonder you didn't like the N801's, driven with a measly 200W! The 801 requires at least 300 and even more before they begin to open up. That particular model could really benefit from bi-amping. This thread just amazes me how ridicoulously biased it is toward a fantastic speaker iine. Any of the Nautilus line from the 804 on up is very revealing, "junk in = junk out" The electronics matched have a lot to do with the end result. I recently heard a set of 802's powered with a Krell, it was muddy. the same set powered with a Threshold was majical. I have a set of N804's powered with a Classe 300 amp, Classe pre and CDP and the synergy is great. I will agree that the BW line tends to be overpriced, but the Nautilus line of speakers are definetly not the kind of junk some of you want to portray it as.
joeb
121 posts
 
Some of you guys are trying to use "a live performance" as a yardstick to measure or categorize the quality of sound reproduced by a speaker. I for one have never liked most "live" performances. The accoustics in most halls, amphitheatres, outdoors, clubs etc. stinks! The background noise, itself detracts from the quality. A good studio recording is difficult to reproduce live. There are very few recordings of live performances that do justice to a good band. Pink Floyds "Pulse" live in Europe is one of the few, and there are others. Also, we all have differences in musical tastes, and there are physiological differences to our ears themselves, and of course our brains are all wired differently, so this argument about speaker quality seems awfully strange. I personally love my BW N803's, but I think the N805 is much too bright, and the lower line of BW is more suited to HT, but not critical listening.
My 2 cents.
jb
More to discover