Originally Posted By: Adrian
But not obvious when compared to companies which use the same design philosophy such as Axiom, Paradigm, PSB, B&W ect. Sure you can make references to obvious choices like Bose, Klipsh ect...but compare speakers who's engineers have the same design goal(which should be a flat freq response through it's range). I also took part in the M3/B&W test and thought I was listening to two different Axiom speakers. The point is, for two sonically close speakers, do you want to pay $350 or $2500? regardless of the outcome of the test, that to me was the main revelation of the test. You can keep going on about the problems associated with testing speakers, but the simple fact is, the greatest biases are the appearance and price which is why that shuld be eliminated. Blind testing may not be the perfect system, but it's superior to sighted tests as shown by the heavy hitters who support it. If you you read the posts below the link Jay provided, you'll see some very strong professional rebuttals that are more interesting than the blog(imo). When I buy speakers, I listen with my ears, not my eyes. When I buy paint for my kitchen, I use my eyes, and don't tap the can to see what it sounds like.
Getting back to the M3/B&W comparison. The M3, though an Axiom speaker, is known to have somewhat different characteristics than the rest of Axioms speakers and most of the people involved in the test had never heard an M3 before, nor had most heard the B&W if any. So to imply that we "knew" which was the Axiom because we own M80s or M60s or whatever, is just heresay. Some speakers are easy to tell the difference sonically like the ones you mentioned, but most would be hard pressed when comparing similarly designed ones.


I wonder if that test was conducted at B&W, if you would have preferred the B&Ws. Paradigm ran a similar blind test claiming their speakers beat B&Ws too. Seems like speaker companies like to compare themselves to B&W alot and of course when they host a blind test at their facility, using their setup, they....ALWAYS win.. HMMM.