I worked at a Bang and Olufsen store in Boston. Most months we were the leading high-volume store in sales in America. Occasionally we would get beaten out by New York’s Madison Avenue store- their customers were very different than ours, and NY’s customers typically bought very small single room systems, and our Boston customers typically bought lots of multiroom systems and more expensive B & O products.
So what of their headphones? Well they just don’t sound very good at all compared to what we talk about here. There is decent soundstage, but the music lacks impact and emotion. I owned the Form 2 headphones (not much better than Koss porta pros) , they lacked low-frequency impact and extension- and distorted easily. The highs were somewhat rolled off, the ear bud model A8 had better depth and clarity, but has ridiculously rolled off low-frequency response- better than apple ear buds.. but not by much. For what you spend you could by a $59 Caffeine Pro amp and a decent set of Ear Buds and still have $60 to go out to dinner and have far better sound.
The products also were extremely horribly unreliable. We were constantly replacing headphones – the cables were of low quality- always internittent, they also lost their pistonic stiffness for adjustability and the little rubber tips on the A8’s ends always fell off- . So did the foam covers. The warranty was good- 3 years and it was global- so we didn’t have too many customer fits.
The Form 2 Headphone was not ergonomically designed. That is, unless your ears are rectangular. The only positive thing about that particular headphone was that it was relatively lightweight. But with no padding on top of the headphone band if you are bald it was intolerably uncomfortable. Also the pads founds ways to irritate pressure points- I could never have a pair on my head for more than an hour. I rarely got through a single album before taking them off both due to comfort and miserably compressed frequency limited SQ.
In regards to the rest of their gear, the Beolab 4000 Speaker sounded terrible with no real low end or high frequency extension or air. They used incredibly cheap thin paper drivers inside of the speakers however, it was nice that they were active loudspeakers with built in amplifiers in each speaker and that placing the speaker directly on the wall was not severely detrimental to its mediocre sound signature.
The Beolab 6000 Speaker which is one of the more popular sellers also had horrible cheap drivers and sounded terrible. Great for your deaf grandmother.
The Beolab 8000 speakers which are best known for their spiked bottom appearance, or slightly better and could least throw a tall image – but again they were severely limited in both frequency response and timbre. They were a very big seller. I will say that they look spectacularly good in Red. The QC that went into the appearance of those speakers is remarkably thorough… if only they put decent drivers in them. But the dimensions are too limiting for anything other than a ribbon driver and then there is not enough surface area.
The Beolab 3 speakers are a totally different animal designed from a completely different evolutionary path. These were actually fairly listenable. They had one particularly good strong point, they are absolutely immune to poor placement – and for those of us who are married, that can be a big deal. A pair of Beolab 3’s placed extremely poorly could beat just about any other pair of speakers placed extremely poorly. No matter where you put these things they could throw a decent stereo image and when coupled with the Beolab two subwoofer, they could do a terrific job, and I mean terrific, if the Beolabs 3’s were placed high above head level on a bookshelf and angled downwards – with the Beolab two subwoofer on the floor it can throw a very convincing wall of sound- part of the reason for this is that you can geet decent time alignment this way.. This speaker satellite subwoofer combination is probably their best speaker value and possibly the best sound quality in their line but it will still set you back over 5K. At least the amps are built in.
The Beolab 5 speaker system is their flagship speaker system. It suffers some real big problems. If you did not feed it a digital signal, it will re-digitize the signal to its digital EQ and then feed it through another digital to analog converter and this double digitizing was damaging to the sound quality (Since all of their speakers use Class D amplification the pulsing can make it even worse and more digital grain sounding- so it is almost "triple digitizing" in terms of the amount of grain added.) . The only source unit they have which has a digital output is their a six disc CD changer Beosound 9000, which could be mounted in many different positions. The Beolab 5’s shared the same concept of high frequency dispersion with the Beosound 3’s (A technology not developed by B & O but licensed from a third party), but the drivers did not integrate well together (it is a 4 way speaker), and I’ve only heard them in one installation (Kansas City B & O) where they sounded good. They have a tremendous amount of power making them a good choice for home theater use where space is limited , but I could not take them seriously for critical listening- they sound completely digital. They also are unreliable- our store model was constantly in need of repair.
Most of their source units with the exception of the Beosound 3200 and the Beosound 9000 CD changer are lacking in sound quality. The Beocenter 2 Which morphed its shape to accept a DVD was fraught with problems….stay away from that one….which can’t even do 5.1- and it costs $4100! An $200 Oppo DVD player will run circles around it.
So for the most part, this company is a failure when it comes to sound quality with the exception of the few pieces, most notably their 7.2 center channel, and the speakers that share the acoustic lens. All the other speakers in my humble opinion can be bested by a sub $500 paradigm speaker- even the $150 discontinued decade old -Sound Dynamics RTS-3 speakers can blow away ALL of their speakers under $4000. No kidding.
However, there is one thing that this company does better than any other company in the world. No one can hold a candle to the quality of their video plasma displays. The panels are produced at the Panasonic factory and are cherry picked for performance – then they are fitted with higher quality electronics, and are tuned for truly accurate picture rendition. The 65 inch plasma when fed a quality HD signal leaves all the other competitors in the dust. In fact even when fed a mediocre HD signal it does much better than most of the competitors. It is unfortunate that this display costs more than $20,000. But in my opinion, if you have the money, it is well spent. Watching the US open tennis on this display in HD is mind-boggling. And mind you it is not even a 1080p progressive scan plasma.
Part of the reason that the speaker systems sound so terrible in peoples homes, is that few B & O stores actually care about sound quality- they actually don’t even care if you have never sold audio before… They like car sales people, designer clothing sales people, and brokers of any kind as salespeople as opposed to audio enthusiasts. The first thing they try to tell you when you come to work there is that sound quality does not matter. They don't even give instruction on sound deadening- or room control or tuning.
The only store in my opinion that is capable of doing a quality audio install 100% of the time is the one in Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. Those installers are worth flying around the world to have installs done, and they are willing to mix equipment other than Bang and Olufsen to achieve their goal. In contrast the store in Boston where I worked constantly tried to push Sonance in wall and in ceiling speakers on the customers, mostly because this product line has a 60% margin for the retailer, so they could discount the product 15% and still make more margin than selling other products at full MSRP. That store had absolutely no concern for sound quality whatsoever- all the sore demos were set up horribly and they never cared if I tuned the store…most likely because they could not hear the difference themselves. Unfortunately, the company is more concerned with how the audio networks within itself then the actual enjoyment of the music. To their credit they have not changed their remote codes for over a decade making old units compatible with new ones.
The irony of this, was that one of the older gentleman that worked at the Boston store for many decades would make fun of Bose speakers all the time, but in reality Bang and Olufsen is nothing more than the Bose of Europe. Many similarities exist, like a lot of marketing materials, attractive speaker cabinets, but pop off the grill’s and be prepared to be shocked at the low quality cheap paper (un-doped raw paper) drivers within. The only exceptions being the speakers with the acoustic lens and the subwoofer (both which suffer from surrounds that are too stiff so they completely lack micro detail).
The company has a lot of training programs, you go to Chicago to undergo a basic salesman’s course, you are tested on certain installation questions regarding cable lengths available for each unit, component programming for network compatibility, and the history of the company.
What was truly shocking, at least to me, is that there was no theory of acoustics taught anywhere in their course literature. Nowhere, nothing, nada, zip, zilch. There was no instruction to the salespeople (who were not only salespeople, but also went to give estimates in people’s homes and make suggestions as to the placement of the speakers, and then oversaw the entire installation process using their installers) out how to select the correct speaker placement, and there was no teaching of critical listening techniques. The concept of transfer function was unheard of.
I found this hysterically funny. It is akin to a boutique piano store salesman selling someone a piano, and then not knowing where to place it in the house to get good sound, and not even bothering to bring the piano into tune- or even suggest where to hire a piano tuner. It is a recipe for garbage. I found the whole company’s philosophy for selling audio to be irresponsible to the needs and desires of their customers.
So with this basic philosophy, it is no wonder that their headphones fail to deliver. And if B & O wanted to they could deliver a great little built in headphone amp into a speaker system…but they don’t. The Beosound 2 (their mp3 player) had a reasonably good amplifier section- but it is nothing more than an oversized iPod shuffle since it has no display- and their new MP3 player doesn’t sound nearly as good- and it’s a brick too.
The funny thing is, the president of the company, and the head of Bang and Olufsen of America all realize that the store in Kansas City is capable of delivering a superior sounding product to the customer. But they support the store the least because its sales are the smallest. Often that store finishes in the bottom five of sales of stores of similar size. But the stores that deliver the worst systems to their customers, who often use low quality speakers from third parties, are rewarded the most with volume bonuses and salesmen incentives.
In hoping to move sound quality forward, which in part is the reason for this forum, you should be thinking to invest your money in companies whose goals are to bring musical enjoyment to their customers. Investing your hard earned money in an audio company that is more concerned about how its products visually integrate with your furniture than with installing an emotionally satisfying sound system in your home is not a good idea. its like spending your money at a restaurant that has great food presentation- but it tastes lousy and costs a fortune.
But, buying their $20,000 plasma television, if you have the money, is a great idea (normally I could care less about TV pictures... but this has to be seen to be believed) . The only problem is their plasma television monitor controller is hard to integrate with non-Bang and Olufsen speakers. Even so, it may be worth it to have an entirely separate video and audio system to watch that plasma.
), and definitely lack the soundstage and definition of sounds. I did back to back comparisons with the SR80s straight from the headphone out of my iPod photo (b/c this was what I was going to use them with). Differences were quite apparent. But on their own, they are very decent and there aren't many in the price range I paid that sound as good. Basically, pay MSRP or what the Apple store and charging and look elsewhere. Find this at the iPod vending machine and I'd say give it a try.
