| [ Bang & Olufsen 2000 Hi-Fi product range ] |
My name is Ernest Ruiz and I must confess... Last week I went into a B&O shop! Yes my dear audio fellows, the june 28th 2000, the writer of these lines went into the forbidden place for true audiophiles. But I wanted to have a first hand experience on these products to talk about them. As you know if you want to talk about any audio equipment, first you have to listen to it. So that's the reason why I went to the B&O center.
If you think that into a B&O center you will find listening rooms you are wrong. The listening process is made standing up in front of the equipment (nice looks!) while the person in charge of the bussines (in my case a very kind person) gives to you thousand details about how good the B&O equipment will look in your living room or even your bedroom and he doesn't let you listen to the music because of his disscus and his frenetic use of volume up-down keys on the "almost Star Trek" remote control (Engage!). Nothing about techcnical specifications and this awful audio jargon. Some of the equipment is placed on very nice furniture that moves when breathing in front of them. Perhaps not the best place for audio equipment? May be, but they look great!. So..a wonderful environment that should be present in any furniture maganize, but not in audio magazine (as we know). But you can understand it, if you think that B&O equipment is not audio equipment. It is furniture that, and that's really amazing, can sound.
The B&O range for the 2000 is divided in two big groups: speakers and sound sources.
In the speakers group the technical specifications offered "doesn't speak about watts" (literal words from dealer), but electrical consume, maximum SPL, maximun power output, etc. Nothing about the traditional parameters used in audio, except frequency response range. All the speakers (except BeoVox CX 100) contain the system amplifier. The range has the following models: ($1 USA = 177 pta)
The sources range is composed of:
With all these components it is possible to have 12 combinations (4 speakers * 3 sources) and that's all. I always tougth that the B&O range was bigger, but not. 12 is enough. I think that it is better to have only 12, because the final result is what we could call "not the best result"....
There's an hybrid system composed by speakers with a source called BeoSound Century. It is sold as a complete pack. There isn't any possibility to connect different speakers to this source. Added to this limitation there's another problem, the speakers placement. They are as close to the source and one to the other that it is impossible to get an stereo image from the system. And they aren't detachable. So when listening to this stereo unit the sound we get is like ..mono. Its "specifications" are:
And now let's talk about the sound... Well, they sound awful. The same sound we can get from a $200 mini system. In fact I think that there're many minis that sound even better than the B&Os. They can't offer realistic sound. No bass extension (even when usign loudness!). My beloved ESL57 have more bass than any B&O system. Metallic treble and mid . No soundstage. I supose that the main objective is to build "good looking" equipment, not hi-fi equipment. As I said before the whole range must be considered furniture that can produce sound, but not hi-fi. I supose that there's a market for these products, but I'm sure that the people that would buy a B&O it is more interested in design that in music.
And there's more. The price. They are extremely expensive as you can see. The price-sound quality relation is the worst we can find today. How can we pay more than $5000 for a pair of speakers with a sound even worst than a shoe box fitted with plastic cones? If B&O is trying to build hi-fi systems they main goal should be sound quality, not only design. But here the design is first and the sound is not.
If we compare the speakers with a pair of B&W 805 Nautilus (about $1500) we can realize what we get when we buy B&O hi-fi systems. Even a pair of KEF Q-15 (about $250) are better speakers. B&O = sounding furniture.
Finally, as an audiophile worried about non audiophiles and about what they can do, I must alert them about buying B&O products: if you want the best audio reproduction possible, please try other products. If you are only interested in design, B&O is what you need. But remember, your ear is the final judge in hi-fi, not your eyes.