New B&O headphones range?

Hey Guys,

What with the HUGE premium headphone market dominated by the likes of Dr Dre BEATS starting at £169 and rising to well over £400 do you think that BANG&OLUFSEN will realise what a huge market there is out there with the young, fashion dudes spending a fortune on stylish headphones for their iPhones? I can see B&O doing well out of it! I lose count the amount of young people that I see with these very expensive headphones - I myself use them.

Give me the punchy, alive sound of the BEATS with BANG&OLUFSEN after sales service and i'll gladly buy B&O headphones next time around!

 

What's your views guys? (And yes, you'd be absolutely horrified if you heard about Dr Dre BEATS after sales service - but that's another thread!)

I think they must MUST be working on that! I agree it is a great market right now for some great headphones and surely B&O are they guys to do it? I wouldn't be surprised to see some within 12 months under BeoPlay.

I totally agree Martin. I can see some real street stylish white ones with pieces of aluminium on! And that B&O name. It's certainly how most of my friends at University bought into Apple. They'd been brought up on Windows computers, they bought iPhones and fell in love with the way that they were designed and built and took the plunge and bought MacBooks and MacBook Pro's.

From B&O headphones to B&O BeoPlay A8 to V1s etc - long term brand loyalty! (I know at University in Marketing it was known as 'From the cradle to the grave' but that's not a very nice saying is it?)

Paul W:

I totally agree Martin. I can see some real street stylish white ones with pieces of aluminium on! And that B&O name. It's certainly how most of my friends at University bought into Apple. They'd been brought up on Windows computers, they bought iPhones and fell in love with the way that they were designed and built and took the plunge and bought MacBooks and MacBook Pro's.

From B&O headphones to B&O BeoPlay A8 to V1s etc - long term brand loyalty! (I know at University in Marketing it was known as 'From the cradle to the grave' but that's not a very nice saying is it?)

I sure hope they're working on new ones!  
and I agree it helps getting the name out there!  

BEATS is just good marketing. Horrible sound and most of the people seem to equal bass with good sound. Beats headphones produce only too much bass and sound awful. Hopefully B&O does NOT adapt that style of sound.

B&O has attractive small, good (regarding their size) sounding earphones: The A8 Headphones or the (iphone) Headset i3.

What's the difference between B&O and Beats? Beats has much better marketing.. B&O could have much better sales when they decide to do good marketing and find back to their high quality!

Sales with x percent off are NOT good for a luxury company and will hurt them in a long term.

 

Interesting one TWG. Really depends on your music taste, I owned a pair of A8s for a good 3 years and while they would suit a listener of classical or jazz music, I found for my taste in music which is RnB and Dance, they were lacking far too much in the bass area. They were clear certainly but for me, just didn't do it. I guess they were aimed at the older, traditional BANG&OLUFSEN customer. They were elegant certainly.

The BEATS certainly have a lot of bass but also very clear treble too and this is suited very much to my taste & music taste and the output of the iPhone etc.

So im hoping that the B&O headphone range will stand different to the BANG&OLUFSEN headphone range and take the younger listeners music into consideration. A bit like my B&O CEntury - FAB with easy listening, jazz & classical but pretty uninviting with dance/RnB music - just too flat!

That bland, dull and uninviting sound is called "natural sound reproduction". I greatly dislike the idea that speakers and headphones should be made to reduce everything into BOOM-tsk-BOOM-tsk-BOOM-tsk just to appeal to some market segment. Crank up the bass & treble at the source if you need that

Anyway, I agree with the general idea of this thread. B&O really should launch some serious headphones - I'm sure they would be well able to.

I agree B&O should be working on headphones, but would want them to be "serious" headphones to compete with the Grados/Sennheisers of the world.

If they are going to make white "boom & hiss" headphones with large logos then please brand them as Play.

tournedos:

That bland, dull and uninviting sound is called "natural sound reproduction". I greatly dislike the idea that speakers and headphones should be made to reduce everything into BOOM-tsk-BOOM-tsk-BOOM-tsk just to appeal to some market segment. Crank up the bass & treble at the source if you need that

Anyway, I agree with the general idea of this thread. B&O really should launch some serious headphones - I'm sure they would be well able to.

Snap!!

Paul W:

Interesting one TWG. Really depends on your music taste, I owned a pair of A8s for a good 3 years and while they would suit a listener of classical or jazz music, I found for my taste in music which is RnB and Dance, they were lacking far too much in the bass area. They were clear certainly but for me, just didn't do it. I guess they were aimed at the older, traditional BANG&OLUFSEN customer. They were elegant certainly.

The BEATS certainly have a lot of bass but also very clear treble too and this is suited very much to my taste & music taste and the output of the iPhone etc.

So im hoping that the B&O headphone range will stand different to the BANG&OLUFSEN headphone range and take the younger listeners music into consideration. A bit like my B&O CEntury - FAB with easy listening, jazz & classical but pretty uninviting with dance/RnB music - just too flat!

Yes, BEATS have a lot of bass and trebles and between there's nearly nothing. They just sound like you messed up s.th. with an equalizer or switched loudness on. There's nothing like natural sound reproduction and even the beats-audio in some hardware (phones, touchpad, laptop) is just a marketing gag: Special EQ settings with worse sound.

The B&O A8 can have more than enough "Ooomph": You have to where them with the provided foam. B&O seems to have made an update to the B&O A8 headphones: I killed my headphones while the cable was get caught and I stopped moving too late. ;-)
As they where a few years old and out of warranty I bought a new pair and was VERY surprised about the bass! Much more than the old ones!
You can listen to RnB, House etc. without any problems and with enough bass pressure without sounding unnatural.

But as we all know: Listening is pure subjective! So if you are happy with that Beats audio thingy... stay happy. :)

I prefer listening without any sound adjustments no matter if I use speakers or headphones. Why should I buy a headphone or speaker and and adjust the sound afterwards? When my ears tell me "we don't like the sound" I don't buy it. Easy as this. :)

 

Interesting about the A8 with more bass TWG. I like the i3 but i'm a little concerned about the cable and iPhone controller - it does look a little fragile - not too sure if it will withstand the daily London tube commute!

Puncher that is my argument, B&O Play headphone should and will appeal to a totally different market to the BANG&OLUFSEN audience!

Paul W:

Interesting about the A8 with more bass TWG. I like the i3 but i'm a little concerned about the cable and iPhone controller - it does look a little fragile - not too sure if it will withstand the daily London tube commute!

Puncher that is my argument, B&O Play headphone should and will appeal to a totally different market to the BANG&OLUFSEN audience!

Except I'd rather they release some "proper" 'phones first, worthy of their capabilities and have them criticallly recognised rather than some pumped up, primary coloured monstrosities that could possibly fuel the "fashion" over substance fire, even if branded Play (note the use of the word fashion rather than style)!

Having shown they can make real headphones and then making monobass boomphones for the younger, musically challenged customers is the way to go.

What? Beats headphones can make trebles? I must hear that... here is the signal response graph of the iBeats :

Nothing above 2kHz!!!

Concerning headphones, B&O has only the Form2, which is good, but is very poor compared to today's offers. And the biggest issue is that it's not a fashion headphone because it doesn't have the button+mic for iPhone that is needed in 2012. The Earset 3i is good, but it lacks bass, and it's earphone, not headphone.

B&O needs to complement the Earset 3i with :
- A good set of in-ear earphones (with 3 buttons remote+mic for Apple) that isolates more from outside noise than the Earset 3i
- A good headphone, that can directly compete with the B&W P3 and P5, the Focal Spirit One and the Philips Fidelio L1 and M1.

Today, I've tested the Focal Spirit One : impressive totally flat rendering, but a design that I don't really like and a build quality not at the top. I've also tested the B&W P5 : really poor. Not tested the P3 for the moment. And I still have the Philips L1 at home : like the Focal, a totally flat response, very B&O, but more open to outside noise. And I just received the M1 that I will test intensively the coming days.

Anyone remember Lee's modern B&O headphones? They advertised 'VibroCard' techcnology if I remember right. They had light blue cans with a black headband and were circumaural design.

These didn't get much attention on the old forum when he showed them off. I for one would love to know more about them.

Evan:

Anyone remember Lee's modern B&O headphones? They advertised 'VibroCard' techcnology if I remember right. They had light blue cans with a black headband and were circumaural design.

These didn't get much attention on the old forum when he showed them off. I for one would love to know more about them.

Lee who??

Evan:

Anyone remember Lee's modern B&O headphones? They advertised 'VibroCard' techcnology if I remember right. They had light blue cans with a black headband and were circumaural design.

These didn't get much attention on the old forum when he showed them off. I for one would love to know more about them.

Indeed, if I was any good at Photoshop, I would realise my vision of two Beoworlders, one with a pair of BeoLit12s on either side of their head, and the other one wearing a BeoPlay A8 wrapped around their head ... of course on the BeoLit option is feasible since the A8 would require a power cord

But on a more serious note, on our trip we both used our A8s with their airline connectors and were able to actually enjoy the in-flight movies because we could hear the dialogue !

Point taken Puncher but, BEATS account for 59% of ALL headphones sales WORLDWIDE! I lose count the amount of young guys wearing the BEATS Professionals. These retail at £350!!! In today's recession, the under 25s are the generation willing to spend this amount of money on headphones for which B&O could do very very well in. Put it another way, which 35 year old starting a family with a mortgage, loans and huge outgoings would even consider spending that on a pair of headphones? This is why the young, iPhone generation is such an important market. B&O once ignored them and look at the severe mess it got itself into!

Paul W:

Point taken Puncher but, BEATS account for 59% of ALL headphones sales WORLDWIDE! I lose count the amount of young guys wearing the BEATS Professionals. These retail at £350!!! In today's recession, the under 25s are the generation willing to spend this amount of money on headphones for which B&O could do very very well in. Put it another way, which 35 year old starting a family with a mortgage, loans and huge outgoings would even consider spending that on a pair of headphones? This is why the young, iPhone generation is such an important market. B&O once ignored them and look at the severe mess it got itself into!

Fair dos (you do of course assume that all the BEATS Professionals are genuine and not Chinese/ebay ripoffs). I still think making only fashion headphones is going to seriously dent your reputation as a purveyor of quality speaker products unless you also have a flagship model in your range with unimpeachable performance.

When you want to watch movies with say Beolab 8000's, the recommendation is usually to get the Beolab 2 to enhance the bass. There's no mention that the 8000's can't reproduce sound genuinely, but when the need arrises it's nice to have the 2 to make an impact when the time is right. The A8's are very good headphones, but some music does desire more bass than they can achieve, same with the Form 2's.

The world, music and technology has moved on and its time for B&O to put out some smart discreet, but fantastically capable headphones. 

I'm not surprised that most people find the A8s lack bass, I was thinking the same when I first tried them on!

However, as said before, you REALLY have to insert them in your ears with the foams on them, it does make a difference in isolation, and therefore bass levels.

Another major improvement I did on mine, as suggested in another thread years ago, was to apply transparent adhesive tape on the 2 bass vents at the back of the earphone, and then only make 1 tiny pin hole in each vent : this prevents the bass from running away and believe me, it gives a new life to all my music without buying new phones!

What I don't understand is why don't B&O specify in their user guide that the earphones should be inserted as deep as you can, and why they haven't worked on those vents and released a Mk2 version of the range.

If they ever come back with high-end headphones, I'd like a professional kind of product, after all, BeoLab 9 was first developped for recording studios!

Great point Christophe! I indeed owned the A8s for many years before some little toe rag stole them from my gym! I loved the clear trebles from them but found the bass really lacking. Great build quality though apart from the soldered on 3.5 plug which came unglued and was replaced under warranty. I did find the iBeats a better earphone though for my music taste.

Hi Paul,

I also had a pair of A8 for years, and still use them from time to time...

But I also had the chance to try the new Earset 3i for a month, and the bass is really improved compared to the A8. It's like a totally new set of earphones. They did a good job in improving them.

Mbee thank you for that! Yes, i'm very tempted with the i3 - I'm a real headphone listener as i'm constantly on the go! I'm wanting headphones for evening / weekend use when i'm wearing my casual gear, skinny jeans & boots whereas, I think the i3's will be excellent for when i'm suited and booted for work!  Very tempting in white! Plus I do believe that they have a 3 year warranty which means quality!

B&O go for a good headphone!

Personly i'm using a AKG K701 at home and a Philips L1 which i carry around with me during the days. It's a fantastic product and ways better than the Dre BEATS. It's made with classic materials (aluminium, leather and fabriccable)

Let's hope that B&O Play Headphones are coming soon....

 

Yes im really hoping for the B&O PLAY range of headphones!

I notice today on the B&O website that the A8 name has been dropped from the earphones! Definitely causing confusion with the tremendous BeoPlay A8 I guess :)