Building drivers in-house, or having exclusive use of drivers is irrelevant. I have heard speakers that used exclusive drivers that have sounded excellent, and others that sounded poor. I could say the same about speakers using "drivers you can get off the Internet." In the end, it mainly comes down to the capability of the driver (created in-house or not), and what the speaker designer does with it (implementation).
As for B&W being a big company, can't disagree there... but again, that means nothing with respect to end-product quality to my thinking. Bose is a big company too. I am sure you would not compare *B&W* to Bose... Again, size of company and distribution channels are irrelevant, it comes down to what the end product sounds like (and its build quality). Is a box created in a large scale assembly plant necessarily more effective than one created by hand, or with manual tooling?
---Dave
As for B&W being a big company, can't disagree there... but again, that means nothing with respect to end-product quality to my thinking. Bose is a big company too. I am sure you would not compare *B&W* to Bose... Again, size of company and distribution channels are irrelevant, it comes down to what the end product sounds like (and its build quality). Is a box created in a large scale assembly plant necessarily more effective than one created by hand, or with manual tooling?
---Dave