I had to call their customer service to get a PIN number for a beolab speaker that I found in the garbage. They basically asked me a couple simple questions and made sure it wasn't stolen and then gave me the master code. No money and it took about 5 minutes. Great customer service for somebody who's never actually purchased an item from them
Nice. I've had a similar experience with Mitsubishi factory car stereos for vehciles which are approx 20 years old. Obviously no value to an ancient car stereo.
@@darwiniandudei hate when you disconnect a honda battery too long on the 02 to like 10. You gotta put in that huge pin code based on that decks serial number. Thank god they put the search online
Sorry if this comes across as inflammatory... but it kinda sounds like they created a problem, then were helpful solving it. Which is really only bested by .. well ... not having the problem in the first place.
@@nickwallette6201 I have no reason to defend B&O, but I suspect that like Apple these things are to reduce theft. If people know you can't steal them and use them, they're less desirable.
@@nickwallette6201 I think many of these systems were used in public places, or office foyers etc, and the PIN was actually a useful feature, just not much in the home with a single user, which explains why the owner can disable the PIN.
50 years ago when I was at university learning (among other things) how to design user interfaces, I was taught the "principle of least astonishment". The basis of the principle is that when designing a control, you choose a mode of operation that will 'least astonish' the user. That is to say, you design things to work in the way that most of the users will expect. If there is an established convention, you don't re-invent it unless there is an unavoidable overriding reason to do so.
That principle goes out of the window when there is no established practice. If you're early you can choose your own path and some companies stick to that. You don't fault Apple for not using Windows design principles.
I might guess that most owners of b&o kit were, like my grandfather, previous owners of b&o kit, so that the principle of least astonishment applied here would be the leave the interface alone between generations. Just a guess.
And in the case of B&O, there was exactly such a reason. Indeed, the button was originally marked "PLAY" on the Beolink 1000 remote - for the record it wasn't much used. To play a CD, you press CD. To watch TV, you press TV. Not very astonishing :) The Audio Master and Video Master (the primary audio and video systems on the bus) would then do whatever it took to make that happen. The button was changed to "GO" because of the proliferation of on-screen menus. Some systems would come with IR blasters for eg. satellite decoders or cable boxes, and "GO" would then logically map to eg. "select" or "enter" for such remotes. It's hard to say this stuff without sounding pretentious, but these things really aren't "just" hi-fis. They should be compared to more comprehensive home automation systems like those you see in fancy auditoriums.
About 15 years ago, I bought a TV and a set of speakers from B&O. Looked cool, sounded great, but I got the impression that they just felt the need to do things differently for the sake of being different so they can charge the premium.
My dad used to work for Philips in a factory that made magnets for CRT TVs, he always says the B&O televisions were just Philips TVs in polished wood cases.
@@dcan911 yes they used Philips tubes but trist me they far outshone any philips set both externally and performance wise, it was bang and olufsen circuitry and technology that meant b&o got more out of Philips tubes than Philips could , much the same as more recent years with LG LCD displays
@@dcan911 It's true, but it's worth mentioning that a truck loaded with tubes arrived at the BO factory. They tested the tubes and kept only five of them. The remaining tubes were sent back to Philips. Former BO shop manager here
I had a coworker for some years - a designer who used to work for B&O. He told me that at B&O the chief designer was king! Nothing less. In the 1970s it was Jacob Jensen and in the 1980s it was David Lewis. Techmoan is absolutely spot on with his assumption on how it was at B&O: The designer had some weird idea on how the user interface should be, and then everybody said "yes master" and started working on it. My designer coworker actually left B&O because he and pretty much everybody else was treated as nothing more than minions for David Lewis.
@@theblah12And Apple design got better when he left. Jobs had good instinct, but Ive was a mixed bag. Skeuomorphic software/apps were always a bad idea.
@@neuronic85 I think Ive's work was more experimental than their current design team but that was because there was room at the time (I'm talking late-90s through late-00s) for new ideas and innovation. Now that Apple have pretty much found the ideal form factor for most of their products they can play it safe and build on the principles that Ive established under his leadership.
@@neuronic85 lol.. Apple designs got worse after Ive left. What are you smoking. If you are a designer you know the new apple products have ugly peppered here and there that a good designer would never allow. Ive/Jobs is the reason why Apply came back from the brink of bankruptcy. It is easy to cry about the designs now. But without design Apple even wouldn't be here. It is always funny when people without no design knowledge cry about design.
@@arunashamalYes, Apple appears to be resting on their laurels. It will serve them for a while but someone will be along to eat their lunch before they know it.
I've always associated B&O with the 'Yuppies' of the 1980s. They were always heavily advertised in the colour supplement magazines of heavyweight newspapers, alongside ads for Stella Artois and (for some odd reason) Kimberly-Clark paper towels. Part of the whole aspirational lifestyle - Porsche Carrera on the driveway, BT 'brick' carphone nestling in its NiCd charger, bottle of Chablis in the fridge and Brothers In Arms on the BeoSysyem. "Crispin has got the funding, Darling - we're going for it! - SNORT"
I used to repair those, I went to a training course in Detroit Michigan. The same year I got my pilots license, it was easier to pass the pilots course, than learning to use the B&O, I worked on a unit similar. But it had a turntable and a CDplayer but the CD track numbers and radio displays were in the speakers. It did have really good sound and were reliable. It looks fragile, but is trouble free. The speakers were tower.
During my childhood, I would never have guessed or even thought that B&O would be sold outside our borders. Like it is just a thing of our culture here. B&O equals normal here, but as I crew up, I realised that this were sold to high end customers in places like NYC. Kind of made me proud, and still does, that products from my country are sold world wide. You know. Lego and B&O. Yet. Back in my childhood in the 1980's, these products were for those that were high middle class and the rich. Except those transistor radioes that everyone had. It is those Beolit 500/700 models. They were so cheap, that everyone had them. And they have that magically soft sound quality. Rich, deep and all that. And produced cheap.
Awesome video as always! I will never forget that scene in Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when the ice from the gutter of the Griswold's house flies through the window of the wealthy neighbours house and hits that thing they called "the stereo". It looked so futuristic at the time seeing this as a kid in the early 90s, I thought it was just a prop. Years later I learned that it was a B&O Beosystem 4500, it still looks futuristic today.
I worked in a B&O store during the mid 00. Great times, happy and polite customers, great quality. B&O shines in larger audio and tv system setups (MasterLink) B&O is not for everyone💰
Your advice to do your homework on B&O before spending any money is BANG ON. Years ago, I was shopping for a used turntable and B&O turntables came up in the search a lot. I didn't think too much about it - they looked beautiful! So, I thought, I'll spend the extra twenty bucks and get the pretty one for my living room. It showed up with no cartridge. Not a big deal, right? Ha! These are bespoke cartridges. I think it was over $200 to get a cartridge and I didn't spend anywhere near that on the turntable itself. I'll admit, I did spend the money and I am happy with the turntable, which is still the centerpiece of my living room setup. But if I had it to do over again, I would've gone simpler and cheaper.
@@oOWaschBaerOo A critical point to consider is that the interface will be the same. In fact the button "CD ALL" on this device will make all CDs play on that device (if linked via Masterlink).
@@oOWaschBaerOo An early prototype version of Beosound 9000 had a scary and funny bug with end-stop sensor that caused the sled fly off the end at high speed.
If a system that's 40 years old, still working as designed and still competitive (and compatible) with today's music sources is overpriced then I have to wonder what represents good value.
@@andrewwilson8273 The model in the video is a '03-'11, not even close to 40 years old. It's also not difficult to find a 30+ year old CD/radio minisystem that still works fine, since CD transports are typically direct drive rather than perishable rubber belt like cassette and LP.
I too have spent my adult life looking at B&O stuff in shop windows and wondering if it was really worth the money. So this was a fascinating insight to me. And the answer is basically what I thought it would be - decent stuff, weird design, difficult to use, expense not really justified. Expensive hi-fi, designed to appeal to nerds with money, but probably better taste than the aveage hi-fi geek. I dont think I'll be buying any B&O anytime soon.
Back in the CRT days B&O TVs were genuinely fantastic, they normally used Philips tubes (maybe Samsung later on) but the picture and sound quality was top of the class and they looked amazing. The build quality was always superb as well, their stuff never broke. The only real competition in the segment was probably Loewe.
Yeah, they were good lasting quality. They had nice sounding speakers as well. My grandmother had a B&O CRT, she bought it in the mid-80s and didn't swap it out until you had to have a HD LCD-TV in the mid-2000s when all our countries terrestrial channels all went digital and HD.
I remember walking past the B&O shop near to where I lived in the early 00s, and seeing one of their 100Hz CRTs displaying something in the shop window. It looked SO much better than any regular TV I'd seen up until that point. I was amazed at how smooth the image was.
B&O and Loewe TVs ate flyback transformers almost on a monthly basis. I worked in a TV repair shop in Germany in the 1990s and changing flybacks and horizontal output stage components of Loewe and B&O TVs was about 90% of our business.
My Friend owned a Hifi Store it used deal with high end Hifi he said he would never deal with B&O as you have push B&O all the time and they have secret shoppers, If you dared to suggest another brand based on the users needs they would drop you.. More importantly he said it was style over substance you could get a better sounding gear for 1/3 of the price
I remember playing with the cassette-equipped version of this unit in a shop in the 90s as a teenager. I, the biggest gadget nerd among anyone I knew, couldn’t figure out how to get it to play a cassette. I was already starting to learn about usability design at the time, and it definitely cemented my view that B&O prioritizes design over anything else. They also famously used a proprietary infrared protocol (possibly even with a different IR wavelength) that makes them incompatible with universal IR remotes.
Yeah, 455kHz as opposed to 38kHz. Not only that, but it's bi-directional. On some remotes (like the deliciously stupid Master Control Panel 5500 or the Beolink 7000) you get RDS data and even VU meters.
Puting on requires only to decide what we want to use and push it. . To make Ouverture (with cassette) to play cassette one need only to pusch "tape" no need to switch unit "on" (by not existing) separate button provided in other brand constructions. The same with radio and CD To make pause for mechanic media requires push "stop". To switch off only press red point. To switch between modes just press next command. It is just perfect. Switch on radio radio just pusch radio. All is logicaly controlled. I never complyed remote - it is no comparable to other - batteries last years and no need to worry about range - enough to be in room or even out only turmning remote to open doors.
They used normal hex for remote codes, it was the frequency that is different. Reason was that it bounces better so you can pretty much point the remote in the wrong direction and it'll still work. That's why back in the day the stores needed a cap with a hole in the end of the remote to reduce range otherwise everything in the shop would come on 🤣
@@Mikexception "To switch off only press red point." I suppose the "red point" is actually meant to represent the red LED on the different units indicating a powered-down state. All very "clever" from an aesthetics-fixated design pundit's perspective, completely neglecting people with certain forms of colour blindness, and ignoring long-established conventions. If a designer has to explain something as commonplace as switching things on and off or playing audio, they shouldn't be in that line of work. Design is about ergonomics first and foremost, not "it looks amazing" aesthetic posturing.
@@paul_boddie the red point is also the only circle so there's no dependency on color. There are several controls where the dot is monochrome, like the IR eye on Beolink units and the Beolink 1000 remote.
Growing up in the 80/90's my folks always had B&O tv's and sound systems. It always struck me as odd, as we weren't a rich family, by any stretch of the imagination. Now seeing how expensive these things were, I can see why we were so skint. 😯 I used to love showing off the tv rotating to my friends, though. Haha. 😃
I take my daughter into the B&O showroom to see and hear what I might replace my surround sound system. We are shown the television with rotating panels for speakers that rises to the occasion and the tower speakers that the curtains open up before getting the sound. Impressive and the sound awesome. But I remarked to my daughter. B&O often has some showmanship but by the time these all moved into place I would have forgotten why I switched them on in the first place.
Bang and Olufsen made some decent portable radios in the 60s, however they seem to be more of a manufacturer of expensive "life style" systems than audiophile gear.
I owned a similar model that had a cassette, CD, and radio. I pretty much concur with your review but came to a different conclusion with regard to value. This B&O player is a beautiful unit and the sound quality was better than anything its size at that time. It probably is still better than a standard Sonos streaming speaker you can get today. What kills this unit is the usability issues you identified. It's not just the non-intuitive labeling of buttons. Try figuring out how to set the clock or how to have it play music as an alarm in the morning. The latter needed to be done using the remote control unit and requires a complex programming procedure using buttons on the front and back of the remote control. The manual is written in Dinglish (Danish-English) and is totally confusing and in some cases not even accurate. I eventually sold the unit but did buy a pair of B&O headphones. A lovely pair of over-the-ear headphones with lambskin leather ear coverings. Lovely to look and very good sound but the same usability issues. The headphones are hard to pair with your phone. Hard to re-set. Hard to increase the volume etc. etc. It's amazing that something as simple as a pair of headphone could be so difficult to use. And the killer is that the usability flies in the face of B&O's sleek, mininal design. I will never buy another B&O product. They are just not worth it.
In a way B&O is very like Apple: Their equipment tends to be sold to the same 'demographic', and while the experience is pretty good once you get used to it, it is deliberately tailored to be sufficiently different from the 'norm' to induce the inductee not to want to change to a competitor... ...oh, and the hardware is 'reassuringly' far more expensive than it has any right to be - that 'demographic' again. On the positive side, at least B&O don't actively prevent the 'owners' from repairing their own equipment!
I disagree, apple are extremely good at UI. The iPhone for example is completely tailored to work very well with little to no actual setup or changes to settings. Airpods connect without any of the usual Pairing nonsense. Apple take what B&O want to be and made it work which is why they're popular on a level B&O could only dream of despite their high prices.
I’ve always been a hifi fanatic but only ever on a strict budget, I would research and buy the best that I could afford. When I met my late wife back in the early 90’s, I discovered that her mum had a B & O stereo system and a B & O TV. I couldn’t wait to see it all working and listen to it as that was the first time I’d come across B & O in the wild. I was suitably under impressed and reached the conclusion it was more for people that valued the way the system looked than sounded. I appreciated my Technics system in my bedroom even more after listening to B & O for the first time.
There is B&O with decent audio quality, but there is definitely also B&O with very very good audio quality. And they offered features like multi-room way earlier than others.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm an electronic technician with 40 years of experience, and I always refused to repair these systems. They don't worth the expenses for me to buy the adapter, and rich people usually just buy another one when they break, which they often do. Normal systems like Toshiba or technics usually sound better, and they don't touch mcintosh or a vintage marantz, pioneer, sansui, look and sound wise.
Now that you've gone down the rabbit hole, you might also noticed that there are multiple versions of seemingly the same models... The Beo4 remote comes with different layouts, some even have a button labled "Play" 😉 and so did the Beocenter 2500 btw.
The differences are not small - even looking simmilar Becoenter 2500 has very different CD transport than Ouverture and the differences are hidden in number of laser beams. Worthy noticing they use as DAC famous TDA 1541 Also casssette was not provided in 2300 model
Dear Rebecca. The 3000 series unit plus the speakers you see in Mats video offer truley the biggest bang for buck regarding sound. The design of the user interface is guided by the remote control. Having and using a Beo4 brings sense and logic to the whole system. I would challange anybody to live with this system fully set up and want to return it after a month. I love music. I have an enormous cd collection. My master system was valued at very many tens of thousends of lbs. With a diploma in music production and studio tech, I can be confident in my reccomendation. Check my comment in the above section. Bw Mike.
Fully agree. I’ve never had much interest in these overpriced toys, but seeing how unwieldy and counterintuitive they are in use, I’m even more glad I’ve never interacted with them.
to me as an engineer this just looks so EWWW no matter how much it cost and how hard it may have been to build, all about this, the display, the buttons, the connectors, it looks just medium quality at best and form follows design, connectors pointing up, yeah sure, there's reasons why you would not. i know there goes some praise with B&O stuff as well as some of their amp designs but idk, to me it's way overrated big boy toys
This is the second time you've randomly found dancehall from somewhere that isn't the Caribbean. From Japanese dancehall in a random minidisk to African dancehall in the memory of a bang and Olufsen midi system. excellent stuff, as always.
As someone from Denmark where these things were quite common it's funny to see how the things we took for granted - the way you operated it, the way things connected, etc - are actually completely foreign to people not in that ecosystem. The wording of buttons make sense when you consider that the buttons are basically identical on all their devices because they were all controlled by the same remote, but without that context it just seems extremely odd
Exactly! Also the GO button was PLAY on Beolink 1000, they changed it because on-screen menus were becoming a thing and they needed an "enter/ok"-like button.
Danes don't take these things for granted. My gran has had a B&O stereo for years, and I spent a lot of time learning how to do simple things. Hate B&O's idiosyncratic buttons. The remote with the transparent glass display was awesome tho
I like good sound. Hate companies for witch design is design is the first goal. Plastic is everywhere, sound is average, user interface is sh.t. Price is ...
You do a really great job of ‘introducing’ your audience to different (I can’t say ‘new’) gear. I’ve always been curious about the B&O stuff, and had formed much the same opinion as yourself. It’s good to know the sound quality is there. Enjoyed watching you ‘get to know it’s so-to-speak.
B&O current product range has some amazing (and amazingly expensive) products in it. It's also worth noting that products like the Beolab 5 speakers shown at the start of the video came with a *lifetime guarantee*. I know someone who has had theirs fixed twice for free over 20 years after he put too much power through them and apparently blew them, or so he tells me. They still sound amazing, and look like Daleks which is cool.
Early beolab 5s ( which as you said are amazing speakers) had a problem with cracking chassis, all sorted under warranty so not a big prob really, but your friend would have problems blowing them by putting " too much power through them" tbh as with being " active" their inbuilt amplifiers are obv not going to overdrive speakers they are specifically made for and if anything they will go into thermal rest/ cut out till things cool down if amps get too hot, so was I think maybe something else causing it lol 😆
This whole setup definitely confirms the image that I had in my mind as well. It's a brand for the well off hippy dippy types who prefer unusual, quality items that not everyone has. Basically, the people who owned setups like this probably also drove 90's Saabs, used early Mac computers and vacationed in Finland.
I have a 90s Saab and also a small colection of old PowerPC macs, aswell as some old and broken B&O devices. Im gonna repair them. And i have modern earbuds from B&O, i have a connection now where i can get like last seasons display-models. Im 22 btw
I wonder if they intentionally made the user experience different. I can imagine people feeling like different is better and maybe even harder to use is better.
Yeah, it is marketing. They aimed at elitists, with big pocket, who feel good only when everything about themselves are different than the rest. They simply feel better because it is different, even if it is stupid.
I inherited a 1960s B&O/Lenco record player as a teenager, it used DIN plugs on it as well which was also a pain, but I put it down to its age. Thought B&O might have moved on in the 50 or so years since they made my old one!
By the 1980s they had added two pins carrying data signalling. So if you hook a turntable up and press PHONO, for instance, that's where the signal goes for the auto-start. An interesting touch is that those two pins can often be unscrewed from the plug for compatibility.
B&O used DIN style plugs because they enabled their devices to talk to each other. Other manufacturers used proprietary connections that are impossible to replace these days. Remember this system and those coming before were well before Bluetooth. Wired connection was the only viable option. DIN connections were the best way to go for the longevity and compatibility that B&O offered to their customers.
@@xsc1000 It's not a standard *interface* like MIDI (also conventionally on a DIN) though, just a standard connector. The MIDI interface is standard(ish...) both physically and electrically and designed to be interoperable between vendors.
DIN plugs were extensively used for record players all over Scandinavia - probably all over Europe - not just from B&O. I've two record players and two amplifiers with those connectors (Gerrard and Technics players, Tanberg and Pioneer amps).
My granddad was a big fan of B&O. When he built his house in the late 60s, he had an entire audio system fully integrated into the house, with speakers in the living room, dining room, the bar in the basement, and on the outdoor patio. He also had several B&O TVs and VCRs. All hugely expensive, but overall a great quality system that was in regular use for 20+ years until he upgraded it with a newer version in the 90s. It would still have worked, but got too complicated for my grandma to operate (the criticism mentioned in the video is warranted), which prompted my dad and his siblings to replace it with something simpler. Still, since the system was perfectly operational, the various bits and pieces were divided up amongst the family, whoever wanted something from it. I've "inherited" several of the speakers and modified their cables to work with my amp. They work perfectly and I love the sound quality.
This thing has so many buttons that I'm surprised it takes 4 presses of a button just to get to the radio tuning mode. Seems like they have a button for just about everything, even extraneous buttons which could've just been combined into a single button. This thing could've had half as many buttons, and both looked better and been easier to operate. Although, I will say, the number buttons are a godsend for CD playback. I've never seen another CD player with that feature (maybe on the remote control, if you were lucky) but it makes a lot of sense.
I used to work for a B&O dealer. Lovely kit, quirky, expensive, but I like the quirky. Our customers were a certain king of person, the sort that drove a Saab car.
Those customers must have got increasingly cross as Saabs became filled with increasing numbers of cheap Chevrolet (Vauxhall) parts in the 90's and 00's, despite Saab's best efforts to reengineer as much of the vehicle as possible. 😐 Or were they the kinds of people not to care about the componentry found deep within their B&O sound system (be it, shock horror, some lowly off-the-shelf chip or speaker driver) or Saab motor car?
@@TassieLorenzo We moved to Volvos ( even in the Ford days they were better than a GM Saab lol) and the “ parts” you speak of were indeed sometimes manufactured by other manufacturers but most often were made especially for B&O with the specs and tweaks that B&O specified/designed :)
I was drooling over B&O equipment when I was 10 years old. I considered it the pinnacle of audio/video. Now, 40 years later, I'm like: meh, that's overpriced and pretty standard gear. Also: "THAT THING IS A DUST MAGNET!!" 😂
For me it was McIntosh and Carver... But like you, that old stuff is all "meh" now. I still cherish my retro component stereo system from back in the day, but my tiny Sony MP3 player and Logitech TXH speakers and/or Sennheiser headphones sound much better (deep solid bass you can feel even when played at low volume, super crisp highs, perfect channel separation, absolutely zero background hiss/noise) than the best of the best hi-fi could have produced back in the day.
@@fredashay I still wouldn't mind having a McIntosh, despite knowing you're still paying a huge premium for the name alone. Definitely more my style of hifi than the "interior designer" brands.
They are all dust magnets now that Apple Music and Spotify have lossless audio (and spatial/HD). Only collectors who want a certain edition or mastering not available on streaming listen to CDs, and even then there’s probably more collectors who listen to ripped music than actual CDs.
Loved the centring of the display when showing off the system. It worked surprisingly well, having your reflection in the disc cover as you described and pointed things out
It could be that the display has an electoluminescent backlight, the colour would be about right for that. Unfortunately electroluminescent materials don't last forever, over time they get more and more dim, that could explain why this display is so dim.
My stepdad had a Beomaster 5500 with the Master Control Panel 5500 and a Beogram 5500 record player. And as a kid i thought it was wild! I thought it looked very futuristic and super cool. And the record player was amazing. And still would be today. If you can get an 80ties B&O record player you get a very good record player. Sadly the Beomaster 5500 broke in the early 2000's and it all ended out being thrown out, which of cause was a mistake as i sit here older.
I still have mine - replaced all caps, perished rubber, etc, new cartridge for the turntable. All sounds wonderful in its own right, i would say the weakest links are actually the beocord 5500 and the beomaster 5500 itself, of which the amplifier section is very primitive and based on an ancient design.
Of all the hifis i saw advertised in my Dad's Readers Digest magazines, I used to lust after the B&O systems the most 😅 The aesthetic was so starkly different from everything else, so futuristic and Knight Ridery! I still wouldn't mind collecting one of the 80's hi-fi's, but I seriously doubt they were ever distributed in my country.
B&O has mythical status in Denmark and is roundly considered a prime example of Danish design. We never had B&O at home, so I never knew that the UI was so counter-intuitive.
that's one of the reasons why B&O didn't achieve success like the japanese av market had - having owned multiple iterations of beograms, almost all of them use proprietary connectors, have counterintuitive user interface and setup and in the price range they weren't competitive (had it for the looks, sound wise these were like ~500 $ Pioneers.)
@@Mikexception ok, but even niche brands have better standardization and intuitive design. No high-end brand in the last 20 years used din-connectors for speakers, that’s obsolete design.
@@jani0077 Realy technical reason of replacement DIN connectors is justified for spakers consuming so much power that DIN connectors maybe too much heated by average current. I didn't check the DIN current limits but trying to imagine it may be easily say 3 amps because all fuses rated even 3A are using spring sockets and no heating. So they are capable to average power 9xR where R is speaker imperdance - if 8 ohms then it is 72Watts/ ch I hope with efficiency of 90 dB per 1 watt no many listeners need more power in spakers. In my opinion it is a matter of awaited by customers style but it affects convinence which I like more.
@@Mikexceptionwow you must not be happy about usbc making it to iphone...because wanting standardized connectors suddenly makes someone a lousy customer. While I appreciate your technical explanation for why they continued to use DIN your prior comment was simply ignorant and uncalled for, consumerist, classist, elitist, etc...these are not valid reasons to omit standard connectors. B&O is basically the apple of hifi and I'm sure they copy from each other's playbook. It's not to keep lousy customers away, it's to keep people stuck in one system with no compatibility or a way out...in a sense B&O has created their own walled garden the way their components only connect to each other and nothing else, huge red flag for any educated consumer, but a giant green flag for people with money to burn and a superiority complex. B&O is complete ass for hifi, only a certain brown nosing type of costumer falls for their marketing tricks, I've tried several of their products and never enjoyed a single one.
I've had some experience with a number of B&O products. Never owned one, but I know enough about them to have a firm opinion. They're overdesigned pretentious decent-sounding HIFI for snobs with deep pockets. The whole philosophy is to make a pretty system for snobs and to lock them into the ecosystem of B&O while also making it difficult enough of an achievement to use so the rich snobs can feel superiour to other audiophiles. Do they sound good? Sure, but not much better than any other hifi-in-a-box from the likes of Bose and similar. They have tons of pretentious design-gimmicks such as sliding doors which make people go ooh and aah for five minutes but end up being a pain in the rear when long-term using them. The interfaces and usability is hilariously poor, but like I said, it's only there to make people spend ludicrous amounts of money on a sound-system and then forcing them to learn the asinine interface so they also get dependent on the sense of superiority and snobbism.
Hum.... seems you got a bit of chip on your shoulder mate, to be fair. Seems like your assesment is based on that, as well as too narrow a scope of models to make a blanket statement about the brands as such.
It's the usual bunch of Smalldicks bitching over B&O equipment they never could afford in the first place. :-D The same as the Apple haters. Just ignore them. @@GoldenCroc
Glad I am not the only one. As a young man I would gaze through their shop window longingly knowing that this fabulous looking equipment was just way out of my league. As I got older nothing changed alas, oh well, such is life.
I always thought of B&O as the Apple of home electronics (TVs, stereos etc). Very nicely designed, they look cool but are oh so expensive. And just like Apple products, even older models are collected, cared for and refurbished.
Except at least Apple products mostly have intuitive interfaces that anybody can easily pick up on. This CD player/radio has a nonsensical, idiotic interface. I'm glad it sounds good at least.
My parents had a gorgeous B&O system in the seventies, with a record player that used a sensor to see if you'd put on a single of 12 inch record. It got completely fried due to a lightning strike. 😢
Your priority ordering is correct. B&O exist for customers who more often than not never turn them on they just like them as part of their aesthetic. Quality has got better over the years but only because the quality of components they use has got better. An example of that is B&O TVs use LG screens and as LG have made better screens so have B&O made better quality products. There's nothing wrong with this approach and they certainly don't make bad products they just aren't quite as good as some others.
I have a Beogeam 4000 series and the amp from the 70s and it’s absolutely gorgeous and sounds amazing. Only problem is repairs are a nightmare because parts are anything but standard
I've got this model and i got the beosound 9000 with the 6 cd's, the operation of these b&o systems for this time is really quite the same on all models. I compare it to go from windows to an apple mac pc the first time you try a mac you also think what ??? but when you learn how i works and where things are i just feels natural and you just do it.
Bad news for the fans of the rather mediocre sound quality of B&O is that most of the internals are from PHILIPS with which B&O had a very close relationship. The premium people payed was just for the look and feel.
@@GoldenCrocWhen I worked within PHILIPS, B&O owners were shocked when I told them. They really thought that they bought “the best there is” when in fact they bought consumer grade “HiFi” in expensive packaging. They maintained afterwards that PHILIPS had different grades of components and only sold the highest grade to B&O. Ofcourse utter nonsense.
B&O generally has fantastic sound quality. Sourcing spec components for cabinets that are incredibly well designed isn't the same as 'the internals are just Philips, you're just paying for a fancy box'. That is a distortion of the truth
Philips is (was) just one of the biggest supplier of electronics in Europe, everybody that manufactures any kind of electronic was using Philips components, there was no way around it. Some manufactures make excellent products with Philips components, other makes crappy products. That a company use Philips components, fully or partly, do not tell anything about the quality of the final product, and B&O had made both good and bad product over the years, just like all other manufactures that had been around for a longer time. Philips were in that strange position that they often were in competition with their own costumers regarding many products for consumers. In Denmark B&O were Philips biggest costumer regarding electronic components, and the biggest competitor regarding the AV marked.
I’ve always viewed B&O kit as form over function. Sounds decent but it’s always delivered more aesthetically than sonically. Not always the nicest of kit to work on either with build quality no better than many of it’s contemporaries.
I have a beautiful house, things in it and wife. Why wouldn’t I want a decent looking sound system to complement it all. It’s almost seen as a badge of honour amongst some audiophiles to have an ugly collection of boxes and cables.
Mat: Goes to the trouble of acquiring a B&O system and speakers, researches and evaluates _a system he wasn't interested in._ That says a lot. People half-jokingly talk about the "Techmoan Effect" where he features an item, causing an effect on the availability and pricing of vintage gear. Whether or not that's real, videos like this show us _why_ it happens. A friendly, in-depth review; what's not to like? *_Thanks, as always, Mat!_*
My brain hurts watching the endless button pressing needed. I had a friend who had one, and was most proud of the opening doors - which he showed off. But for me, its just too annoying and far, far too expensive for what it is. But, of course, thanks for showing it to us!
Wow, what a fascinating machine! I also would not have any reason to look for these before. Now, I will definitely keep my eyes peeled here in Japan. I'm sure that there are plenty around. If I find a complete set, I will definitely consider it. As a musician/sound engineer, I think I would feel accomplished learning how to use the unit. It's like an instrument or piece of art in itself.
As an ex seller of top quality refurbished B&O, I find it very disappointing when a seller advertises something as "serviced" when they clearly haven't even bothered to give it a clean or provide you with the PIN code without you having to hunt it down. These are beautiful systems and such a timeless iconic design!
@@avsystem3142 I don’t understand why people can’t just leave soft dome tweeters and/or speaker dust caps alone! The BeoLab 2500s have lovely 1” tweeters and a nice warm sound as he described, they’re quite underrated in my opinion.
You just changed my opinion about B&O too - before this video I thought B&O was overpriced and sort of silly, but I do have more respect for the brand now. Interesting!
We had a B&O TV, got it in 1987 and it didn't get replaced until about 2008. Great picture quality and design. The father of a school friend of mine had a video, computer and TV repair business and he said they were great sets, he didn't rate their VCRs though. Much of their kit was just mechanisms from other people tweaked and repackaged.
I guess if those guts repackaged with a 'military grade PSU' etc... maybe the odd plastic cog swapped for metal, that's still some sort of improvement but be annoying if the picture quality on a VCR was no better than the neighbours Ferguson. I feel a bit seen off having bought a brilliant Miele washer and dryer, the dishwasher is clearly just badge engineering and the mid-line Made-In-Spain Bosch it replaced felt sturdier@@6581punk
My first pair speakers were the M 100’s. My step mother came to apartment with my father one afternoon. When I told her they were $980.00 for the pair ,she looked at me and told me I was stupid. We never really got on with each other. I was delighted that it actually irritated her. I still have them. Over the years they have slowly died but the cabinets are beautiful. B&o was about design over sound quality. They had a lot of marketing that went with them. Time alignment, phase coherency, very inefficient. 73 db 1 watt 1 meter. The cabinets although beautiful or not very well braced. I plan to make a few changes. More bracing, New drivers and I’ve learned how to make my own crossover networks. They will live again.
5w for 96db/1m s not bad. The M-100 is a great speaker and unless the drivers are burned I would absolutely not recommend getting new drivers or redesign the crossover. Bracing wasn't really a thing in 1976, but the M-100 isn't at all bad. (Harbeth even make their well regarded speakers with thin front baffle as they have measured it to be better for mid-freq tone :) . Google it !)
B&O have always been the epitome of form over function. They are art pieces, and the user experience was always an ongoing experiment in finding every different way to accomplish something (but it is worth noting that all of the active language used on their control panels is consistent across their whole range of devices, so...). They're expensive, they look great to people who have interior decorators in their speed dials. (underline underline underline) Yes, they are solidly built (most of the time), and they have decent performance, but that's simply a distant second to making something that perfectly blends into an ultra-modern room.
Yes. That review felt unusually grumpy to me - yes, you have to learn a new interface, but the interface language was consistent and “obvious” once you learn it, and with just one remote you could control every part of your B&O setup (which could include a TV, vinyl, etc) intuitively. Also, remember that this was the 80s - back then every company had its own way of doing things
Working with music equipment for more years than I care to remember, I never had any time for B&O. However, I paid due respect to B&O owners every time I was introduced to a B&O system - secretly questioning myself why? The design I found always eye catching and I wished I'd owned a huge penthouse apartment to display one of these designs as an art feature. In a different category, I never understood BOSE products either. BOSE PA systems scared me. I am sure B&O and BOSE had features and specifications that appealed to their users and justified the price tags.
B&O used quality drivers and cross-overs, Bose used (and still does) a set of very cheap drivers over and over in their products, using smoke and mirrors (DSP) and/or clunky application of wave-guides (AKA transmission line). Open up a Bose of the same era B&O speaker and look at how cheap the components are in the Bose (for similar money) - they also look like they were knocked together in some old hobbyist's shed.
They're both the Apple of audio. More care is being put in the marketing than in the design of the circuit or speakers. They're good quality but sound wise, you can get à very similar sounding system for à fraction of the price.
@@MarvinHartmann452Well yeah, but that was never the point, as opposed to Apple fans claming they are on top, all categories. They also were the best sounding... in certain form factors. Good luck finding a better sounding system that fits in the same space as this, in the early 90s
@@MarvinHartmann452 Totally agree, and once you buy into these systems you are somehow stuck with it. They are not as 'compatible' with other systems as they could or should be.
@@MarvinHartmann452 I think you touched on every myth about b&o here. The design is not just 'marketing', it's a wonderful element that will make you smile every day that you use it, you'll be looking at it all day, every day, why not make it as beautiful as possible. If you don't care about that, then sure, it doesn't make sense to spend the extra money. I've got used B&O from the 70/80s that works fantastic still, incredible sound that I could've paid much more for the same thing with modern gear.
Back in the 90's my brother-in-law was very into his B&O sound systems so I got to see quite a lot of them. My opionion then was that they were all style and no substance which was backed up when he asked me to make repairs once and I found them to be pretty basic on the inside and with none of the functionality of my far cheaper equipment. Sad to say that after watching this excellent video my opinion has not changed, middle of the road quality at higher than top notch prices and all the useful functionality left out (not to mention being incable of working with other vendor's equipment - a true walled garden if ever I saw one).
Rubbish . What BO speaker of the Uniphase series does not work with any equipment ? What Amplifier , Beocenter . Beomaster till the late 80s does not work with any speaker ? You don't know much about BO , but you claim you do .
The system in this video is mid-fi. Never ment to be anything else. Call it 'entry level' B&O :) They used quality Vifa speakers and there are still a lot of these units around.
My school friend demonstrated an 80s B&O midi system complete with floating tone arm and horizontal loading cassette decks .... woooo we said ... he played some music and 15 year old me wasn't impressed to be honest and that has coloured my view ever since. However that wasn't fair. Another time we watched some TV on the recently acquired flat-screened set that hung from a hinged foot. When it was switched on by remote it turned to face the position of the remote (viewer) .... wooooo we said..... I loved this review for the even handed assessment.
You should try the smaller Beosound Century. It has a very cool and well designed interface with relevant buttons only lighting up based on the source input. Its a very interesting all-in-one with pretty competitive sound quality. Love the B&O feature! I remember sending you an email years ago suggesting some B&O content. I was so happy finally getting my wish fulfilled ❤
Yeah it was a hit, it introduced alot of people to B&O in the 90s ( exactly as it was intended too, with the price point aim of under 1k ( rrp was £995 in UK) but then you were still another £50 for a wall bracket if you wanted one, but more importantly for " new" owners was the extra £100 for a beolink 1000 remote lol, great times :)
I used to work in a B&O shop and sold hundreds of these units to posh people. But I just got a secondhand Beosound 3200 system for myself. Always wanted one and now I have one. Sounds decent but takes up way too much space.
It only takes up too much space if you pair it with these obsolete Beolab 2500 speakers. 26 years ago when I got mine, I paired it with Beolab 6000, and so it has never taken too much space!
I remember a friend back in the late '70s having a big sprawling B&O Hi-Fi system. The centre-piece was the Linear-tracking record player. That was the first time I had ever seen such a concept. They also had a VCR, U-matic, it would have been back then. I knew it was an expensive collection of kit, but then, they weren't short of coin…
@@toresbe Philips Video 2000 was a great system but suffered from crappy marketing. Philips apparently expected people to use them for holiday footage and the like and took forever to bring out tapes long enough to record a feature film.
@@thescrewfly From the launch of the VCC2020 Philips had 4 hour tapes and being double sided 8 hours recording. Their previous tape loop VCR did not have long play and tapes were 60 minutes. The 1700 (?). Could not use the Video 200 for holiday footage as it took years to sell the portable recorder. A shoulder bag with separate camera that at home had a TV receiver and recorder for it. The early models from both Philips an Grundig had problems. Did not work half the time. Each new release was just as bad with many units un-repairable. I got though several before finding one that worked and continues to work now. Prices were also very high. Most of the tapes recorded back in the 80s are unplayable now with the magnetic material peeling away from the backing. My VHS tapes are better but also 10 or 15 years younger.
I have a parallel tracking B&O turntable as part of my B&O system. Great piece of kit, controlled by the same remote control that operates the rest of the system. And yet the turntable does not have an IR receiver. When I bought the turntable I didn't know about that trick. I discovered it by accident when I pressed the phono button on the remote and the turntable started turning and playing the LP on the platter. ❤
@@toresbe The first B&O VCR was the Video2000 Beocord 8800 V released in 1981 which was based on the Philips VR2020 if the B&O info websites are to believed so if it was the late 70s it could not have been a B&O VCR. Video2000 itself was released in 1979 but idk how fast the first vcrs were available.
I worked as a car electronics installer from 88 to 03. A few of the places I worked sold B&O equipment and I never saw anyone buy any. I became an electrician in 98 and the only time I saw B&O systems in customers homes they were in closets gathering dust. Like you I never even contemplated owning one. It's like the wave radio more design value and status. If I wanted something cool I would build it from components and wood. Thanks for taking the hit to you bank account.
The few hundred quid he spent on this 20-year old stuff pales in comparison to the income from hundreds of thousands of views he'll be getting. Plus the patrons, of course.
It’s funny how people think all TH-cam videos earn Mr Beast money. If I’m lucky this one might just about break even, but it’s more likely it’ll lose a couple of hundred quid. The Patrons are the ones keeping the channel going.
@@Techmoan I put in no effort to my channel and don't have monetization. I just upload video-game play. Why would a channel with no content worry about your income ? I have been subscribed to you for at least 7 years.
B&O is just art, all the pre-90's stuff is just rock solid, and fixable, albeit hard to take apart properly as all is large, heavy and some tricks need to be known, but the service manuals are all available, parts used are relatively common, and build quality is just superb. just avoid the 90's stuff, the quality took a big hit, and they are much harder to fix. their stuff from the 70's and early to mid 80's are the best by far.
SHHHH! I like people looking at used components thinking 'ha, B&O is just style over substance, I'm too smart to fall for that!'. It leaves all their great stuff for me. I've got a phenomenal vintage stereo of theirs, and a few other things. Ironically, it's some of the best value for money I've ever spent.
@@donello430 Seeing the details of how it goes together (especially the proprietary active speakers) made me flip from "yeah I might pick that weird old posh CD player up if I saw it in a pawn shop or thrift shop" to "nah, that looks like more trouble than it's worth even if offered for free".
There's a lovely James Burke quality to seeing your face reflected in the circle of the CD player and then (around 11:24) having the doors close as you are about to say "It's a little bit confusing."
I have the feeling the usability did get quite some attention, but that they'd gone for different ways to do things on purpose, while not considering whether on not it was an improvement.
No. The reasons for the unique interface are three: one: backwards compatibility. You can buy current B&O stuff and a dedicated B&O dealer can make it work with a 1973 B&O record player, as in, your shiny new 2023 B&O remote will start the record player. Two: networkability. That "up" button on the CD player, when networked with the TV, will change to the next TV channel when you are controlling the TV from the CD player, if you should choose to do so -or from the remote, which is the exact same one for the TV and for the CD player. Three: a lot of the features appeared on B&O before they appeared on other devices... B&O had to invent the interface. B&O is now 98 years old.
This is a huge nostalgia hit for me. My grandad had one of these - for about 20 years. It's still working and sounds incredible! It always felt like magic seeing how it worked.
Yes! If you've lived with Windows for any number of years, the Mac is often (and still is for me) not very intuitive. However, every time I fire my Windows desktop up I find a wealth of expletives I never thought I would pass my lips. The Mac just works!
When I was a younger, I had a friend whose dad was pretty well off. He shelled out for a whole-house B&O system. This would have been in the early to mid 1980s. I was always impressed with how stylish it was, and the home integration, though I found it quirky to operate as a lot of controls were not common-sense based. It sounded good, but no better than good equipment at perhaps a third of the price IMO. All of this stuff was well out of my price range and most of it still is, though I had the luck of finding B&O's "boombox" Beosystem 10 at an estate sale for the steal price of $15 USD a few years ago. The sound quality is very good for a boombox, but they've definitely elevated form over function with this as well. The tape lacks an auto stop feature in all modes, the controls are a bit clunky, and the handle is perhaps the most uncomfortable on any portable stereo of this type, though it is solid aluminum. This is definitely not a boombox you're going to take to the beach. It is remarkably heavy for its size and is built like a tank. Despite its age it needed no belts or other maintenance. I have added Bluetooth to the AUX input on mine. All that said, I would have happily paid a lot more for this as it's just really cool. Would love to see you do a review on one and see how the cassette mechanism compares to others of its time period. Thanks for another great video.
I'd never own any of the home system stuff because it looks basically like it was designed to annoy me specifically, but if I ever came across that boombox I'd probably grab it if the price were right.
The fact that they have somehow managed to make the bad feeling that you get when you accidentally trigger automatic doors available for purchase for a large amount of money really fails to sell it to me.
Over the years, I've had a few laptop computers with the names of premium audio brands on their speakers, including B+O. I assume they all came out of the same parts bin in Taiwan and the only thing "premium" about them was the silk screening on the case, because they all sounded exactly the same as any other laptop. :)
Any branding exercise like this is usually just about putting the name on a normal part. The IWC dashboard clock you can get as a very expensive option in high-end Mercedes-Benz cars is the same automotive clock made by M-B, but with an IWC dial on the front.
Yea so basically mainly HP had a deal with B&O where B&O would "calibrate" their speakers and slap their name on the laptop. Although it's not that mayor, just an equalizer adjustment
Some laptops used the B&O ICE Power Class D amplifiers, which warranted slapping the B&O name on the laptop. I think it was Asus who had this partnership with B&O in this particular case.
@@chekiechekie Still would have been crap. Asus have burned so many 'sticker brands' it's unreal. Their latest 'co-lab' was with EK Waterblocks.... All seemed fine until everyone realised the IDIOTS at ASUS used aluminium instead of copper inside their VRM waterblock to save cash. This caused galvanic corrosion of everyone's custom loops. Even watercooling newbies know that you NEVER mix aluminium & copper and EK are the highest-end of PC Watercooling. The 'partnership' lasted exactly one product due to the brand damage EK suffered for ASUS's stupidity.
Another great video Mat. While on the topic of exotic hifi, could you look into Braun Atelier hifi system? Ideally a white/wood model or silver. Legendary hifi from Braun needs to be Techmoaned!
I remember being blown away by the Beovox RL 60 loudspeakers when I was in my mid teens. The shop was playing Dire Straits Money For Nothing through them. Great times!
The RL Redlines are passive speakers. I have owned all the models of late, buying and selling. The 'best' are the big daddies/4-way RL 140's/7000, if you can find them.
I own and maintain a couple of B&O systems. Would never buy their stuff new, I don't have that kind of money. But the second-hand prices are often surprisingly good. I got a pair of Penta speakers for 500 USD which will tear paint off the wall before distorting. The video is even-handed but understandably missing a bit of context. This system is best seen as a home entertainment network node. The device is really best operated from the remote - the CD rip feature best from the PC interface - also a lot of the design choices make much more sense when you keep in mind it was developed for component systems which also integrated with TV, like the Beosystem 6500. I think they're extremely over-engineered - the sheer madcap ambition really is a big chunk of the appeal to me. As a broadcast engineer, it feels more like an audio router than a normal stereo. I could compare it to a 1980s Mercedes S-class: Very complex beasts with a lot of innovations and comforts, which does mean a lot of complexity that can go wrong. But what other 1986 stereo gives you multi-room audio with balanced audio lines and data networking? If I have friends over and want to fix some snacks without losing programme audio, I just walk into the kitchen and press "GO" on the IR eye, and the active source is routed in. If I prefer music, I can press CD on my remote and the system will route audio from the CD player in the living room to the kitchen. I can set an alarm from a unit in my bedroom, and wake up to music from the turntable in my living room. (Well, if the pickup mechanism didn't need a nudge...) And the UI manages all of this complexity far better than my Sonos stuff. I hate pawing at a touchscreen.
That indeed does not make it make any more sense that there is a "Go" button instead of a "Play" button. Also in principle a device should stand on its own and be usable without other components. Especially something so simple as a CD player. Also having to fire up the PC and use whatever interface B&O came up with in 2003 when you simply wanted to put some music on is not the flex you think it is
@@amac203 Go starts a source. You press play on tape or CD, but you don't press play to turn on a TV, or to drop a needle. It also enables it to double as a select button in on-screen menus. The button used to be "PLAY" on the Beolink 1000 remote, but was re-labeled "GO" on the Beo4 - partly because of the proliferation of on-screen menus. Often these systems used IR blasters to control satellite decoders, cable boxes etc. Anyway I almost never use the Go button, I just use the source select button. If I want to play a CD, I hit CD. I'm puzzled that you'd call my comment a flex, I'm just adding context to the user interface concept B&O had in the day which is (again, understandably) missing from this video. And the PC interface did much more; it allowed you to route PC audio to your stereo, and stereo sources to your PC speakers. Also, it's not just a CD player; it's also a HDD player and radio, and it's also an audio and data router for an expandable home entertainment system, including second-room speakers, TVs, VTRs, etc etc. So much of the point of B&O is that you have one remote for everything - in some systems even house lights and door intercom.
@@amac203 Using the PC for ripping is not unheard of I'd say. It is what it is - for those not either wanting or affording this, obviously you'd not dive into the details and philosophies behind the products. This system was as much intended to be a master in a (multi room) system, consisting of multiple component, seamlessly interoperating. Like, audio from the TV to this system - or vice versa. Wherever you wanted to listen or see. Their UX is different for sure - but for people who've used B&O before, this is second nature. I do not disagree with respect to the price/value on the sound side of things in these systems. But simply reducing this to a "rich idiots" thing... get over it...Sorry, @amac203, I see I ended up responding to everyone else's ranting.
@@gizmothingy25524 I get the impression Sonos was HEAVILY inspired by B&O since that pretty much describes the functionality of the whole house Sonos system a friend sank like $15k into. I can't stand Sonos' closed and incompatible design philosophy either 😂
I fell in love with B&O in 1992 when I first discovered it. I've always dreamed of having one. And I wasn't wrong at all about the sound quality, it does have a good sound quality.
In a world where we already have XLR (5 and 3 pin), jacks, speakon, minijacks, and RCA connectors, we should really take a moment to appreaciate the (cough) "ingenuity" of manufacturers using non-standard cabling
As someone else wrote - that connector was designed to support multiple channels of sound AND two-wire computer communication. The DIN connector was a standard in Europe, the pin's assignments differed between usage. That cable replaced TWO RCA cables with their 4 connectors and one two-wire communicaton cable. 2 connectors instead of 6. The system was designed to work well in a B&O system.
@@TheStefanskoglund1 The DIN connector being "standard" is misleading. Yes, the connector itself is standard in the same way a D-sub is, but the actual interface is proprietary and designed not to be interoperable - you won't find this DIN on any other brand in the hifi shop, and that's by design.
I had to call their customer service to get a PIN number for a beolab speaker that I found in the garbage. They basically asked me a couple simple questions and made sure it wasn't stolen and then gave me the master code. No money and it took about 5 minutes. Great customer service for somebody who's never actually purchased an item from them
Nice. I've had a similar experience with Mitsubishi factory car stereos for vehciles which are approx 20 years old. Obviously no value to an ancient car stereo.
@@darwiniandudei hate when you disconnect a honda battery too long on the 02 to like 10. You gotta put in that huge pin code based on that decks serial number. Thank god they put the search online
Sorry if this comes across as inflammatory... but it kinda sounds like they created a problem, then were helpful solving it. Which is really only bested by .. well ... not having the problem in the first place.
@@nickwallette6201 I have no reason to defend B&O, but I suspect that like Apple these things are to reduce theft. If people know you can't steal them and use them, they're less desirable.
@@nickwallette6201 I think many of these systems were used in public places, or office foyers etc, and the PIN was actually a useful feature, just not much in the home with a single user, which explains why the owner can disable the PIN.
50 years ago when I was at university learning (among other things) how to design user interfaces, I was taught the "principle of least astonishment". The basis of the principle is that when designing a control, you choose a mode of operation that will 'least astonish' the user. That is to say, you design things to work in the way that most of the users will expect. If there is an established convention, you don't re-invent it unless there is an unavoidable overriding reason to do so.
This. So much this!
That principle goes out of the window when there is no established practice. If you're early you can choose your own path and some companies stick to that. You don't fault Apple for not using Windows design principles.
I might guess that most owners of b&o kit were, like my grandfather, previous owners of b&o kit, so that the principle of least astonishment applied here would be the leave the interface alone between generations. Just a guess.
And in the case of B&O, there was exactly such a reason. Indeed, the button was originally marked "PLAY" on the Beolink 1000 remote - for the record it wasn't much used. To play a CD, you press CD. To watch TV, you press TV. Not very astonishing :) The Audio Master and Video Master (the primary audio and video systems on the bus) would then do whatever it took to make that happen.
The button was changed to "GO" because of the proliferation of on-screen menus. Some systems would come with IR blasters for eg. satellite decoders or cable boxes, and "GO" would then logically map to eg. "select" or "enter" for such remotes. It's hard to say this stuff without sounding pretentious, but these things really aren't "just" hi-fis. They should be compared to more comprehensive home automation systems like those you see in fancy auditoriums.
I know it as "The Principle of Least Surprise" but, yes, when writing code or creating GUIs it it something that I adhere to.
About 15 years ago, I bought a TV and a set of speakers from B&O. Looked cool, sounded great, but I got the impression that they just felt the need to do things differently for the sake of being different so they can charge the premium.
My dad used to work for Philips in a factory that made magnets for CRT TVs, he always says the B&O televisions were just Philips TVs in polished wood cases.
Philips made the CRT screens for the Avant and thats all they did. The B&O electronics and picture management gave us the perfect B&O picture@@dcan911
@@dcan911 yes they used Philips tubes but trist me they far outshone any philips set both externally and performance wise, it was bang and olufsen circuitry and technology that meant b&o got more out of Philips tubes than Philips could , much the same as more recent years with LG LCD displays
Seen those, family has a B&O television, with a pretty decent sound even. Though nowadays hooked up to a way more capable sound system with big boxes.
@@dcan911 It's true, but it's worth mentioning that a truck loaded with tubes arrived at the BO factory. They tested the tubes and kept only five of them. The remaining tubes were sent back to Philips.
Former BO shop manager here
I had a coworker for some years - a designer who used to work for B&O. He told me that at B&O the chief designer was king! Nothing less. In the 1970s it was Jacob Jensen and in the 1980s it was David Lewis. Techmoan is absolutely spot on with his assumption on how it was at B&O: The designer had some weird idea on how the user interface should be, and then everybody said "yes master" and started working on it. My designer coworker actually left B&O because he and pretty much everybody else was treated as nothing more than minions for David Lewis.
Sounds very much like Apple under Jony Ive
@@theblah12And Apple design got better when he left. Jobs had good instinct, but Ive was a mixed bag. Skeuomorphic software/apps were always a bad idea.
@@neuronic85 I think Ive's work was more experimental than their current design team but that was because there was room at the time (I'm talking late-90s through late-00s) for new ideas and innovation. Now that Apple have pretty much found the ideal form factor for most of their products they can play it safe and build on the principles that Ive established under his leadership.
@@neuronic85 lol.. Apple designs got worse after Ive left. What are you smoking. If you are a designer you know the new apple products have ugly peppered here and there that a good designer would never allow. Ive/Jobs is the reason why Apply came back from the brink of bankruptcy. It is easy to cry about the designs now. But without design Apple even wouldn't be here. It is always funny when people without no design knowledge cry about design.
@@arunashamalYes, Apple appears to be resting on their laurels. It will serve them for a while but someone will be along to eat their lunch before they know it.
I've always associated B&O with the 'Yuppies' of the 1980s. They were always heavily advertised in the colour supplement magazines of heavyweight newspapers, alongside ads for Stella Artois and (for some odd reason) Kimberly-Clark paper towels.
Part of the whole aspirational lifestyle - Porsche Carrera on the driveway, BT 'brick' carphone nestling in its NiCd charger, bottle of Chablis in the fridge and Brothers In Arms on the BeoSysyem. "Crispin has got the funding, Darling - we're going for it! - SNORT"
In the 60'ies and 70'ies there were no computers in their systems, making them much easier to use.
I'm getting strong "American Psycho" vibes from this.
I’ve got half the lifestyle. I’ve got the wine, the old phone and Dire Straits, while in dire straits. I’m living the dream!
And that is how we got PFI hospitals darling
@@andreasu.3546 The first owner obsessed over getting a reservation at the Dorsia.
I used to repair those, I went to a training course in Detroit Michigan. The same year I got my pilots license, it was easier to pass the pilots course, than learning to use the B&O, I worked on a unit similar. But it had a turntable and a CDplayer but the CD track numbers and radio displays were in the speakers. It did have really good sound and were reliable. It looks fragile, but is trouble free. The speakers were tower.
During my childhood, I would never have guessed or even thought that B&O would be sold outside our borders. Like it is just a thing of our culture here. B&O equals normal here, but as I crew up, I realised that this were sold to high end customers in places like NYC. Kind of made me proud, and still does, that products from my country are sold world wide. You know. Lego and B&O.
Yet. Back in my childhood in the 1980's, these products were for those that were high middle class and the rich. Except those transistor radioes that everyone had. It is those Beolit 500/700 models. They were so cheap, that everyone had them. And they have that magically soft sound quality. Rich, deep and all that. And produced cheap.
Bizarre and Obfuscated
Awesome video as always! I will never forget that scene in Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when the ice from the gutter of the Griswold's house flies through the window of the wealthy neighbours house and hits that thing they called "the stereo". It looked so futuristic at the time seeing this as a kid in the early 90s, I thought it was just a prop. Years later I learned that it was a B&O Beosystem 4500, it still looks futuristic today.
I was going to say, B&O just screams "80s yuppie" to me, from the design to the price.
Look again. They had the Beosystem 9000 in that movie.
Just a note to say your channel is such a source of comfort for me. I miss the old days a lot. Your videos help jump back in time.
I worked in a B&O store during the mid 00. Great times, happy and polite customers, great quality. B&O shines in larger audio and tv system setups (MasterLink) B&O is not for everyone💰
Your advice to do your homework on B&O before spending any money is BANG ON. Years ago, I was shopping for a used turntable and B&O turntables came up in the search a lot. I didn't think too much about it - they looked beautiful! So, I thought, I'll spend the extra twenty bucks and get the pretty one for my living room.
It showed up with no cartridge. Not a big deal, right? Ha! These are bespoke cartridges. I think it was over $200 to get a cartridge and I didn't spend anywhere near that on the turntable itself. I'll admit, I did spend the money and I am happy with the turntable, which is still the centerpiece of my living room setup. But if I had it to do over again, I would've gone simpler and cheaper.
One big advantage is that these B&O cartridges are still being manufactured by Soundsmith
yeah he got it bangonolafson
This is the most "fancy pants" CD Player I've ever seen. Always putting out fantastic content for us Sir Techmoan! Thank you!
then look up the Beosound 9000 in action 😆 that is even more fancy and complicated to work on
@@oOWaschBaerOo A critical point to consider is that the interface will be the same. In fact the button "CD ALL" on this device will make all CDs play on that device (if linked via Masterlink).
@@oOWaschBaerOo An early prototype version of Beosound 9000 had a scary and funny bug with end-stop sensor that caused the sled fly off the end at high speed.
Well Mr Fancy Pants, let's see if your CD spinnin' is as fancy as your dancin'!
The B&O transistor wash* is practically nil.
* Turn a stereo up to full volume with nothing playing. The tape hiss you then hear is transistor wash.
B&O were perfect for movie props. They were just ridiculously expensive.
Best to seen in Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase.
If a system that's 40 years old, still working as designed and still competitive (and compatible) with today's music sources is overpriced then I have to wonder what represents good value.
And imo, they are the absolute best sounding and best listening experiences you'll ever have
@@andrewwilson8273 This is less than half that old afaik
@@andrewwilson8273 The model in the video is a '03-'11, not even close to 40 years old. It's also not difficult to find a 30+ year old CD/radio minisystem that still works fine, since CD transports are typically direct drive rather than perishable rubber belt like cassette and LP.
I too have spent my adult life looking at B&O stuff in shop windows and wondering if it was really worth the money. So this was a fascinating insight to me. And the answer is basically what I thought it would be - decent stuff, weird design, difficult to use, expense not really justified. Expensive hi-fi, designed to appeal to nerds with money, but probably better taste than the aveage hi-fi geek. I dont think I'll be buying any B&O anytime soon.
Back in the CRT days B&O TVs were genuinely fantastic, they normally used Philips tubes (maybe Samsung later on) but the picture and sound quality was top of the class and they looked amazing. The build quality was always superb as well, their stuff never broke. The only real competition in the segment was probably Loewe.
Yeah, they were good lasting quality. They had nice sounding speakers as well.
My grandmother had a B&O CRT, she bought it in the mid-80s and didn't swap it out until you had to have a HD LCD-TV in the mid-2000s when all our countries terrestrial channels all went digital and HD.
I remember walking past the B&O shop near to where I lived in the early 00s, and seeing one of their 100Hz CRTs displaying something in the shop window. It looked SO much better than any regular TV I'd seen up until that point. I was amazed at how smooth the image was.
B&O and Loewe TVs ate flyback transformers almost on a monthly basis. I worked in a TV repair shop in Germany in the 1990s and changing flybacks and horizontal output stage components of Loewe and B&O TVs was about 90% of our business.
@@albinklein7680 to be precise: the cheaper and early MX-series ate transformers….after 5-6 years.
My Friend owned a Hifi Store it used deal with high end Hifi he said he would never deal with B&O as you have push B&O all the time and they have secret shoppers, If you dared to suggest another brand based on the users needs they would drop you.. More importantly he said it was style over substance you could get a better sounding gear for 1/3 of the price
I like that b&o thing that had 8 visible cds of your choice behind glass, it looked amazing and colourful
I remember playing with the cassette-equipped version of this unit in a shop in the 90s as a teenager. I, the biggest gadget nerd among anyone I knew, couldn’t figure out how to get it to play a cassette. I was already starting to learn about usability design at the time, and it definitely cemented my view that B&O prioritizes design over anything else.
They also famously used a proprietary infrared protocol (possibly even with a different IR wavelength) that makes them incompatible with universal IR remotes.
Yeah, 455kHz as opposed to 38kHz. Not only that, but it's bi-directional. On some remotes (like the deliciously stupid Master Control Panel 5500 or the Beolink 7000) you get RDS data and even VU meters.
Puting on requires only to decide what we want to use and push it. . To make Ouverture (with cassette) to play cassette one need only to pusch "tape" no need to switch unit "on" (by not existing) separate button provided in other brand constructions. The same with radio and CD To make pause for mechanic media requires push "stop". To switch off only press red point. To switch between modes just press next command. It is just perfect. Switch on radio radio just pusch radio. All is logicaly controlled. I never complyed remote - it is no comparable to other - batteries last years and no need to worry about range - enough to be in room or even out only turmning remote to open doors.
They used normal hex for remote codes, it was the frequency that is different. Reason was that it bounces better so you can pretty much point the remote in the wrong direction and it'll still work. That's why back in the day the stores needed a cap with a hole in the end of the remote to reduce range otherwise everything in the shop would come on 🤣
@@Mikexception "To switch off only press red point."
I suppose the "red point" is actually meant to represent the red LED on the different units indicating a powered-down state. All very "clever" from an aesthetics-fixated design pundit's perspective, completely neglecting people with certain forms of colour blindness, and ignoring long-established conventions. If a designer has to explain something as commonplace as switching things on and off or playing audio, they shouldn't be in that line of work. Design is about ergonomics first and foremost, not "it looks amazing" aesthetic posturing.
@@paul_boddie the red point is also the only circle so there's no dependency on color. There are several controls where the dot is monochrome, like the IR eye on Beolink units and the Beolink 1000 remote.
Growing up in the 80/90's my folks always had B&O tv's and sound systems. It always struck me as odd, as we weren't a rich family, by any stretch of the imagination.
Now seeing how expensive these things were, I can see why we were so skint. 😯
I used to love showing off the tv rotating to my friends, though. Haha. 😃
Thats very cool! I still enjoy the rotating tv, never gets old, it becomes normal.
I take my daughter into the B&O showroom to see and hear what I might replace my surround sound system. We are shown the television with rotating panels for speakers that rises to the occasion and the tower speakers that the curtains open up before getting the sound. Impressive and the sound awesome. But I remarked to my daughter. B&O often has some showmanship but by the time these all moved into place I would have forgotten why I switched them on in the first place.
Bang and Olufsen made some decent portable radios in the 60s, however they seem to be more of a manufacturer of expensive "life style" systems than audiophile gear.
I owned a similar model that had a cassette, CD, and radio. I pretty much concur with your review but came to a different conclusion with regard to value. This B&O player is a beautiful unit and the sound quality was better than anything its size at that time. It probably is still better than a standard Sonos streaming speaker you can get today. What kills this unit is the usability issues you identified. It's not just the non-intuitive labeling of buttons. Try figuring out how to set the clock or how to have it play music as an alarm in the morning. The latter needed to be done using the remote control unit and requires a complex programming procedure using buttons on the front and back of the remote control. The manual is written in Dinglish (Danish-English) and is totally confusing and in some cases not even accurate. I eventually sold the unit but did buy a pair of B&O headphones. A lovely pair of over-the-ear headphones with lambskin leather ear coverings. Lovely to look and very good sound but the same usability issues. The headphones are hard to pair with your phone. Hard to re-set. Hard to increase the volume etc. etc. It's amazing that something as simple as a pair of headphone could be so difficult to use. And the killer is that the usability flies in the face of B&O's sleek, mininal design. I will never buy another B&O product. They are just not worth it.
In a way B&O is very like Apple:
Their equipment tends to be sold to the same 'demographic', and while the experience is pretty good once you get used to it, it is deliberately tailored to be sufficiently different from the 'norm' to induce the inductee not to want to change to a competitor...
...oh, and the hardware is 'reassuringly' far more expensive than it has any right to be - that 'demographic' again.
On the positive side, at least B&O don't actively prevent the 'owners' from repairing their own equipment!
I disagree, apple are extremely good at UI.
The iPhone for example is completely tailored to work very well with little to no actual setup or changes to settings.
Airpods connect without any of the usual Pairing nonsense.
Apple take what B&O want to be and made it work which is why they're popular on a level B&O could only dream of despite their high prices.
I’ve always been a hifi fanatic but only ever on a strict budget, I would research and buy the best that I could afford. When I met my late wife back in the early 90’s, I discovered that her mum had a B & O stereo system and a B & O TV. I couldn’t wait to see it all working and listen to it as that was the first time I’d come across B & O in the wild. I was suitably under impressed and reached the conclusion it was more for people that valued the way the system looked than sounded. I appreciated my Technics system in my bedroom even more after listening to B & O for the first time.
It's the Apple of Hi-Fi
Yeah, like Bose - but we don't want to start that discussion here!!
That's why I call it d.o.f. (design over functionality), and to maintain them is a total nightmare.
There is B&O with decent audio quality, but there is definitely also B&O with very very good audio quality. And they offered features like multi-room way earlier than others.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm an electronic technician with 40 years of experience, and I always refused to repair these systems. They don't worth the expenses for me to buy the adapter, and rich people usually just buy another one when they break, which they often do. Normal systems like Toshiba or technics usually sound better, and they don't touch mcintosh or a vintage marantz, pioneer, sansui, look and sound wise.
Now that you've gone down the rabbit hole, you might also noticed that there are multiple versions of seemingly the same models... The Beo4 remote comes with different layouts, some even have a button labled "Play" 😉 and so did the Beocenter 2500 btw.
The differences are not small - even looking simmilar Becoenter 2500 has very different CD transport than Ouverture and the differences are hidden in number of laser beams. Worthy noticing they use as DAC famous TDA 1541 Also casssette was not provided in 2300 model
Once you start with B&O it does not end. Ive fallen so far down the vintage B&O rabbit hole ill never get myself out...
This enlightening video has finally ended the little desire I had to own any B & O gear. This one was so badly designed yet cost so much.
B&O is for the fan. not the rest of us :oD
Dear Rebecca. The 3000 series unit plus the speakers you see in Mats video offer truley the biggest bang for buck regarding sound. The design of the user interface is guided by the remote control. Having and using a Beo4 brings sense and logic to the whole system. I would challange anybody to live with this system fully set up and want to return it after a month. I love music. I have an enormous cd collection. My master system was valued at very many tens of thousends of lbs. With a diploma in music production and studio tech, I can be confident in my reccomendation. Check my comment in the above section. Bw Mike.
Fully agree. I’ve never had much interest in these overpriced toys, but seeing how unwieldy and counterintuitive they are in use, I’m even more glad I’ve never interacted with them.
@@alamunez they really are designed to be used with the remote tbh, the front panel is just back up/ alternative when at system anyway etc
to me as an engineer this just looks so EWWW
no matter how much it cost and how hard it may have been to build, all about this, the display, the buttons, the connectors, it looks just medium quality at best and form follows design, connectors pointing up, yeah sure, there's reasons why you would not.
i know there goes some praise with B&O stuff as well as some of their amp designs
but idk, to me it's way overrated big boy toys
This is the second time you've randomly found dancehall from somewhere that isn't the Caribbean. From Japanese dancehall in a random minidisk to African dancehall in the memory of a bang and Olufsen midi system. excellent stuff, as always.
As someone from Denmark where these things were quite common it's funny to see how the things we took for granted - the way you operated it, the way things connected, etc - are actually completely foreign to people not in that ecosystem. The wording of buttons make sense when you consider that the buttons are basically identical on all their devices because they were all controlled by the same remote, but without that context it just seems extremely odd
Exactly! Also the GO button was PLAY on Beolink 1000, they changed it because on-screen menus were becoming a thing and they needed an "enter/ok"-like button.
Danes don't take these things for granted. My gran has had a B&O stereo for years, and I spent a lot of time learning how to do simple things. Hate B&O's idiosyncratic buttons. The remote with the transparent glass display was awesome tho
It's like an Android user trying iPhone for the first time
I like good sound. Hate companies for witch design is design is the first goal. Plastic is everywhere, sound is average, user interface is sh.t. Price is ...
@@lambertax I like the user interface, and as for "plastic" - that's just utter nonsense. The thing literally is milled out of solid metal.
Adding a PIN to a stereo receiver is just about the most pretentious thing a HiFi company could possibly do! What were they thinking?
Do all their electronics have that??
I’m not sure but I would assume they did that on some of the other models. This is the first time I have seen a PIN featured on a HiFi equipment.
You do a really great job of ‘introducing’ your audience to different (I can’t say ‘new’) gear. I’ve always been curious about the B&O stuff, and had formed much the same opinion as yourself. It’s good to know the sound quality is there. Enjoyed watching you ‘get to know it’s so-to-speak.
B&O current product range has some amazing (and amazingly expensive) products in it.
It's also worth noting that products like the Beolab 5 speakers shown at the start of the video came with a *lifetime guarantee*. I know someone who has had theirs fixed twice for free over 20 years after he put too much power through them and apparently blew them, or so he tells me. They still sound amazing, and look like Daleks which is cool.
Early beolab 5s ( which as you said are amazing speakers) had a problem with cracking chassis, all sorted under warranty so not a big prob really, but your friend would have problems blowing them by putting " too much power through them" tbh as with being " active" their inbuilt amplifiers are obv not going to overdrive speakers they are specifically made for and if anything they will go into thermal rest/ cut out till things cool down if amps get too hot, so was I think maybe something else causing it lol 😆
Wow, no thanks!
This whole setup definitely confirms the image that I had in my mind as well. It's a brand for the well off hippy dippy types who prefer unusual, quality items that not everyone has. Basically, the people who owned setups like this probably also drove 90's Saabs, used early Mac computers and vacationed in Finland.
Ha ha. I check all the boxes except the Saab, so far. But I think an old Turbo convertible, nicely restored, may have my name on it.
3 dart finishers who expect strawberries in Waitrose in December.....
I have a 90s Saab and also a small colection of old PowerPC macs, aswell as some old and broken B&O devices. Im gonna repair them.
And i have modern earbuds from B&O, i have a connection now where i can get like last seasons display-models.
Im 22 btw
@@timweber4318ok thanks for sharing
Saab (2000s) owner, definitely not a Mac user, and does wish to have a vacation in Finland and any other Skandi country. See your point
I wonder if they intentionally made the user experience different. I can imagine people feeling like different is better and maybe even harder to use is better.
They must have done it intentionally the awkward bastards!
Watching the video it reminded me of Citroën cars.
See also: Linux 🙂
Yeah, it is marketing. They aimed at elitists, with big pocket, who feel good only when everything about themselves are different than the rest. They simply feel better because it is different, even if it is stupid.
@@K-o-RLinux is a hodgepodge that grew up over the decades. This is a terrible design from the ground up, now 😅
I inherited a 1960s B&O/Lenco record player as a teenager, it used DIN plugs on it as well which was also a pain, but I put it down to its age. Thought B&O might have moved on in the 50 or so years since they made my old one!
By the 1980s they had added two pins carrying data signalling. So if you hook a turntable up and press PHONO, for instance, that's where the signal goes for the auto-start. An interesting touch is that those two pins can often be unscrewed from the plug for compatibility.
DIN plugs were standard in Europe since 50s, so they were used in every european devices and even officially imported ones.
B&O used DIN style plugs because they enabled their devices to talk to each other.
Other manufacturers used proprietary connections that are impossible to replace these days.
Remember this system and those coming before were well before Bluetooth. Wired connection was the only viable option.
DIN connections were the best way to go for the longevity and compatibility that B&O offered to their customers.
@@xsc1000 It's not a standard *interface* like MIDI (also conventionally on a DIN) though, just a standard connector. The MIDI interface is standard(ish...) both physically and electrically and designed to be interoperable between vendors.
DIN plugs were extensively used for record players all over Scandinavia - probably all over Europe - not just from B&O. I've two record players and two amplifiers with those connectors (Gerrard and Technics players, Tanberg and Pioneer amps).
Very stupid system, overpriced and ugly.
My granddad was a big fan of B&O. When he built his house in the late 60s, he had an entire audio system fully integrated into the house, with speakers in the living room, dining room, the bar in the basement, and on the outdoor patio. He also had several B&O TVs and VCRs. All hugely expensive, but overall a great quality system that was in regular use for 20+ years until he upgraded it with a newer version in the 90s. It would still have worked, but got too complicated for my grandma to operate (the criticism mentioned in the video is warranted), which prompted my dad and his siblings to replace it with something simpler. Still, since the system was perfectly operational, the various bits and pieces were divided up amongst the family, whoever wanted something from it. I've "inherited" several of the speakers and modified their cables to work with my amp. They work perfectly and I love the sound quality.
This thing has so many buttons that I'm surprised it takes 4 presses of a button just to get to the radio tuning mode. Seems like they have a button for just about everything, even extraneous buttons which could've just been combined into a single button. This thing could've had half as many buttons, and both looked better and been easier to operate.
Although, I will say, the number buttons are a godsend for CD playback. I've never seen another CD player with that feature (maybe on the remote control, if you were lucky) but it makes a lot of sense.
I used to work for a B&O dealer. Lovely kit, quirky, expensive, but I like the quirky. Our customers were a certain king of person, the sort that drove a Saab car.
Those customers must have got increasingly cross as Saabs became filled with increasing numbers of cheap Chevrolet (Vauxhall) parts in the 90's and 00's, despite Saab's best efforts to reengineer as much of the vehicle as possible. 😐 Or were they the kinds of people not to care about the componentry found deep within their B&O sound system (be it, shock horror, some lowly off-the-shelf chip or speaker driver) or Saab motor car?
@@TassieLorenzo We moved to Volvos ( even in the Ford days they were better than a GM Saab lol) and the “ parts” you speak of were indeed sometimes manufactured by other manufacturers but most often were made especially for B&O with the specs and tweaks that B&O specified/designed :)
Great to hear that these still have support and people repairing them. It's certainly weird but I think it's charming in a way.
a €4.000 system is worth repairing :oD
I was drooling over B&O equipment when I was 10 years old. I considered it the pinnacle of audio/video. Now, 40 years later, I'm like: meh, that's overpriced and pretty standard gear. Also: "THAT THING IS A DUST MAGNET!!" 😂
For me it was McIntosh and Carver...
But like you, that old stuff is all "meh" now.
I still cherish my retro component stereo system from back in the day, but my tiny Sony MP3 player and Logitech TXH speakers and/or Sennheiser headphones sound much better (deep solid bass you can feel even when played at low volume, super crisp highs, perfect channel separation, absolutely zero background hiss/noise) than the best of the best hi-fi could have produced back in the day.
@@fredashay I still wouldn't mind having a McIntosh, despite knowing you're still paying a huge premium for the name alone. Definitely more my style of hifi than the "interior designer" brands.
Not an issue. People rich enough to buy B&O are more than rich enough to hire maids.
They are all dust magnets now that Apple Music and Spotify have lossless audio (and spatial/HD). Only collectors who want a certain edition or mastering not available on streaming listen to CDs, and even then there’s probably more collectors who listen to ripped music than actual CDs.
Loved the centring of the display when showing off the system. It worked surprisingly well, having your reflection in the disc cover as you described and pointed things out
It could be that the display has an electoluminescent backlight, the colour would be about right for that. Unfortunately electroluminescent materials don't last forever, over time they get more and more dim, that could explain why this display is so dim.
"It's neat and minimalist. Also it's a bookshelf system that needs three seperate power leads"
It doesn't, they can be daisy-chained with off-the-shelf wires
@@toresbe It's neat and minimalist, you need to buy extra cables just to plug it in.
@@mechadeka They come with them and yes, you need power cables for electronics, no matter how minimalist they are (which it never aimed to be, either)
Yeah yeah I hadn't got to that bit of the video when I made my sarky comment, it happens
@@toresbeDoesn't matter how you spin it, they could have easily daisy-chained the power cords as well. Don't make excuses for poor design.
My stepdad had a Beomaster 5500 with the Master Control Panel 5500 and a Beogram 5500 record player. And as a kid i thought it was wild! I thought it looked very futuristic and super cool. And the record player was amazing. And still would be today. If you can get an 80ties B&O record player you get a very good record player. Sadly the Beomaster 5500 broke in the early 2000's and it all ended out being thrown out, which of cause was a mistake as i sit here older.
I still have mine - replaced all caps, perished rubber, etc, new cartridge for the turntable. All sounds wonderful in its own right, i would say the weakest links are actually the beocord 5500 and the beomaster 5500 itself, of which the amplifier section is very primitive and based on an ancient design.
80ties = Eight titties 😂
Of all the hifis i saw advertised in my Dad's Readers Digest magazines, I used to lust after the B&O systems the most 😅 The aesthetic was so starkly different from everything else, so futuristic and Knight Ridery! I still wouldn't mind collecting one of the 80's hi-fi's, but I seriously doubt they were ever distributed in my country.
This was designed by a guy who only ever used or even looked at his own products.
I kind of see how Steve Jobs learned a lot from B&O.
B&O has mythical status in Denmark and is roundly considered a prime example of Danish design. We never had B&O at home, so I never knew that the UI was so counter-intuitive.
that's one of the reasons why B&O didn't achieve success like the japanese av market had - having owned multiple iterations of beograms, almost all of them use proprietary connectors, have counterintuitive user interface and setup and in the price range they weren't competitive (had it for the looks, sound wise these were like ~500 $ Pioneers.)
@@jani0077 Very highly recognized brand should not target masses of lousy customers .They are not supposed to pay the adequate price
@@Mikexception ok, but even niche brands have better standardization and intuitive design. No high-end brand in the last 20 years used din-connectors for speakers, that’s obsolete design.
@@jani0077 Realy technical reason of replacement DIN connectors is justified for spakers consuming so much power that DIN connectors maybe too much heated by average current. I didn't check the DIN current limits but trying to imagine it may be easily say 3 amps because all fuses rated even 3A are using spring sockets and no heating. So they are capable to average power 9xR where R is speaker imperdance - if 8 ohms then it is 72Watts/ ch I hope with efficiency of 90 dB per 1 watt no many listeners need more power in spakers. In my opinion it is a matter of awaited by customers style but it affects convinence which I like more.
@@Mikexceptionwow you must not be happy about usbc making it to iphone...because wanting standardized connectors suddenly makes someone a lousy customer. While I appreciate your technical explanation for why they continued to use DIN your prior comment was simply ignorant and uncalled for, consumerist, classist, elitist, etc...these are not valid reasons to omit standard connectors. B&O is basically the apple of hifi and I'm sure they copy from each other's playbook. It's not to keep lousy customers away, it's to keep people stuck in one system with no compatibility or a way out...in a sense B&O has created their own walled garden the way their components only connect to each other and nothing else, huge red flag for any educated consumer, but a giant green flag for people with money to burn and a superiority complex. B&O is complete ass for hifi, only a certain brown nosing type of costumer falls for their marketing tricks, I've tried several of their products and never enjoyed a single one.
I've had some experience with a number of B&O products. Never owned one, but I know enough about them to have a firm opinion. They're overdesigned pretentious decent-sounding HIFI for snobs with deep pockets. The whole philosophy is to make a pretty system for snobs and to lock them into the ecosystem of B&O while also making it difficult enough of an achievement to use so the rich snobs can feel superiour to other audiophiles.
Do they sound good? Sure, but not much better than any other hifi-in-a-box from the likes of Bose and similar. They have tons of pretentious design-gimmicks such as sliding doors which make people go ooh and aah for five minutes but end up being a pain in the rear when long-term using them. The interfaces and usability is hilariously poor, but like I said, it's only there to make people spend ludicrous amounts of money on a sound-system and then forcing them to learn the asinine interface so they also get dependent on the sense of superiority and snobbism.
My thoughts exactly!
Hum.... seems you got a bit of chip on your shoulder mate, to be fair.
Seems like your assesment is based on that, as well as too narrow a scope of models to make a blanket statement about the brands as such.
It's the usual bunch of Smalldicks bitching over B&O equipment they never could afford in the first place. :-D The same as the Apple haters. Just ignore them. @@GoldenCroc
People like things that look good, and b&o has done that for 100 years.
Glad I am not the only one. As a young man I would gaze through their shop window longingly knowing that this fabulous looking equipment was just way out of my league. As I got older nothing changed alas, oh well, such is life.
I always thought of B&O as the Apple of home electronics (TVs, stereos etc). Very nicely designed, they look cool but are oh so expensive. And just like Apple products, even older models are collected, cared for and refurbished.
Except at least Apple products mostly have intuitive interfaces that anybody can easily pick up on. This CD player/radio has a nonsensical, idiotic interface. I'm glad it sounds good at least.
My parents had a gorgeous B&O system in the seventies, with a record player that used a sensor to see if you'd put on a single of 12 inch record. It got completely fried due to a lightning strike. 😢
Your priority ordering is correct. B&O exist for customers who more often than not never turn them on they just like them as part of their aesthetic. Quality has got better over the years but only because the quality of components they use has got better. An example of that is B&O TVs use LG screens and as LG have made better screens so have B&O made better quality products.
There's nothing wrong with this approach and they certainly don't make bad products they just aren't quite as good as some others.
For a long time it was Panasonic panels but they had a lot of quality problems with them..
I have a Beogeam 4000 series and the amp from the 70s and it’s absolutely gorgeous and sounds amazing.
Only problem is repairs are a nightmare because parts are anything but standard
That price for those plastic speakers is criminal
I've got this model and i got the beosound 9000 with the 6 cd's, the operation of these b&o systems for this time is really quite the same on all models. I compare it to go from windows to an apple mac pc the first time you try a mac you also think what ??? but when you learn how i works and where things are i just feels natural and you just do it.
Style over function sold to people with too much money
Bad news for the fans of the rather mediocre sound quality of B&O is that most of the internals are from PHILIPS with which B&O had a very close relationship. The premium people payed was just for the look and feel.
Everyone that would care, already knows this. So I am not sure its in any way "bad news"
@@GoldenCrocWhen I worked within PHILIPS, B&O owners were shocked when I told them. They really thought that they bought “the best there is” when in fact they bought consumer grade “HiFi” in expensive packaging. They maintained afterwards that PHILIPS had different grades of components and only sold the highest grade to B&O. Ofcourse utter nonsense.
B&O generally has fantastic sound quality. Sourcing spec components for cabinets that are incredibly well designed isn't the same as 'the internals are just Philips, you're just paying for a fancy box'. That is a distortion of the truth
Philips is (was) just one of the biggest supplier of electronics in Europe, everybody that manufactures any kind of electronic was using Philips components, there was no way around it. Some manufactures make excellent products with Philips components, other makes crappy products. That a company use Philips components, fully or partly, do not tell anything about the quality of the final product, and B&O had made both good and bad product over the years, just like all other manufactures that had been around for a longer time.
Philips were in that strange position that they often were in competition with their own costumers regarding many products for consumers. In Denmark B&O were Philips biggest costumer regarding electronic components, and the biggest competitor regarding the AV marked.
Japanese electronics simply superior by features and price point
I’ve always viewed B&O kit as form over function. Sounds decent but it’s always delivered more aesthetically than sonically. Not always the nicest of kit to work on either with build quality no better than many of it’s contemporaries.
I have a beautiful house, things in it and wife. Why wouldn’t I want a decent looking sound system to complement it all. It’s almost seen as a badge of honour amongst some audiophiles to have an ugly collection of boxes and cables.
@tonkerdog1 agree. I always make sure that both my wife and my Hi-fi are comparable in terms of aesthetics and function
very Apple
@@allenellisdewitt No, Apple is very B&O. Apple took inspiration from them
@@tonkerdog1 You're lucky. My wife is far too ugly for a sound system like this.
Initial setup is not the concern of the B&O user. They have staff to set these things up for them.
I still miss the puppets
7:33 Take a moment to appreciate that you positioned everything to capture your reflection in the CD cover while you're talking!
Mat: Goes to the trouble of acquiring a B&O system and speakers, researches and evaluates _a system he wasn't interested in._ That says a lot.
People half-jokingly talk about the "Techmoan Effect" where he features an item, causing an effect on the availability and pricing of vintage gear. Whether or not that's real, videos like this show us _why_ it happens. A friendly, in-depth review; what's not to like?
*_Thanks, as always, Mat!_*
My brain hurts watching the endless button pressing needed. I had a friend who had one, and was most proud of the opening doors - which he showed off. But for me, its just too annoying and far, far too expensive for what it is. But, of course, thanks for showing it to us!
Wow, what a fascinating machine! I also would not have any reason to look for these before. Now, I will definitely keep my eyes peeled here in Japan. I'm sure that there are plenty around. If I find a complete set, I will definitely consider it. As a musician/sound engineer, I think I would feel accomplished learning how to use the unit. It's like an instrument or piece of art in itself.
I the west, those who had a B&O system would quite often drive a saab. :oD
B&O was the apple products of its time
Design, special user interface and pricy
As an ex seller of top quality refurbished B&O, I find it very disappointing when a seller advertises something as "serviced" when they clearly haven't even bothered to give it a clean or provide you with the PIN code without you having to hunt it down. These are beautiful systems and such a timeless iconic design!
@@avsystem3142 I don’t understand why people can’t just leave soft dome tweeters and/or speaker dust caps alone!
The BeoLab 2500s have lovely 1” tweeters and a nice warm sound as he described, they’re quite underrated in my opinion.
You just changed my opinion about B&O too - before this video I thought B&O was overpriced and sort of silly, but I do have more respect for the brand now. Interesting!
My only experience of Bang and Olufsen is watching Alan Partridge buy one but they always felt like the Apple of the Audio world but far more premium.
We had a B&O TV, got it in 1987 and it didn't get replaced until about 2008. Great picture quality and design. The father of a school friend of mine had a video, computer and TV repair business and he said they were great sets, he didn't rate their VCRs though. Much of their kit was just mechanisms from other people tweaked and repackaged.
I guess if those guts repackaged with a 'military grade PSU' etc... maybe the odd plastic cog swapped for metal, that's still some sort of improvement but be annoying if the picture quality on a VCR was no better than the neighbours Ferguson. I feel a bit seen off having bought a brilliant Miele washer and dryer, the dishwasher is clearly just badge engineering and the mid-line Made-In-Spain Bosch it replaced felt sturdier@@6581punk
Same. And some claim that they can't unsee Bang and Olufsen being used to play UB40 and Def Leppard thanks to Alan Partridge.
Lol yes remember the Alan Partridge scene he plays black beauty! "Linn its brilliant!" Ahhhh haaa!!!
The Apple comparison is on point.
My first pair speakers were the M 100’s. My step mother came to apartment with my father one afternoon. When I told her they were $980.00 for the pair ,she looked at me and told me I was stupid. We never really got on with each other. I was delighted that it actually irritated her. I still have them. Over the years they have slowly died but the cabinets are beautiful. B&o was about design over sound quality. They had a lot of marketing that went with them. Time alignment, phase coherency, very inefficient. 73 db 1 watt 1 meter. The cabinets although beautiful or not very well braced. I plan to make a few changes. More bracing, New drivers and I’ve learned how to make my own crossover networks. They will live again.
5w for 96db/1m s not bad.
The M-100 is a great speaker and unless the drivers are burned I would absolutely not recommend getting new drivers or redesign the crossover. Bracing wasn't really a thing in 1976, but the M-100 isn't at all bad. (Harbeth even make their well regarded speakers with thin front baffle as they have measured it to be better for mid-freq tone :) . Google it !)
B&O have always been the epitome of form over function. They are art pieces, and the user experience was always an ongoing experiment in finding every different way to accomplish something (but it is worth noting that all of the active language used on their control panels is consistent across their whole range of devices, so...).
They're expensive, they look great to people who have interior decorators in their speed dials. (underline underline underline)
Yes, they are solidly built (most of the time), and they have decent performance, but that's simply a distant second to making something that perfectly blends into an ultra-modern room.
Yes. That review felt unusually grumpy to me - yes, you have to learn a new interface, but the interface language was consistent and “obvious” once you learn it, and with just one remote you could control every part of your B&O setup (which could include a TV, vinyl, etc) intuitively. Also, remember that this was the 80s - back then every company had its own way of doing things
The cockpit controls on the Starship Enterprise would be easier to navigate!
Working with music equipment for more years than I care to remember, I never had any time for B&O. However, I paid due respect to B&O owners every time I was introduced to a B&O system - secretly questioning myself why? The design I found always eye catching and I wished I'd owned a huge penthouse apartment to display one of these designs as an art feature.
In a different category, I never understood BOSE products either. BOSE PA systems scared me.
I am sure B&O and BOSE had features and specifications that appealed to their users and justified the price tags.
B&O used quality drivers and cross-overs, Bose used (and still does) a set of very cheap drivers over and over in their products, using smoke and mirrors (DSP) and/or clunky application of wave-guides (AKA transmission line). Open up a Bose of the same era B&O speaker and look at how cheap the components are in the Bose (for similar money) - they also look like they were knocked together in some old hobbyist's shed.
They're both the Apple of audio. More care is being put in the marketing than in the design of the circuit or speakers. They're good quality but sound wise, you can get à very similar sounding system for à fraction of the price.
@@MarvinHartmann452Well yeah, but that was never the point, as opposed to Apple fans claming they are on top, all categories.
They also were the best sounding... in certain form factors. Good luck finding a better sounding system that fits in the same space as this, in the early 90s
@@MarvinHartmann452 Totally agree, and once you buy into these systems you are somehow stuck with it. They are not as 'compatible' with other systems as they could or should be.
@@MarvinHartmann452 I think you touched on every myth about b&o here. The design is not just 'marketing', it's a wonderful element that will make you smile every day that you use it, you'll be looking at it all day, every day, why not make it as beautiful as possible. If you don't care about that, then sure, it doesn't make sense to spend the extra money. I've got used B&O from the 70/80s that works fantastic still, incredible sound that I could've paid much more for the same thing with modern gear.
Back in the 90's my brother-in-law was very into his B&O sound systems so I got to see quite a lot of them. My opionion then was that they were all style and no substance which was backed up when he asked me to make repairs once and I found them to be pretty basic on the inside and with none of the functionality of my far cheaper equipment. Sad to say that after watching this excellent video my opinion has not changed, middle of the road quality at higher than top notch prices and all the useful functionality left out (not to mention being incable of working with other vendor's equipment - a true walled garden if ever I saw one).
Rubbish . What BO speaker of the Uniphase series does not work with any equipment ? What Amplifier , Beocenter . Beomaster till the late 80s does not work with any speaker ? You don't know much about BO , but you claim you do .
The system in this video is mid-fi. Never ment to be anything else. Call it 'entry level' B&O :) They used quality Vifa speakers and there are still a lot of these units around.
My school friend demonstrated an 80s B&O midi system complete with floating tone arm and horizontal loading cassette decks .... woooo we said ... he played some music and 15 year old me wasn't impressed to be honest and that has coloured my view ever since. However that wasn't fair. Another time we watched some TV on the recently acquired flat-screened set that hung from a hinged foot. When it was switched on by remote it turned to face the position of the remote (viewer) .... wooooo we said..... I loved this review for the even handed assessment.
You should try the smaller Beosound Century. It has a very cool and well designed interface with relevant buttons only lighting up based on the source input.
Its a very interesting all-in-one with pretty competitive sound quality.
Love the B&O feature!
I remember sending you an email years ago suggesting some B&O content. I was so happy finally getting my wish fulfilled ❤
Yeah it was a hit, it introduced alot of people to B&O in the 90s ( exactly as it was intended too, with the price point aim of under 1k ( rrp was £995 in UK) but then you were still another £50 for a wall bracket if you wanted one, but more importantly for " new" owners was the extra £100 for a beolink 1000 remote lol, great times :)
I used to work in a B&O shop and sold hundreds of these units to posh people. But I just got a secondhand Beosound 3200 system for myself. Always wanted one and now I have one. Sounds decent but takes up way too much space.
It only takes up too much space if you pair it with these obsolete Beolab 2500 speakers. 26 years ago when I got mine, I paired it with Beolab 6000, and so it has never taken too much space!
I remember a friend back in the late '70s having a big sprawling B&O Hi-Fi system. The centre-piece was the Linear-tracking record player. That was the first time I had ever seen such a concept. They also had a VCR, U-matic, it would have been back then. I knew it was an expensive collection of kit, but then, they weren't short of coin…
FWIW: The VCR was Video2000, not U-matic :)
@@toresbe Philips Video 2000 was a great system but suffered from crappy marketing. Philips apparently expected people to use them for holiday footage and the like and took forever to bring out tapes long enough to record a feature film.
@@thescrewfly From the launch of the VCC2020 Philips had 4 hour tapes and being double sided 8 hours recording. Their previous tape loop VCR did not have long play and tapes were 60 minutes. The 1700 (?). Could not use the Video 200 for holiday footage as it took years to sell the portable recorder. A shoulder bag with separate camera that at home had a TV receiver and recorder for it. The early models from both Philips an Grundig had problems. Did not work half the time. Each new release was just as bad with many units un-repairable. I got though several before finding one that worked and continues to work now. Prices were also very high. Most of the tapes recorded back in the 80s are unplayable now with the magnetic material peeling away from the backing. My VHS tapes are better but also 10 or 15 years younger.
I have a parallel tracking B&O turntable as part of my B&O system. Great piece of kit, controlled by the same remote control that operates the rest of the system. And yet the turntable does not have an IR receiver.
When I bought the turntable I didn't know about that trick. I discovered it by accident when I pressed the phono button on the remote and the turntable started turning and playing the LP on the platter. ❤
@@toresbe The first B&O VCR was the Video2000 Beocord 8800 V released in 1981 which was based on the Philips VR2020 if the B&O info websites are to believed so if it was the late 70s it could not have been a B&O VCR. Video2000 itself was released in 1979 but idk how fast the first vcrs were available.
I worked as a car electronics installer from 88 to 03. A few of the places I worked sold B&O equipment and I never saw anyone buy any. I became an electrician in 98 and the only time I saw B&O systems in customers homes they were in closets gathering dust. Like you I never even contemplated owning one. It's like the wave radio more design value and status. If I wanted something cool I would build it from components and wood. Thanks for taking the hit to you bank account.
The few hundred quid he spent on this 20-year old stuff pales in comparison to the income from hundreds of thousands of views he'll be getting. Plus the patrons, of course.
It’s funny how people think all TH-cam videos earn Mr Beast money. If I’m lucky this one might just about break even, but it’s more likely it’ll lose a couple of hundred quid. The Patrons are the ones keeping the channel going.
@@Techmoan I put in no effort to my channel and don't have monetization. I just upload video-game play. Why would a channel with no content worry about your income ? I have been subscribed to you for at least 7 years.
@@rgpark69he was replying to the other comment (under your comment). 🙂
A proper mug's eyeful. All flash round the front, the back looks like some piece of Alba tat from Woolworths
This is a rich vein to explore. The old B&O stuff was so fun.
This Beosound line is optimized for remote control operation, like most of B&Os products after the mid-80s.
B&O is just art, all the pre-90's stuff is just rock solid, and fixable, albeit hard to take apart properly as all is large, heavy and some tricks need to be known, but the service manuals are all available, parts used are relatively common, and build quality is just superb. just avoid the 90's stuff, the quality took a big hit, and they are much harder to fix. their stuff from the 70's and early to mid 80's are the best by far.
SHHHH! I like people looking at used components thinking 'ha, B&O is just style over substance, I'm too smart to fall for that!'. It leaves all their great stuff for me. I've got a phenomenal vintage stereo of theirs, and a few other things. Ironically, it's some of the best value for money I've ever spent.
@@donello430 Seeing the details of how it goes together (especially the proprietary active speakers) made me flip from "yeah I might pick that weird old posh CD player up if I saw it in a pawn shop or thrift shop" to "nah, that looks like more trouble than it's worth even if offered for free".
B&O : bizarre and overpriced.
There's a lovely James Burke quality to seeing your face reflected in the circle of the CD player and then (around 11:24) having the doors close as you are about to say "It's a little bit confusing."
Honestly I wouldn't have one of those systems. Too many thing I don't like about them. Did like the video though, as usual.
I have the feeling the usability did get quite some attention, but that they'd gone for different ways to do things on purpose, while not considering whether on not it was an improvement.
No. The reasons for the unique interface are three: one: backwards compatibility. You can buy current B&O stuff and a dedicated B&O dealer can make it work with a 1973 B&O record player, as in, your shiny new 2023 B&O remote will start the record player. Two: networkability. That "up" button on the CD player, when networked with the TV, will change to the next TV channel when you are controlling the TV from the CD player, if you should choose to do so -or from the remote, which is the exact same one for the TV and for the CD player. Three: a lot of the features appeared on B&O before they appeared on other devices... B&O had to invent the interface.
B&O is now 98 years old.
This is a huge nostalgia hit for me. My grandad had one of these - for about 20 years. It's still working and sounds incredible! It always felt like magic seeing how it worked.
Using a B&O sounds the same as using a Mac for the first time, after a lifetime of using a PC.
Yes! If you've lived with Windows for any number of years, the Mac is often (and still is for me) not very intuitive. However, every time I fire my Windows desktop up I find a wealth of expletives I never thought I would pass my lips. The Mac just works!
Style over substance at a premium price... Sounds like Apple took some inspiration!
"CD operation is a little bit different" - That's being very generous and diplomatic. 🙂
When I was a younger, I had a friend whose dad was pretty well off. He shelled out for a whole-house B&O system. This would have been in the early to mid 1980s. I was always impressed with how stylish it was, and the home integration, though I found it quirky to operate as a lot of controls were not common-sense based. It sounded good, but no better than good equipment at perhaps a third of the price IMO. All of this stuff was well out of my price range and most of it still is, though I had the luck of finding B&O's "boombox" Beosystem 10 at an estate sale for the steal price of $15 USD a few years ago. The sound quality is very good for a boombox, but they've definitely elevated form over function with this as well. The tape lacks an auto stop feature in all modes, the controls are a bit clunky, and the handle is perhaps the most uncomfortable on any portable stereo of this type, though it is solid aluminum. This is definitely not a boombox you're going to take to the beach. It is remarkably heavy for its size and is built like a tank. Despite its age it needed no belts or other maintenance. I have added Bluetooth to the AUX input on mine. All that said, I would have happily paid a lot more for this as it's just really cool. Would love to see you do a review on one and see how the cassette mechanism compares to others of its time period. Thanks for another great video.
I'd never own any of the home system stuff because it looks basically like it was designed to annoy me specifically, but if I ever came across that boombox I'd probably grab it if the price were right.
The fact that they have somehow managed to make the bad feeling that you get when you accidentally trigger automatic doors available for purchase for a large amount of money really fails to sell it to me.
This. Couldn't have said it better.
Over the years, I've had a few laptop computers with the names of premium audio brands on their speakers, including B+O. I assume they all came out of the same parts bin in Taiwan and the only thing "premium" about them was the silk screening on the case, because they all sounded exactly the same as any other laptop. :)
Any branding exercise like this is usually just about putting the name on a normal part. The IWC dashboard clock you can get as a very expensive option in high-end Mercedes-Benz cars is the same automotive clock made by M-B, but with an IWC dial on the front.
Yea so basically mainly HP had a deal with B&O where B&O would "calibrate" their speakers and slap their name on the laptop. Although it's not that mayor, just an equalizer adjustment
Some laptops used the B&O ICE Power Class D amplifiers, which warranted slapping the B&O name on the laptop. I think it was Asus who had this partnership with B&O in this particular case.
@@chekiechekie Still would have been crap. Asus have burned so many 'sticker brands' it's unreal. Their latest 'co-lab' was with EK Waterblocks.... All seemed fine until everyone realised the IDIOTS at ASUS used aluminium instead of copper inside their VRM waterblock to save cash. This caused galvanic corrosion of everyone's custom loops. Even watercooling newbies know that you NEVER mix aluminium & copper and EK are the highest-end of PC Watercooling. The 'partnership' lasted exactly one product due to the brand damage EK suffered for ASUS's stupidity.
@@chekiechekie i had one of these asus laptops with a mini subwoofer that connected via 2,5mm jack. it was awesome for what it was.
The button layout looks more like a home security alarm system to me. Beautiful looking piece of kit though.
Another great video Mat. While on the topic of exotic hifi, could you look into Braun Atelier hifi system? Ideally a white/wood model or silver. Legendary hifi from Braun needs to be Techmoaned!
I remember being blown away by the Beovox RL 60 loudspeakers when I was in my mid teens. The shop was playing Dire Straits Money For Nothing through them. Great times!
The RL Redlines are passive speakers. I have owned all the models of late, buying and selling. The 'best' are the big daddies/4-way RL 140's/7000, if you can find them.
I have a pair of RL 6000 as my daily drivers in the living room and they are still amazing.
I own and maintain a couple of B&O systems. Would never buy their stuff new, I don't have that kind of money. But the second-hand prices are often surprisingly good. I got a pair of Penta speakers for 500 USD which will tear paint off the wall before distorting. The video is even-handed but understandably missing a bit of context. This system is best seen as a home entertainment network node. The device is really best operated from the remote - the CD rip feature best from the PC interface - also a lot of the design choices make much more sense when you keep in mind it was developed for component systems which also integrated with TV, like the Beosystem 6500.
I think they're extremely over-engineered - the sheer madcap ambition really is a big chunk of the appeal to me. As a broadcast engineer, it feels more like an audio router than a normal stereo. I could compare it to a 1980s Mercedes S-class: Very complex beasts with a lot of innovations and comforts, which does mean a lot of complexity that can go wrong. But what other 1986 stereo gives you multi-room audio with balanced audio lines and data networking?
If I have friends over and want to fix some snacks without losing programme audio, I just walk into the kitchen and press "GO" on the IR eye, and the active source is routed in. If I prefer music, I can press CD on my remote and the system will route audio from the CD player in the living room to the kitchen. I can set an alarm from a unit in my bedroom, and wake up to music from the turntable in my living room. (Well, if the pickup mechanism didn't need a nudge...) And the UI manages all of this complexity far better than my Sonos stuff. I hate pawing at a touchscreen.
Penta speakers are the business!
That indeed does not make it make any more sense that there is a "Go" button instead of a "Play" button. Also in principle a device should stand on its own and be usable without other components. Especially something so simple as a CD player. Also having to fire up the PC and use whatever interface B&O came up with in 2003 when you simply wanted to put some music on is not the flex you think it is
@@amac203 Go starts a source. You press play on tape or CD, but you don't press play to turn on a TV, or to drop a needle. It also enables it to double as a select button in on-screen menus. The button used to be "PLAY" on the Beolink 1000 remote, but was re-labeled "GO" on the Beo4 - partly because of the proliferation of on-screen menus. Often these systems used IR blasters to control satellite decoders, cable boxes etc.
Anyway I almost never use the Go button, I just use the source select button. If I want to play a CD, I hit CD. I'm puzzled that you'd call my comment a flex, I'm just adding context to the user interface concept B&O had in the day which is (again, understandably) missing from this video. And the PC interface did much more; it allowed you to route PC audio to your stereo, and stereo sources to your PC speakers.
Also, it's not just a CD player; it's also a HDD player and radio, and it's also an audio and data router for an expandable home entertainment system, including second-room speakers, TVs, VTRs, etc etc. So much of the point of B&O is that you have one remote for everything - in some systems even house lights and door intercom.
@@amac203 Using the PC for ripping is not unheard of I'd say. It is what it is - for those not either wanting or affording this, obviously you'd not dive into the details and philosophies behind the products. This system was as much intended to be a master in a (multi room) system, consisting of multiple component, seamlessly interoperating. Like, audio from the TV to this system - or vice versa. Wherever you wanted to listen or see. Their UX is different for sure - but for people who've used B&O before, this is second nature. I do not disagree with respect to the price/value on the sound side of things in these systems. But simply reducing this to a "rich idiots" thing... get over it...Sorry, @amac203, I see I ended up responding to everyone else's ranting.
@@gizmothingy25524 I get the impression Sonos was HEAVILY inspired by B&O since that pretty much describes the functionality of the whole house Sonos system a friend sank like $15k into. I can't stand Sonos' closed and incompatible design philosophy either 😂
I fell in love with B&O in 1992 when I first discovered it. I've always dreamed of having one. And I wasn't wrong at all about the sound quality, it does have a good sound quality.
that shot was incredibly slick : 7:58
In a world where we already have XLR (5 and 3 pin), jacks, speakon, minijacks, and RCA connectors, we should really take a moment to appreaciate the (cough) "ingenuity" of manufacturers using non-standard cabling
As someone else wrote - that connector was designed to support multiple channels of sound AND two-wire computer communication.
The DIN connector was a standard in Europe, the pin's assignments differed between usage.
That cable replaced TWO RCA cables with their 4 connectors and one two-wire communicaton cable.
2 connectors instead of 6.
The system was designed to work well in a B&O system.
Yeah, they needed to be special.
@@TheStefanskoglund1 The DIN connector being "standard" is misleading. Yes, the connector itself is standard in the same way a D-sub is, but the actual interface is proprietary and designed not to be interoperable - you won't find this DIN on any other brand in the hifi shop, and that's by design.