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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
vernneal's avatar
vernneal
438 posts
 
Listen to a B & W CM10 which sounds fantastic at a price below the 804D, 803D,802D and 800Ds which ALL sound great. I suspect your snobbishness has gotten the better of you. Oh and there are other hi fi bargains such as the Rega turntable, The OPPOS 103 and 103D CD/DVD players, Kimber Kable 4TC and 8TC but you would have to listen and the $$$ might no be enough for you, Cheers
jaxwired
229 posts
 
Ummm....these people are all dead now.
bcgator's avatar
bcgator
354 posts
 
LOLOLOLOLOL Sometimes Audiogon is unreadable, like when someone says that speaker A "blows" speaker B (this is actually happening in another thread, right now), as if the music from speaker A is so amazing that it causes speaker B to literally fly away in some kind of tornado event, and then sometimes you get a thread like this, spanning more than a decade, culminating with Jaxwired taking the cake for post of the week.
ptss
1,649 posts
 
Hmm. That would make you 1 of a kind!
mapman's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
mapman
15,679 posts
 
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.
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