As a long time JBL fan, I am surprised they scored so well here, or that B&W was so close. In spite of the mass production and reach of Harman, I always felt that they were treated as more of a consumer quality brand, or perhaps having been watered down by their budget offerings, or the Harman association.
I took a fair amount of crap over the years for using JBL. Of course, most of those of that opinion have since either washed out of audiophilia and weren't all that experienced in audio to begin with, or tended to recite trendy brand hate rumors about all products that are popular. One guy I know, took potshot comments at my Ray Ban (he was an Oakley fan) sunglasses, just because I claimed I could see much better wearing them when driving in the blinding rain storms we get down here, while most people were having to either pull over, or drive at 20mph. When I informed him that just about all popular brand sunglasses are covered under the same (Luxottica) company, he wanted to hate the messenger instead. I never even claimed that the (pre Luxottica /Bausch & Lomb) sunglasses I own were better. Just that they were good enough because I could stare directly at the sun without squinting or sneezing and the driving thru torrential rain attribute.
