About 4 years ago, when I was putting together an audio system to replace my much too old equipment, I listened to a lot of speakers, Canton Dynaudio, Mirage, and more. I wasn't going really high end, but I wanted good sound. I was about to buy a pair of Dynaudio towers when my internet trawling led me to Soundex outside Philadelphia, which had a good price on the speakers I was interested in. But it also had B&W, and I was able to compare the Dynaudios to B&W CDM7s in the same room. We left with the B&Ws. Since then I have acquired a CDM CNT and a pair of the SNTs mentioned above for the HT system I'm gradually putting together.

When a neighbor decided a few months ago that she had too much speaker in her living room I acquired a pair of 703s for my 2-channel audio system (replacing the CDM7s).

Are there better speakers out there? probably. But B&Ws sound very good and, as noted above, there are good buys in used speakers that have been treated kindly.

Bob