So I thought I'd post a short review of thw B&W store in central.....
Got to the store on Duddle St in a not too obvious building (typically HK style), and was met and greeted by warm staff. It was nice, because they acknowledged your presence without shadowing you, and making you feel uncomfortable.
The store is about 4000 sq ft...... lots of tasteful downlight’s which gives it that “cinema feel”. Also they have lots of carpet and curtains suggesting an excellent acoustic environment with no harsh reflections or reverberations to spoil the clarity. There are three demonstration rooms; two of them have home cinema setup.
There is an excellent range of speakers on display, all of them B&W, along with a gaggle of cd players and amplifiers by Rotel. They also feature a full range of Casse amplifiers which are just so beautifully esoteric.
The speaker range start at basic bookshelves and go all the way to massive imposing semi professional home cinema style speakers which just looked awesome and costing northwards of 100K (shame they were not hooked up!). A good sign also was the size of the cables connecting components, which wouldn’t look out of place on the national grid!
The salesman hooked up whatever speakers we wanted to listen to. He was reasonably good in terms of product knowledge, and was always polite and friendly and never seemed bothered by our in-ability to decide! Typically he rubbished other manufacturers somewhat unconvincingly. Also unfortunately there were no Nautilus speakers on display.
We brought our own CDs in, and tried a good range of music out. Stuff like "Madonna - Do you know what it feels like" just sounded so so very excellent. Dance and Hip Hop had the slam factor and stuff like "Air - Moon Safari" was just so atmospheric and so beautifully resolved.
We listened to a number of B&W speakers starting off at bookshelves, but we were totally blown away by their floorstanders (700 series) which sounded great. A lovely balance between being tonally neutral, but not so flat or boring sounding.
Having looked at the various finishes, we plumped for the 3 way 700 series finished in cherry with delivery around 2 weeks.
So all in all, a great experience. A must visit place on your list if you are considering buying good hi fi speakers!