Bang and Olufsen visit

[FNG212]

Apparently one of the only B&O stores (minus dealers I guess?) is 20 min from my house. A friend is in town and took me there because he wanted to listen to their $16,000 speakers. We got to listen to a John Meyer Blu-Ray concert on their 50" Plasma.

It was a cool store but we kind of felt out of place and the sales people weren't terribly friendly considering it was a dead empty store.

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/beolab5

The sound was pretty amazing. The guitar was incredibly accurate and the drums offered serious punch from the 15" down firing woofer. The sales guy had no interest answering my technical questions about the speakers so I don't have much to report, but I'm sure its available somewhere online. The imaging was great as you could hear him walk across stage and screen. I have no comparison of anything on this level so I don't know how they compare to others but they were pretty neat to say the least.

My friend thinks the highs sounded thin but he's prissy.

 

[fredk]

Every time I see those speakers I think of the robot in the '60s lost in space series.

I'm a little afraid to listen to really high end speakers. I like my system...

 

[walter duque]

A friend of mine auditioned these speakers and said just about the same as you did. Pretty amazing. And that's coming from a guy that has Sonus Faber Stradivarius, that's got to mean something.

 

[Warpdrv]

Amazing that a dead store wouldn't give you the time of day....

Hmmm and I wonder why dealers are starting to go down... You would think they'd be kissin your a$$ to get a sale of anything rather then brow beat you - and making you look like you aren't good enough to service.....

I can't stand that attitude and I have gotten it more then a few times. I usually make it a point to go back to those types of stores to puke in their face and tell them I bought really expensive gear from their competitors because of their service and attitude....

 

[Adam]

No kidding, Patrick. It's not like we need to feel like it's a privilege to have a chance to buy their product and need to impress the salespeople.

 

[WmAx]

One of the very few decently execeduted omnipolars..... unfortunately perhaps the ugliest one as well...

A properly placed very wide dispersion speaker in a good acoustic space, if the speaker is designed well, has advantages to increase SQ according to known human hearing functions, as compared to the dispersion of typical monopolar systems, which inherently limit their ultimate SQ.

-Chris

 

[walter duque]

Amazing that a dead store wouldn't give you the time of day....

Hmmm and I wonder why dealers are starting to go down... You would think they'd be kissin your a$$ to get a sale of anything rather then brow beat you - and making you look like you aren't good enough to service.....

I can't stand that attitude and I have gotten it more then a few times. I usually make it a point to go back to those types of stores to puke in their face and tell them I bought really expensive gear from their competitors because of their service and attitude....

I went to Harvey's on Rt. 17 in NJ, which is a highend store that carries everything from Krell to Sonus Faber. I told the saleman if he could demo some equipment for me although I don't have the money to purchase anything here. He said come on in. I must have spend at least 4 hours in there and they where very pleasant, they knew they had no sale, but still spend their time with me. That was a great day for me. There are still a few good mom and pop shops outthere. Very Few of course.

 

[Davemcc]

I stumbled into a B&O store in downtown Chicago. I found the staff quite friendly and willing to humour me with demos and auditions even though they knew I was far from home and not ready to buy anything. In fact, I received a card from them a few months after the visit thanking me for looking at their products.

I find some their technology interesting and unique. I was particularly impressed with the quality of their displays, impressive but expensive.

 

[Lordoftherings]

B&O has some very nice speaker models that received raved reviews.
The ones I remember, were Omnipolar design, round (robot type) and with a little cute metal hat on top, they look like Robi. Anyaway, cannot remember the exact model #, but I do remember being impressed by their nice performance (from the review).

If Chris is talking about the same model than me, then I agree, they were not good looking, they were in fact quite "ugly". Sorry for the vulgar word.
[Don't want to get any bad rep for that one, I hope.]

But their performance was unique and very good (say excellent). They were also very expensive. With some research, I can found them. I got a review of them at home, in one of my mag. Perhaps Stereophile or The Absolute Sound?