Speaker Asylum: Re: B&W Nautilus 804 - review posted by John Ashman General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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Posted by John Ashman (D ) on October 31, 2004 at 07:24:49

In Reply to: Re: B&W Nautilus 804 - review posted posted by ScofieldKjv on October 31, 2004 at 06:51:32:

I suggest you go find a pair of B&W Matrix 3 speakers and give them a good listen. Even though they are about 20 years old, they sound better in most ways than newer B&Ws. Of course, they didn't use Kevlar or porting, but they also had a much better cabinet than todays speakers. What flaws they had were flaws of subtraction, not addition.

My big point is that B&W has been the recipient of a social promotion program by Stereophile because the owner/publisher of Stereophile and the chief editor were both big B&W fans and owners. And since most of the editors and many of the writers in audio went through the Stereophile school of audio writing, you'll see B&W held up as a model for how a speaker should sound. The problem is that there are a LOT of better speakers out there, especially for the same price, certainly with objectively flatter response and better quality drivers/cabinets. The flaws of the product have been twisted into "benefits", but you can look on any measurement of any recent B&W and see severe FR variations. Just like Bose is the posterboy for what's wrong with mid-fi, B&W has become the posterboy for what's wrong with high-end. So I apologize for my strong reaction, but please, there are lots of good speakers out there, give a great review to one that deserves it. Again, no speaker is perfect and if you can't hear the imperfections and comment on them, then a review is just a "promotion" or "advertisement", not a review.

Here's a link of 703 measurements, it was the closest I could find, but if you do a google search for "measurements B&W frequency response" you'll find all you need to know. People are *finally* starting to figure out via the internet that the emperor has no clothes and kevlar is a bad midrange material.

• http://www.guidetohometheater.com/speakersystems/1004bw/index4.html   (Open in New Window)

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