So, for all my audiophile life, I’ve spent $1000’s on IEM’s like Dunu, Thieaudio, 64 Audio, and many other brands most of the consumer world has no understanding of, let alone heard of. For much of my audiophile life, we all understand that only wired IEM have the proper frequency responses, timbre, and overall balance needed for your music to be as it was intended to be. We all know that when it comes to consumer branded tools like bluetooth earphones, they weren’t designed to give what the artist intended but more of giving the listener a hyped up version of it, which does work in most cases for consumers.
The Bowers and Wilkins brand took a different approach. They hold still to the belief that nothing should be added or taken away from the sound. They hold true that the number one responsibility of the maker to assure that results are pure and not altered. I’ve had Bowers and Wilkins only one time in my life for earphones, the first Pi5’s but had the headphones as well.
I really liked the sound even then but hated the app and the limitation it gave. I remember even then thinking to myself how true to life the results were and struggled with myself upon returning them because of the problems I had with the apps and controls. I never purchased another B&W for earphones again until the pi8s were released recently.
Now that I’m back, what I remembered is back even better. The resolution and timbre accuracy of Bowers and Wilkins is the soul of the tech. Their push for accurate reproduction of the music or sound isn’t wavered or colored with the trend of all other bluetooth earphones phones. Everything from Sennheiser-Earfun brands are all trying to give the “consumer” sound as exciting as possible, and nothing is wrong with that, if that’s what you seek. Denon perl Pro, Cambridge Audio M100, and Earfun Air Pro 4 are still some of my favorite consumer sounding earphones. However, none of them are as accurate or as resolving as the Bower and Wilkins Pi8’s. They weren’t designed for audiophiles no more than the Pi8’s created for consumers’ sound. And I had forgotten that fact for years.
It is here where we split off and make the mistake and judge their sound as better or worse. The Sonys or Denon’s weren’t created to be audiophile earphones. The Bowers and Wilkins branded listening tools are. They are designed to be beautiful and are designed to recreate sound accurately, not colored or exaggerated. So this might not be your cup of tea if what you seek is not an audiophile level of accuracy and performance.
For me, the need for beauty and accuracy appeals greatly to me. It could be the missing piece and drive for the amount of bluetooth earphones I’ve had. I’m just trying to get as close to possibly in bluetooth as my wired iems, not understating that in order for me to do this whatever I buy must first be heading toward that goal of audiophile sound representation. I’m just hooked on realistic representation. I think this is why I’m so ingrained into Asmr and Podcast full cast stories as much as music. It’s the timbre and real-life sounds that accurately depict what they are that created worlds and universes inside and around me when I listen. The more accurate they are, the more my brain is fooled to believe it’s happening, and in that moment is where nirvana is felt for me.
So, for my recommendation, I urge you all to find and identify with first what you seek truly and not necessarily seeking after what is hyped up the most or what had the highest ranking. Most people are consumer ear trained buyers, so the Bowers and Wilkins will not make you the happiest. I’m not saying it can’t make you happy, period, but you won’t be as happy with it as something with more exaggeration in its sound, and Bower and Wilkins already understand this.
They don’t expect consumers to gravitate to them over consumer branded earphones in sales. They make their product for a different type of person, Audiophiles. Those are who they are worried about because their tech is geared to seek out only that which is there and leaving the rest to the market oversaturated with plenty of brands aiming to do so for bluetooth. Their position is actually unique for bluetooth, and Bowers and Wilkins is one of the very few, if not the ONLY company, in bluetooth space that is pushing this direction.
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