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
Could not agree more about the conclusion that the old B&O DNA is gone! My last purchase was a Beovision 10-40 in 2011 together with one of the last BeoSound 9000’s produced. I bought one of these great CD changers in 2000 and when I heard it was being discontinued, I sold the old one and got a new BeoSound 9000.
These units combined with masterlink to 4 audio link rooms and 1 video link room is just perfect for me. After some practice and with great help from members on this forum, I have been able to do all link jobs myself. Just yesterday I got a mint condition Beolab 2000, that I bought on Ebay for only 45GBP. A masterlink cable from Steve, a bit of splitting and soldering and all works just great!
To complete the whole setup, I connected a Beogram 7000 and Beocord 7000 to the AUX of the BeoSound 9000, again with a cable from Steve. I am still using multiple LC2’s, a Beotime and a BeoSound 2, so it’s a true and original Beolink system throughout the apartment.
Nowadays I just don’t feel the deep connection that I used to have with the brand. I bought some Beoplay items, such as a headset and a Bluetooth speaker, but that’s all. I read here about so many problems and software issues with newer tv’s and audio systems, such as Beomaster 5 and BeoSound Moment, that I just don’t feel that I can trust the B&O quality like before. What I have now works fine for me and I just hope that I can keep it running for many years to come.
Prices of older equipment have come down a lot, so still a lot of possibilities to expand my old style masterlink system. Regretfully this price drop also resulted in LifeStyle AV having to close. They sold me a great little BV6-22, motorised stand and Beolab 2000 last year and delivered great service, for which I am still very thankful.
B&O no longer offers an entire “closed” home integration solution, produced solely by B&O. Too many other companies and developers involved, resulting in compatibility issues and software mess. The current B&O range is just all over the place. Extremely high end (& high price) speakers. Medium priced speakers that miss the “wow” design. Some badly designed televisions and a range of Beoplay items. All together a messy line-up.
I’m sad that B&O and I, have estranged from each other, but that’s the reality. Throughout the company’s history they have always come back from difficult times, so I hope that the old DNA will return one day.
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
The First Class Check-In Terminal of Singapore Airlines at Singapore Changi Airport also had a BeoSound 9000 and a pair of Beolab 8000’s for years. This can’t be a coincidence! They took it away about 2 or 3 years ago.
BEOVOX141:I will do a separate thread about this no later than this weekend, but one idea usually spawns another one
BEOVOX141
When do we see what you promised, page 7 ?
Peter Pans drawings.
/Peter Pan
I still love the older lines and like others have a complete ML setup that I am really happy with and can see no reason to change - I love being able to access sources directly from my Beo4 in any room rather than having to use an app and have my phone on me the whole time. For me part of the DNA was that the products were designed and built in Denmark - somehow buying a premium product that is built in China, new or secondhand just isn't the same.
I went to a B&O dealer’s a few weeks ago.
The DNA remains—only just—but only in the bigger active speaker range, and perhaps in the classic headphone range.
But that’s it.
Like Peter, I still value the vintage gear of course, of which I have a fair collection.
And anyway, all that compressed music Bluetooth nonsense is not hi-fi, not at all. You want B&O DNA? Behold an old Beogram 4000!
Jacques
.. or a 3000 Chartz
B&O has become dependant on outside companies for the sources of media to the point where it does not attempt to add a radio receiver function to any of its speakers. They are returning to the corporate market with an interesting wall speaker but will have deserted the hotel room to market. The hotel tv was a good intro for many to the brand. It was a brand which was often built into the home and passively there providing good sound and pictures. The key ring and the remote in the shape of a flute embellished the experience. If they made a real Beolit with a radio with a display and which wasn't dependant on our unreliable router I'd have bought one last week. A complete , beautiful engineered product with an intuitive interface. That would have been nice. I may just get the Century out of storage and use that!
Beo Century ,Beoplay V1, Beocenter 6, Ex-Beolit 12, Beotime , A8. Beolit 15 , Form 2i , Beolab 2000, Beoplay A3.Beosound 1
Chris Townsend:Spot on. A no expense spared non reliant on router, beautifully built radio.
We have been using the A3 with iPad and whilst the sound is quite good when it works it depends on an apple product. I ended up buying a cheap dab thing with John Lewis card vouchers and it is plasticky and this depresses me when the volume knob wobbles. It works though. I was tempted by a Beosound for ten times the price but it's still router dependent.
valve1: .. or a 3000 Chartz
Of course Eddie, but Thorens DNA it has too.
BeoGreg:A Beolit 17 (or similar) with inbuilt radio and Beosound 3 antenna would be fantastic (for me) !
I agree it would be a great product, a complete modern Beolit. Unfortunately for me it wouldn't help, I live so far in the sticks there is no radio (I don't even have the aerial connected to my BS9000). Of course there are stations, Baptist religious ones, hip hop, and the "oh we got both kinds of music, country and western" variety, which to me is essentially no stations.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Yep that's the one many would like to buy but B&O obviously admit defeat on putting the work and skills into something so obvious. It can't be so difficult to get a receiver like they now get most of a TV from somewhere else on the eclipse.
I feel the whole company is like now like the phone division in 2007: unsure whether to move the tech to other sectors or double down and release another mobile phone
15 years ago I remember being drawn to the brand because they considered the competition to be BMW, not Bose - ie it was a premium product, not just another audio brand. Yet now:
I've said before that if a product is useless without a £hundreds per year subscription to Spotify, Netflix and the like then I don't care. When I need new hifi stuff I will always buy B&O, simply for the design, but if what they offer instore is a glorified internet screen then I'll go on eBay and buy refurbished equipment from years gone by for half the price.
Calvin, good thought there about the vinyl!
why not make a new elegant vinyl player, more people and hipsters have found vinyl once again and its an amazing format for music.
B&o could shine a little again if they released a new vinyl player. Probably a to small market for it, but then again how big rrally is the market for the more high end B&o stuff.
I would love to be able to get a vinyl perhaps with a little style like the moment. A mix of wood and aluminium with some minimalistic details.
Why not a touch display showing 33/45 and option for changing it. And also show the name of the track/record with the shazam algorithm built in. That would be really cool.
Hand sweep over the player to start it and stop it.
And I still vote for my previous idea of using the ”hand in the air” sweep function for the new tvs.
Programmable setting for what will happen when one pass the hand over the tv. As for example to start it and set it up for a specific angle on the stand
I've said a couple times that Re vinyl, they'd almost even be able to get away with just rebadging someone else's product. It would be a deeply sad state of affairs but no worse than asking customers to buy another product and come back later. At the very least a joint-project would at least have the right sort of cable to plug into older equipment and be compatible with the Beo4.
Would not hurt as well to have the current wireless setup in a vinyl player. So it connects easy to all the Beoplay series and the Beolabs. But on bluetooth and wifi. Its not ”back to old school” like this thread is about, but non the less the stuff is out there so needs to be connectable.
Would be pretty cool to have just a vinyl deck and for example a pair of BL18 connected. No fuzz with wires and a really clean and simple setup for playing vinyl! That would bring some of the old DNA back.
Assuming the player itself looks good and ambraces polished aluminium/copper or gold coated aluminium, together with wood!
And not plastic parts and pearl/sand blasted aluminium.
And please give us options of using both Beo4 5 and 6, as well as the app and BeoR1
And now, reality check: Beoplay headphones can’t even connect via bluetooth to Beovision TVs to be used for listening. You can forget about any product integration, Beoplay range is OEM’d chinese stuff and in B&O range product development teams in Struer are getting smaller. There’s noone left to develop it.
AnalogPlanet, keep the hope up!
DanTop: Would be pretty cool to have just a vinyl deck and for example a pair of BL18 connected. No fuzz with wires and a really clean and simple setup for playing vinyl!
DanTop:AnalogPlanet, keep the hope up!
Oh I do! I've bought a pre-owned Moment recently and I'm very happy with it. And after all criticism and everything, now that I look into the TV lineup I start understanding why the non-Android Avant is a wonderful TV.
With a remark for both: at 1/2 to 1/3 of the original price. Bought my Moment for 900 EUR - not 2.400 - and would not mind spending 4-5.000 EUR for the Avant - but certainly not 10.000 as asked originally. This is the pricing level where I am happy to take some compromises or accept technological imperfections as part of the deal.
Also, IFA in Berlin comes relatively soon - maybe we can see some exciting new B&O things there.
AnalogPlanet:Oh I do! I've bought a pre-owned Moment recently and I'm very happy with it. And after all criticism and everything, now that I look into the TV lineup I start understanding why the non-Android Avant is a wonderful TV. With a remark for both: at 1/2 to 1/3 of the original price. Bought my Moment for 900 EUR - not 2.400 - and would not mind spending 4-5.000 EUR for the Avant - but certainly not 10.000 as asked originally. This is the pricing level where I am happy to take some compromises or accept technological imperfections as part of the deal. Also, IFA in Berlin comes relatively soon - maybe we can see some exciting new B&O things there.
Duels: DanTop: Would be pretty cool to have just a vinyl deck and for example a pair of BL18 connected. No fuzz with wires and a really clean and simple setup for playing vinyl! I would go for that.
Would be pretty cool to have just a vinyl deck and for example a pair of BL18 connected. No fuzz with wires and a really clean and simple setup for playing vinyl!
I would go for that.
I know Klipsch has at least one pair, possibly more, of speakers with built in amps and phono preamps and such. Not wireless I think for the phono, that would be wires to the speaker from phono player but if I recall rightly they have wifi/BluTooth, not active but a single amp in each speaker. Personally, in today's world, I think the idea is splended. Today, who wants the classic system, CD, tape, receiver, phono, etc.? I have thought B&O has missed an opportunity by not building speakers with built in BT/wifi (working for a change) and no need for any additional equipment. I have also noticed I believe ProJect turntables selling versions that not only have a digitizer phono preamp built in, analog or digital out, but also a BluTooth transmitter. I notice B&O pushes out a box to do this but not actually put it in the speakers at least as yet. For the price of the speakers this seems short sighted to me.
Jeff,
I think Pro-Ject deserve some credit for putting bluetooth straight in the vinyl player. I have seen them to and I really like that idea.
Perhaps Pro-Ject and B&O could do something together. I think it could result in some nice vinyl stuff
Beste Grüße / Best regards
Schlaumeier
Setup Livingroom: BeoVision 10-40 and 10-32, BeoLab 6000 front, BeoLab 4000 rear, BeoLab 11, Ouverture, Apple TV 2 & 4, Airport Express, 6 x LC2.
Other Rooms: 3 x BeoSound 8, BeoVision 8-26, MX 4002, 2 x Keyring, 2 x Beolit 15, A1, Airport Express, 4 x Beo4, 2 x Beocom 5
Schlaumeier, hi and thanks for sharing your thoughts👍🏻
BV10 is basically the same in function as BV7, and the bv7 is my favorite. So I can totally see what you are talking about.
I dont mind at all to use an old BV and just connect an apple tv. Regarding the 7 and 10 models, well the previous ones as well, as long as they suport hdcp.
The only thing I wish for in that situation is that an old BV with an apple tv setup, could be used together in the new multiroom system.
Yes I know the new multiroom function really goes against what I have been saying in this thread from the beginning 😂
But when in Rome... Might as well find ways to take advantage of it.
Sorry Schlaumeier I am not sure if I really commented so much on your comment, it feels like I spun of in a different direction...
DanTop: The only thing I wish for in that situation is that an old BV with an apple tv setup, could be used together in the new multiroom system. Yes I know the new multiroom function really goes against what I have been saying in this thread from the beginning 😂 But when in Rome... Might as well find ways to take advantage of it.
Just hook up an Essence 2nd gen (box-only) or the Core to an analog stereo-input on these old BV’s.
(Be sure to set the sound-output to line-out level)
This will give you access to all sources of the new NL-based unit - when you use the Bang & Olufsen app (or AirPlay/Chromecasting from a 3rd party app).
Surely not as comfortable as with a true NL-based BV, but if you really want to stick to an old BV, this is the way to go.
You can also access these sources from connected ML-rooms.
Adding one (or more) of the new NL-devices (e.g. a BS1), will give you NL-multiroom as well.
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
Millemissen, Its an idea to make the kit a bit more up to date, though even if the core is connected to the apple tv, and its possible that way to stream out the sound from the atv to the multiroom system, its still not as convenient since one needs to start it all up from outside of the app.
But I agree with you, its probably the best, and possibly only solution to integrate the old BVs in the newer setup.
I had the impression, that you were asking/talking about ‘the new multiroom system’?
This however, is - as you probably already know - much more than just streaming (i.e. airplaying) to/from an ATV connected to the tv.
If ones main interest is using Airplay there is absolutely no need for B&O NL-multiroom.
Just get an ATV4 and some of the new AirPlay 2 compatible devices.
P.S. Why (and how) should ‘the core be connected to the Apple tv’?
What do you have in mind there?
That is the information, that Roger posted here a while ago.
Some say, that the BV11 etc was the last - a couple of hours someone claimed, that the BV10 was the last.
If you mean that the USP will be gone after the current tv’s, it may well be time to go......for you.
I for my part, am eager to discover what the guys in Struer come up with.
Untill then (and probably even afterwards) I’ll enjoy my Avant/2014, my V1-32 and my mix of NL and NL devices, BeoLabs etc.
Farewell - may you find another tv with a good USP.
Millemissen, I thought the connection of essence or coreto the apple tv was what you meant.
Since i from the beginning was talking about for example streaming music from a BV to the multiroom system, and since the old BVs doesnt have a smart engine the apple tv would be needed, and thus connecting that to the core.
But I now assume you meant to connect the essence or core directly to the old BV?
Sure I did!
Redirecting the sound from an ATV to an AirPlay device (B&O or another brand) does not give you multiroom.
Even if you have more than one AirPlay receiver in your home, you can only send to one at the time.
AirPlay 2 might change this....but that is another story.
I never meant to use airplay.
My thought was about the option to connect the atv to the core, and thus linking the sound from the atv in to the B&O app. That way when using youtube or something else on for example a BV7 its possible to link that sound to the entire house, through the core and the app.
Assuming that the core has sound in as wel? That I am not sure if it has. Or is the core only meant to recieve the sound/signal thorugh the app and then to the speakers? So its not possible to use it the other way?
Airplay 2 so far just seems like empty talk. Was suposed to be released was it it on or two updates ago on ios? And apple are just pushing it up.
DanTop: I never meant to use airplay. My thought was about the option to connect the atv to the core, and thus linking the sound from the atv in to the B&O app. That way when using youtube or something else on for example a BV7 its possible to link that sound to the entire house, through the core and the app. Assuming that the core has sound in as wel? That I am not sure if it has. Or is the core only meant to recieve the sound/signal thorugh the app and then to the speakers? So its not possible to use it the other way?
This is getting a bit away from the initial question of ‘B&O and loss of old DNA’.
But anyway ——- the Core has an input port (as analog or optical digital).
If you want to feed the Core with a hardwired signal from an ATV, you will need either the version 3 with the optical out.
Or you would - with the version 4 - need an HDMI Audio Extractor to have a physical connection for the sound output.
And yes, what is connected to this line-in connection (of the Core) can be distributed to other NL- multiroom devices in the setup.
But why make it that complicated???
Keep the ATV as is - and connect the Core to the BV10 via analog-in (as described above).
This way you can benefit of the sources of the Core directly on the BV10 (and connected ML) and you can do multiroom streaming to other B&O devices.
Maybe you are not familiar with what a Core (or an Essence MK2) can provide - a closer look might be helpfull.
P.S. You can easily redirect the sound from ATV (‘using AirPlay’) to B&O multiroom devices - via the menu of the ATV....
....in fact - if that is all that you want - you won’t need a Core for that.
If you want to feed all NL devices/the entire house with the same music/Youtube at one time, you can easily do that in the the Bang & Olufsen app
by using the Join function from the device that is set as sound output in the ATV
Note: when you use an external device for sound this way, you won’t get any sound from the tv speakers.
Millemissen, thanks for taking the time to explain the details on how to connect it👍🏻
And yes we have now deviated somewhat from the initial thread 😄