ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi Beoworlders,
I recently got the chance to go back to the B&O product that first started my love for the brand. What first got YOU into Bang & Olufsen?
If you are interested to find out what started my 34 year obsession with the World's greatest audio brand, then all is revealed here: https://youtu.be/VGl0UHkHmOk
Please let me know what you think and why B&O is special to you......
Kind regards, Steve.
Steve.
www.soundsheavenly.com
Founder of Sounds Heavenly Cables and Brand Ambassador for Bang & Olufsen
Sounds Heavenly are proud to sponsor BeoWorld!
Please check out my YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/soundsheavenlycables
Beolab 6000 and Beolab 8000 speaker designs for me. For. my wife it is the A9.
B&O in my life 😊:
Everything started with my parents having a Beovision LX2500 and VHS91.2 for video, and a Beomaster 1900 and Beogram CDX for music when I was a kid (no B&O speakers). Then I bought my first couple of B&O toys in 2001: an A8 earset and a Beosound 1 1st gen in light blue.
Now the house is full of B&O from all periods...
1976 in my favorite record store when I first saw a Beogram 4002. I immediately had to have one and have used Beogram turntables ever since.
-sonavor
Thanks for asking!
Young, I worked in an advertising agency from which B&O was client, i remember the Beosystem 2300 or 2500 in the boss office.I'm responsible for a (at that time) vanguard 3D animation showing a truck full of B&O stuff to demonstrate sound quality at your door.And also, having discovered that any big photoshop image shown on a tv screen looks like 100x time more crisp than any tv program, to rush into boss's office saying "we need display estate, a B&O store is full of it through the BV screens, lets fill them with our content".
Well at that time, any B&O stuff was well beyond my reach so i was mostly sharing the "style over substance" trend…
Like 20 years after, i was dinning at friends house and at some point, unable to concentrate on the discussion because music was so lifelike, so present and so… I dont know…
Looked at the system and it was a Beocenter "Ouverture like" can't say which, and BL6000.
Go back home, look for second hands ads, bought one… and there it was just the start…
Hi,
In 1975 I worked just off Fleet Street in London. Every day I used to walk up Ludgate hill and there was a small B7O dealers with the showroom underground. When I walked in there I fell in love with the style and quality. At the time everyone else was producing boxes that all looked the same but B&O was different. I made my first purchase there and have owned various B&O products ever since.
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
Design.Ouverture and BL8000
Beogram 6500 MMC2,Beosound Ouverture,2xBeolab 8000,2xBelolab 4000,Beolab 2,Beolab 7.2,Beo4 navi, 2xBeocom2,Serene,Beosystem 3 mk3,H6 2nd gen,Earphones E8,A8,A9 keyring,Beoplay A1,Bottle opener,Beoplay A2 active(thanks Botty)Wine Set(thanks Botty),4Ktv Samsung 55'',Beolab 7.1 with 42''Panasonic plasma,,Oppo udp-203, LinTronic.
Gotta say,... it was the simplicity of the BL6000 and the movements of the door/clamper on the BS2500.
That's when I started to learn everything I could about the company and its design philosophy. Not sure if it's really true, but being told that the doors of the BS2500 used elliptical gears so that it would accelerate and decelerate was what did it for me. Even if it turns out to be a half-truth, it really opened the Pandora's box in terms of the level of detail that B&O went to with its products.
It was only after I discovered eBay that my collection extended into the 70's and 80's
It was the Bang & Olufsen A8 (The earphone).
When I was in Senior High School, My friend had this product and he used it to listen to music.It was 2010 and I was amazed. It looked so futuristic and from that moment, I know the brand Bang & Olufsen and I regard them as a high-end brand with a futuristic designBut the moment that really made me love B&O was during my university years. I had a professor and he admitted in the class that he liked Bang & Olufsen. He even explained to the class that he wanted the moving television (Beovision Avant) in 2015. His explanation reminded me again of the brand and I started browsing more. I searched online and I discovered the Beosound 9000, the Beolab 5, the Beosound 3200, the Beosound Moment, Beolab 18, Beolab 8000 and 6000, etc.
Best Regards, Mit freundlichen Grüßen, 감사합니다Antonius Robin Iriawan, 로빈 올림
Beosound 35, Beoplay E8 3rd Gen, and Beoplay Earset 3i.
No longer in use: Beoplay H5
For me it was in 1978 and a friends parents had bought a BG1500, BC2800 and S35 speakers - I thought it was so cool and looked so much better than the 70's monster japanese hifi my parents had. Although my friends were more impressed with my parents stereo because everything was big and had more switches and lights.
It was that stereo that led me to buy a BG1500 of my own a year later when i started work and from then until about a year ago I had nothing but B&O.
Andrew: It was that stereo that led me to buy a BG1500 of my own a year later when i started work and from then until about a year ago I had nothing but B&O.
Hello
In the early 2000's there was a TV show on French TV called 'En aparté'.
The guest was interviewed alone in a room and could choose a song before leaving.
The used several B&O devices.
Check from 4:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaIpDl2GQ4Q
Christophe
A few years ago, while moving to a smaller flat, I had to replace my large speakers with ones taking less space. At that time B&O released the 18’s including the wireless convenience. It was the perfect opportunity to jump into the B&O world after 40 years of patience !
I acquired a pair of 18s as well as a 19. Since then I’m adding kits progressively .... including legendary ones and I love them.
If only the Moment had survived its poor market introduction and the economic conjuncture .... I still think it was the perfect tool for distributed digital music users.
BS Moment, BS Core, BG 4002, BC 4500, BS1, BL18, BL19, BL8000 + RCV1, A6, M5, M3, A1, P6 (tks Botty), H5, TR1
christophe67:In the early 2000's there was a TV show on French TV called 'En aparté'.
Bonjour,
Oh yes, I remember that show. It was so good indeed, lot of very good moments.
But I didn't recall the B&O stuff. In the one you pointed it's actually funny the direction the host give to the guest to start the music."Press CD and 3 and then LIST, 7" . But the guest looked like he already knew the Beosound!
KMA
B&O product history since 1991: Ridiculously long to list in a signature.
Seeing a BeoSound 2500 at the audio store.... I still remember the first B&O store in Detroit Michigan I walked into!!! So many years ago!!
The first time I saw the Beocenter 9000 (was paired in t he store with redline speakers)Just magic how the hidden doors open and close and how the remote controlled everything,
Still a very desirable thing I and totally iconic.
Beovision 7-55 MK1 red, Beolab 10 red. Beolab 50, all black. Beolab 17 broken ice. Beolab transmitter. Apple tv4 and apple express 2.
Beomaster 1200 with Beovox 2600 speakers.
The BM was in the dealers shop window, and after enquiring about it I was offered a package including the Beovox 2600's which were on demonstration in the dealers demo studio above the shop.
Many many years later I sent the BM to Martin /Dillen for recapping. He found an oversized odd capacitor that was not original and so I concluded that the original dealer had not been entirely honest about this 'New' Beomaster. Nevertheless it has given great pleasure over many years, only to be replaced in terms of daily use by a wonderful white BM2000 (refurbed by Martin!)
I now have stereo sound systems all around the house that can all be synchronised by Chromecast giving me the best of all worlds...... stereo, whole house sound,.......... and nothing has become redundant of products spanning 50 years!
Graham
When I was studying law, I would go into the Bang & Olufsen stop in Chicago and yearn for a sliding door music system such as the BeoSound 4000, BeoSound 2300, or BeoSound 2000 (these are the names used in the U.S. instead of Ouverture, BeoCenter 2300, or Century). My small reward to myself after passing the bar exam was a red BeoCom 1400. After my first big case, I awarded myself with a BeoSound 2300 with Beolab 6000 speakers. I remember the BeoSound 2300 arriving the same day as the CD box set of "Kristina fran Duvemåla." The CD had to be imported from Sweden and was insanely expensive. That was the first CD I played in my BeoSound 2300.
I saw an article in an interior magazine that featured a Beogram 3000 somewhere in the mid eighties. I bought a Beocenter 9300 ten years later.
Vähintään yhdeksänkymmentä prosenttia suomalainen!
I'd been aware of them since college days, the stereo store three doors down from the one I worked in sold them. No interest back then as I was drinking the "high end" kool aid and didn't give them the respect they deserved.Fast forward to the mid 80's, I had just bought my first house, and was trying to find a way to make a more design focused audio setup. I saw the pizza box system, and was floored by it. Sooo sleek, all sides finished, no rough edges or cheap stamped metal boxes, and the fact you could control everything from the remote, tape, LP, CD, and tone controls, etc. I loved the big table top remote with bidirectional communication.
But, I was house poor, so I did some custom cabinets, actually a fair amount cheaper than the Beo stuff, and bought a BG3000. With an MMC5. Hated the sound, should have gotten a better cartridge, so I gave the table to my father and went back to a VPI manual table.
Then, in the late 90's, I was just completely floored when I first saw the BS9000. Instant lust, I knew I absolutely had to own one. I was also no longer house poor, I made a lot more money, so I grabbed it, originally using it to drive my MacIntosh tube amp and regular speakers. I took a pair of BL8000s home and not only did my wife just love the design (me too) but for some reason they sounded better than any speaker I'd had in that room, and I went through a few trying to find something that worked with the room/furniture layout and the rooms oddball acoustics. Unfortunately my father passed away right before then so I got the BG3000 back, and the Beo dealer suggested the problem with the table was the cartridge. I bought an MMC2 and the sound quality was night and day. So, at that time, I was all B&O except for the cassette deck, which never got used.
Now I have added BL9's, a Beolit 15, A3, and have recently picked up a BM2400, BG4002, and BC5000 to restore. Keeping my eyes open for a good pair of BV4-2s.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
I started Bang&Olufsen with a Beosound 3000 in 2000, after dreaming of a Beocenter 2500 for several years. Adding more and more Masterlink products over time until I had in every room at least one Masterlink product. In 2016 I changed to NetLink with a Beosound Moment and some Beosound 35s. After several disappointments with these new B&O multiroom system I moved on to Sonos as my current multiroom „back-bone“. Since a view months I experience Roon and I really enjoy it.
Your observation is really interesting. So I had a bunch of B&O gear in early 2000s. I sold my beovision to get. Pioneer Elite plasma and then decided to get Sonos for streaming. I packed away all my B&O gear and replaced everything with Sonos. Then I got an A9 since Sonos 5 wasn’t working well in my living room. The A9 just looked and sounded so much better. Later, when AirPlay 2 came out I brought back my Beolab 8002/2 and connected them to my TV and Apple TV 4K. Again, the difference between the B&O and my Sonos Soundbar and Subwoofer was huge. At that point, I took out the rest of my Sonos gear and replaced them all with B&O and AirPlay 2. So I ended up doing just the reverse. There is no going back to Sonos for me....I also ended up buying new B&O wireless speakers like the M5, Stage and BS1. I am really happy with them so far. I also got a Core to connect my older Beolab 11/6000 and the DAC and performance is better than a Sonos Connect, which was the last piece of Sonos gear I retired.
‘I agree, B&O support (in the US at least) is poor and that is a problem for them. Sonos has excellent online support.
Roon is awesome software. B&O should add Roon to their software for sure. If I were in your shoes where you had invested in B&O’s software platform, I’d be pretty unhappy. Luckily, I never put too much faith in their software and worked around it as much as possible. I also happen to know a developer at Roon, they are only 20 people in the company in total (based out of NYC) and B&O could easily have the resource to do what they did/are doing...
Just my 2 cents worth...
I grew up with decent speakers, but never had a real "connection" to them. They just ran the radio and occasionally my mother put on a CD for background music at dinners.
I got my relationship to B&O from my mother´s fiance who had a B&O/AV Store at the time. When he moved in, i was probably around 16, he brought a pair of Penta 2 and an Ouverture with him. First of all the design and glass door movement amazed me, but as soon as he asked me if i even listened to music "properly", in the meaning of active listening, a whole new cosmos unfolded for me. From there on I went through many many CDs of his collection and started buying albums myself. Visits at newer B&O flagship stores, reading about audio followed and sooner or later made me buy his pair of pentas, since he switched to BL3 and BL11. I experimented so much, bought and sold B&O products, educated myself with the brand and audio (geoff martin´s blog https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/ is so good...)
Eventually the brand B&O really showed me the joy of music and critical listening. I am just 21 and have found a true passion, that i think will accompany me for the rest of my life, which i am very grateful for.
Fulfilling a dream, upgrading from BL9 to a pair of BL5, is only days away and fills me with content and happiness - no brand or product has "gotten" to me in a way, Bang and Olufsen did and does every day.
The new era with all the wood applications and so on... doesn´t really catch my eye, like the David Lewis designs.
My love with B&O started with a pair of Beolab 9 connected to a BeoSound 4. I was blown away by the sleek design and the sound. Recently B&O reappeared on my radar when they introduced BeoSound 1 and 2. Last Christmas I bought a BeoSound 2 and could not be happier.
Exist to create
It was 2001. I was working from home and had a very good year. Wanted to upgrade my office sound system to burn off some excess $$$. In my hunt for the best sounding, cost no object, office sound system (needed to be self-contained since I thought I might move back to a regular office some day and would want to bring it along), I stumbled across the original BS1. Loved the sound, the look, the magic antenna. Sold. Then I bought a BS9000 + BL8000, and a whole lot more...
My love for B&O started in the late nineties when I was 18 or so. My girlfriend's father replaced his BeoMaster & -Gram 1900 + S45s for a complete 5500 pizzabox system with BeoVox Pentas and the MCP. What a system! I think he first got a BeoGram CD50 with it (with the cd upside-down), as the 5500 was not available yet. Latrer the 5500 came. It was really magical: the tapedeck moving out of its housing so elegantly, the super thin cd drawer, the tangentially moving tone-arm. Although he never used the system a lot, he does actually now a lot more. The music of the TV is played over the AUX of the Master. We both still like to go through the catalogue together as we did then!
I did not only stick with some of the music I listened to in those days, but even with the music sytem , I now use a BeoMaster 6500 everyday.
This year I gave my daughters both a H6 headphone (no empty batteries and easy wire replacement). But it is Interesting to see that the virus does not automatically spread - my brothers do not care for B&O and think I am a bit nerdy with it haha.
I still remember the day i visited a B&O store in 1997 as a student. And the magic got me captivated when i saw a stunning Beosound 9000 CD change. Oh it locked me up on the brand. 8 years later my first purchase a BV7 and a big list of others till today...but strangely i never owned my first love... Maybe in future...
Dimitris-
Year 1975.Sitting with the catalogues, mouth water running.What incredibly nice things. I never saw radios and record players in designs like this before.Mouth wide open. I was blown away. Absolutely fantastic.I got the chance to do a little work on units owned by family members, neighbours, my parents work colleagues andothers, replacing lamps and such, I remember studying every little detail, both in the design, the general build and the electronics.Nine years old I sat down with the schematics and the units, and I found out that if I put my mind to it and gave it my best shot I couldunderstand quite a bit of the circuitry, and I got encouraged to read more about the circuits I didn't fully understand.
Year 1977I got a Beomaster 1900. The most beautiful radio in the world. Nothing in the world came even close tothis futuristic slim-line wonder. I could gaze at it for hours. It's lights. It looked like something from outer space.And the way it was operated. Touch-controlled. Impossible, it seemed at the time and in my mind, to operate anythingwithout pressing buttons or turning dials, - but still it was right there in front of me. How did they do that? How does it work?It had some problems initially, and I believe it was a returned item sold out the back door to my father from a local dealer, butI fixed it and I had it for a couple of years.I then discovered more B&O units, found them here, there and everywhere,and I started collecting.Seriously collecting.
Martin
Dillen:Year 1975. Sitting with the catalogues, mouth water running. What incredibly nice things. I never saw radios and record players in designs like this before. Mouth wide open. I was blown away. Absolutely fantastic. I got the chance to do a little work on units owned by family members, neighbours, my parents work colleagues and others, replacing lamps and such, I remember studying every little detail, both in the design, the general build and the electronics. Nine years old I sat down with the schematics and the units, and I found out that if I put my mind to it and gave it my best shot I could understand quite a bit of the circuitry, and I got encouraged to read more about the circuits I didn't fully understand. Year 1977 I got a Beomaster 1900. The most beautiful radio in the world. Nothing in the world came even close to this futuristic slim-line wonder. I could gaze at it for hours. It's lights. It looked like something from outer space. And the way it was operated. Touch-controlled. Impossible, it seemed at the time and in my mind, to operate anything without pressing buttons or turning dials, - but still it was right there in front of me. How did they do that? How does it work? It had some problems initially, and I believe it was a returned item sold out the back door to my father from a local dealer, but I fixed it and I had it for a couple of years. I then discovered more B&O units, found them here, there and everywhere, and I started collecting. Seriously collecting. Martin
So nicely put. Yes, I think you get to what makes B&O special. I don't think there is any brand that has the same level of emotional connection with their buyers. If there is a brand that needs their own dealer network and stores it is B&O to showcase the. craftsmanship that goes into their products. Unfortunately, in the current world economically that is really hard to do for any company.
Every piece of B&O gear, even the simple M5, I can see the attention to detail. I see a lot of Dynaudio DSP/Active speakers around me, they sound amazing. But when you see a Beolab 18 the craftsmanship and design is just at another level. The passion of the people who designed and built it just shows. I just hope there is a place for such companies today. Unfortunately B&O is a publicly traded company and they will have to adjust to what their investors want...
Your story of the beomaster 1900 reminded me of when I got my BL 6000 with the remote and CD/Tape player with the moving glass etc. It was both beautiful and amazing 🙂