A lot of B&W's sales can be attributed to marketing. They associate themselves with Denon and Rotel. You rarely see a store that carries one of these without the other. It's like Rockford used to be with Alpine. And, B&W has built up the name. Nothing wrong with that, after all making money is the name of the game. People begin to buy an item based on rep and status over true listening and performance. Bose, need I say more... Please don't come unhinged, I'm not comparing B&W to Bose, I just use Bose as an example of the type of mindless purchses I'm talking about, in that respect, maybe I am comparing the two. Not that everyone who buys B&W are like that, we all have our own idea of how we want, or think, our music should sound.

Speakers are a very personal thing to a true audiophile. I'm talking about a person who buys the speaker based on sound solely and cares not what it looks like, not one of those guys who will buy a speaker because it's pretty and he has to please his wife so he compromises. I'm one who buys solely based on sound. I have not heard Audio Note speakers but have heard B&W plenty. Dynaudio, in my opinion wipes the floor with B&W's costing many times more. Driven by Krell or other high quality amps I have yet to hear anything give the impact and transcient response these combos reproduce. I'm talking crescendos so hard I didn't think possible to recreate by electronics. The closest thing to reproducing the snap of real drums I've heard. I'm sure there's many brands of speakers used in recording studios, I haven't been to many to see what was used. Dynaudio makes studio speakers and I'm assuming they are in some studios as they are still making them.

I feel it's a weakness if a speaker has to be put in a corner to work. That in itself will limit use and sales. AN isn't alone in the woods with a difficult placement though.

I believe I said this in my thread where I talk about the Sapphires, I have heard the Flagship Evidence and the, at the time, $35k Temptations, dollar per performance comparing the Sapphires to the big brothers, the Sapphires are a stunning value. When I heard them they were driven by Clayton Audio Class A monoblocks, I believe they are about $15k a pair, the rest of the electronics were T+A, the demo was incredible. Dynaudio had better be careful making speakers like the Sapphire at such a price because it becomes hard to justify more than double for a Temptation.

I also heard the Flagship Diamond series. They were driven by ARC with Classe' monoblocks. This was a very expensive system but one that made me think, "give me the money so I can buy something else". I later heard those Classe' monoblocks with an all Classe system and was very under whelmed so I can't lay all the blame on the B&W's.