My short experience with a pair of Q Acoustics 3050 towers

At one point in my life not too long ago I had some what of a midlife crisis. A few near death experiences will do that to you. I live with a spinal cord injury. After 14 years of being paralyzed and healthy, I went in for a routine surgery that landed me in the hospital for about 200 days on mind altering drugs. Those drugs were the only thing keeping me alive and needless to say, when the whole episode was over, my brain was a little scrambled.

So what better way to make myself feel better as an amateur audiophile than to purchase new stereo gear. Retail therapy can be a great distraction from the fact that an entire year of my life was stolen from me by way of my surgeon's negligence which left me a shell of a man who I used to be (More on that HERE).

Tragedy aside, when I decided I wanted to purchase new speakers I had been using a pair of the original Bowers and Willkins CM1 speakers for about 11 years (pictured below).

You see, before my accident, I worked as a technician in home automation with a company named Beyond Audio. This was my dream job. What guy wouldn't love spending his days getting paid to install high end consumer electronics in the homes of the rich (on second thought)? It's basically Christmas every day. I'd still be working in the industry if it weren't for my disability.

I digress. I had it in my mind that I would get significantly better sound if I purchased a big set of tower speakers and that this move would be an upgrade of significant proportions and would satisfy and end the upgrade fever that the circumstances had placed me under.

But, instead of satisfying my desire to achieve audio perfection it only represented the beginning of a psychological disorder that set me on a course of believing that if I just purchased the right audio equipment I would reach a state of audio nirvana which would align the stars and bring order and peace to the universe and all the people of the world would be impressed by my incredible decision making in regards to my perfect system.

Such is the mindset of many audiophiles and audio enthusiasts. But it's all nonsense. Everything is relative in this hobby and it is relative to your budget. Inevitably, I wanted to see just how much better these new Q Acoustics 3050 towers really were in comparison to my old speakers at least in terms of sound. At that time I was so sold on the idea of having white speakers as that was the trend and because of that trend I detested the retro look of my 11 year old Bowers CM1 bookshelf speakers. Regarding aesthetics, my opinions on this has completely changed and if I had to decide between a pair of the original CM1 bookshelf speakers or the Q  Acoustics 3050 towers the CM1 bookshelfs would be the keepers.

So in order to determine which speaker sound better I set them up side-by-side in my listening area and played a bunch of audio tracks while switching between the speakers (pictured below)

The experiment was a disappointment. All it did was demonstrate how incredible my CM1 bookshelve speakers really were. Although they weren't quite as room filling as the much larger 3050 towers were they were definitely more refined. So this experience set me on a trajectory of continuing to pursue the ultimate system which I will document in upcoming posts.

Spoiler alert… This experiment was the beginning of an audio journey of buying and selling equipment in pursuit of happiness in things that really don't satisfy and leaving me with the conclusion that the beautiful little CM one speakers I had owned for 11 years truly never needed to be upgraded. And, like a lot of other decisions I made during my audio pursuit journey I live with regret even considering selling those beautiful little Bowers and Wilkins . I truly miss them and I wish knew what I knew today!

Moral of the story? The grass isn't always greener on the other side so be content with what you have.