Bang and Olufsen

I had a very different experience than Zaikesman. I listened to the Beolab 5s about 9 months ago and was very impressed. They were poorly set up so it was hard to know how much better they could sound at home but I found their presentation very musical, coherent and convincing. My frame of reference at the time: the Aerial 20ts and now the JM Lab Nova Utopias. I decided against the Beolabs purely on the basis of leaving behind the flexibility of choosing my own amps, having to leave behind my EMM Labs Dac 6, and the lack of any real discounting by B&O. Other than that, I would have definitely taken them for a spin, they were that enjoyable IMO.

The Beolab 5 is awesome but the normal presentation is ridiculous. I heard them in a mall store along a 60 foot long wall from 20 feet away. The front of the store to my left was completely open to mall traffic and there was a television system playing about 20 feet to the right of the Beolabs. The
salesman was friendly, slick and gooey.
This was in January of 2004 when they were first being introduced at $17,000 a pair in a mall. Naturally they were not at their best but they were very impressive. The room reset feature broadcasts a signal, reads and interprets it, and adjusts accordingly. When furniture is moved or many people are present you have to recalibrate. At home this would work. In a store, with people milling about and salesmen prattling, it doesn't.
I gave them a pass because of the investment level, the unknown resaleability, and the fact that I am nearly 300 miles from the dealer, they are hard to ship and who fixes them?
If they were marketed through the normal high end channels with the normal high end support, they would be very famous by now.
As for other B&O stuff, very innovative reasonably durable, aesthetically thrilling, costly compared to Japanese alternatives and completely inappropriate for obsessive audiophiles.
I too was turned off by the take it or leave it pricing.

I have a pair of Penta 3's and use my EAD TM for my pre. I use them in two channel and they are tremendous. I bought these for about $1K and had to replace one of the amps for another $500. For this amount of $$, I would stack them up against just about anything. Including some pretty good i/c's, I am under $2.5K for the whole system. The nice thing about B&O is that it is a perfect fit for a small to medium sized room. The one thing I am lacking now is a good transport/player. I am looking at a number of different ones, but nothing seems to grab me....any help?

My previous system was a B&O BeoSound 9000 CD player and a pair of BeoLab 8000 speakers. I've noticed most audiophiles seem to be pretty biased against B&O stuff, and I'm not really sure why. I remember seeing the 9000 and the 8000 for the first time, and I wanted them. They were the coolest looking stereo equipment I'd ever seen, and are still among my favorites from a design perspective. A couple of years ago, I moved to a condo that wouldn't support any kind of audiophile system at all. I got rid of the big audiophile setup, and bought the B&O.

In some ways, the B&O setup was more successful than any system I'd owned before. While most audiophile gear doesn't live up to its expectations long term (look at how many people with "best of the best" components keep changing them around trying to get things right), the B&O did for me. I expected a stereo that went along with my furniture and artwork and sounded great for background music. That's exactly what I got.

On the other hand, as the time went by, I realized that I did want more than background music. The audiophile bug bit again, and though I wanted to keep the B&O in addition to a new audiophile setup, it had to go to raise the funds.

You know, to me B&O looks like the type of gear a rich, single, trendy guy who is not an audiophile would buy, kind of like, "....yeah, it MUST sound good, just LOOK at it...it COMPLETELY compliments my plasma tv"
Audio furniture to some?
Again, just my opinion, as I've never listened to any B&O. But, just like beauty, music is in the heart/ear of the beholder.