Bang & Olufsen WTF?

[wgscott]

Anyone ever hear one of these?

 

[firedog]

I assume this means wireless speakers are built into the chairs.

 

Cool idea. Probably sounds good if you aren't looking for the extreme audiophile experience. Certainly eliminates the room nodes problem and need for DRC.

[Freann]

Aha - funny. No, the chair is there to illustrate the size of the speaker.

BeoPlay A9 - Seamless Music System with Spotify connect

 

The A9 is a beautiful object, we are planning to buy one to the office (studio).

[firedog]

Well, dumb me. I thought both were chairs.

[Skeptic]

While I haven't heard the BeoPlay A9, I've yet to find any of these modern wireless sound systems that sounds any good relative to their price.

 

They're for the Apple crowd streaming low bit-rate files and are focused more on design and convenience than audio quality. They're for background music rather than HiFi.

 

Ultimately, there's a reason that speakers have the typical "box" design that they do, and aren't made of plastic.

 

Even with angled drivers and DSP, you still aren't going to get much of a stereo sound when the drivers are only 2ft apart. (and that is much further than most of these things)

You can fill a space with sound, but you don't get much positional audio, and if they use DSP to widen the sound field (though I'm not sure that the A9 does) it can sound good with some tracks, but simply awful with others.

 

While it does have an 8" woofer, so it should have a better bass response than most, it's using a long rear-firing bass reflex port so I'd still expect it to have the boosted one-note bass typical with most of these products.

 

Tweeters are highly directional, so I wouldn't expect them to be very effective when they are below your knees.

 

It looks nice though, if you want that Nordic design aesthetic.

[new_media]

So it's great for listening to ABBA in mono?

[firedog]

Good one.

 

So it's great for listening to ABBA in mono?

[Musicophile]

I've heard the A9 and the sound is really not bad.

 

Obviously from any of these design all in ones you'll never get anything audiophile, but for background listening in the living room, the A9 (like the Geneva L we ended up buying) are quite nice, and really look impressive.

 

There is no point comparing this kind of stuff to audiophile gear, it serves different purposes.

[CatManDo]

Every visitor will ask "Why is your satellite dish in your living room?"

[gmgraves]

So it's great for listening to ABBA in mono?

 

 

The only thing good for listening to ABBA in either stereo or mono is earplugs... treacle!

[cjf]

Typical Bang & Olufsen I suspect, all price and no performance!

 

It would certainly make for a good conversation piece for the pinky in the air crowd as they sit around and discuss the next yachting trip.

[wgscott]

Well, dumb me. I thought both were chairs.

 

Perfect sarcasm is a reflexive, brain-stem level snark-infused reply.

[christopher3393]

I've heard the A9 and the sound is really not bad.

 

Obviously from any of these design all in ones you'll never get anything audiophile, but for background listening in the living room, the A9 (like the Geneva L we ended up buying) are quite nice, and really look impressive.

 

There is no point comparing this kind of stuff to audiophile gear, it serves different purposes.

 

Well said...er, typed.

[dyohn]

It sounds very nice for what it is: a high end bluetooth/AirPlay powered speaker. It's designed to become part of a room's decor.

[gmgraves]

Typical Bang & Olufsen I suspect, all price and no performance!

 

It would certainly make for a good conversation piece for the pinky in the air crowd as they sit around and discuss the next yachting trip.

 

 

I haven't looked at B&O equipment for decades, so I have no idea what they are making these days, but my first 'good' turntable was a Beogram 1000. It was a belt-drive turntable arm, and cartridge. The arm is still one of the two prettiest arms I've ever seen (the other being the Walnut Grado arm from the early 1960's) and the cartridge that plugged into the arm was a B&O SP12. It performed great for it's time, and B&O's cartridges, which were moving iron types (variable reluctance), were so good that a company in New York called Soundsmith still makes them under license and will provide new stylus assemblies for the older ones and will re-tip the older ones with non-user interchangeable styli. Also, my first stereo microphone was a B&O ribbon model. It had really low output, but with a transformer to boost it and adequate amplification, it sounded very good and was gorgeously made. It came in a beautiful Brazilian rosewood presentation case with gold lettering stenciled on it. I always thought it was very elegant. A friend had a pair of B&O speakers that were excellent for their time. He was a radio "disc jockey" at a classic station, and he took his own cartridges to work to play his own records on his show. He would replace the station's Shure cartridge/plug-in shells on their SME arms with his own shells fitted with B&O cartridges at the beginning of his shift.

 

So, at one time some Bang & Olufsen gear was highly thought of by the audiophile community. Of course as newer stuff came out, we all moved on, and we didn't think about B&O any more. I guess they did become known more for their high fashion than they did for their "fi". OTOH, weren't those fancy linear-tracking turntables of the 1980's highly regarded?

[Sam Lord]

I thought both were chairs.

 

Way to nail it fd. The left is the B&O and the right is a skandy chair.

 

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