Bang and Olufsen

B&O is good at what it does. You get what you pay for and what you're paying for is looks and sound. Not everyone can have 300 pound wooden crates and giant racks of tubes chilling in the middle of their carpet. If you have to give consideration to design and space, then B&O isn't really such a bad deal, especially if compared to say... designer furniture. I've thought a bit about one day using one of the B&O 6 cd units as a player/preamp unit out in the open and a nice power amp hidden away. I think this would be more presentable than a straight up rig in a place like the living room and no lay person will come into your house and say you paid what for that box with 2 lights and a button?

That being said... I'd love a B&O turntable and a B&O telephone. Not much else though.

I purchased my initial B&O System in 1985 consisting of the Beomaster-8000 Receiver, MS150.2 Speakers, Beocord-9000 Cassette and Beogram-8002 Turntable that is still in use today. I am by no means an Audiophile but an astute Audio Enthusiast. I have over the years auditioned several of the new systems B&O had introduced but can not part with my current system. The overall experience with the Beovox Uniphase Speakers is still thrilling 20 years later.

I gave the Beolab 5's a listen a couple of months ago. I was quite impressed, despite the fact that the balance was biased to the left and the salesman could not figure out how to correct it. They are dynamic and have a good tonal balanced for the most part, though were still a bit bright to my taste. I couldn't help but smile to myself knowing my Linn Kabers, despite their smaller scale presentation, are a far more refined speaker than these at about 1/7th the price (or 1/15th used).
The B&O salesman, who came from a Hi-Fi boutique background and had sold Linn and Naim in the past, told me that the B&O rep had eagerly asked his opinion about the B5's knowing he had been involved in the 'real hi-fi' end of things in the past. Very telling.

B&O is certainly beyond Bose in tonal accuracy and general fidelity. Of all their speakers, I think the Beolab 8000 (the "organ pipe") is the most suitable for a critical listener. However, it needs good signal coming to it. Most people who have that speaker underserve it. Truth is, it becomes something quite credible within its tonal and dynamic range, if fed by exceptional sources and a good tube preamp. B&O's own associated gear can't live up to the speaker, leaving it sounding constrained and smeared. The 5 has similar merits too.

Phil

I knew one of the B&O engineers who did some of their programming on their micros for their receivers. He told me that the top flagship B&O speaker (at the time) had a tweeter that didn't even cost $10 per driver! He basically felt that everything B&O did put was to put styling first, second, third and fourth with their products and the sonics portion of their product line coming in at a dismal 13th on B&O's priority scale.

I do bet that Bose never has spent as much as $10 on one of their tweeters though ;-)