While walking around Chicago lately, I chanced into a couple random listening experiences, neither I felt worth a separate thread but I wanted to share anyway. The first was
Vivid Loudspeakers designed by Laurence Dickie (of B&W Nautilus fame). I had the chance to listen to both the B1 and K1 models. Very nice, modern carbon fiber cabinets, excellent imaging and midrange detail, maybe a little light on bass for my taste (apparently we call that "neutral"). One of the audition pieces was Dvorak's 9th which I'm somewhat familiar with and it was a very pleasing experience. I didn't get a chance to put some Metallica or RATM on, but they seem like a very good, high end speaker well suited to classical music. I didn't ask the price...afraid to.
The other chance audition was that I happened to stumble into a
Bang & Olufsen company store. I had the chance to listen to the Beolab 5 (weird) and the Beolab 8000 (odd). The 5 had good solid bass, expected given the 15" woofer built in. It is also self powered with 2500w ice power amps in each cabinet and rated FR of 20-20K. It was really an odd setup to try and do any critical listening for imaging, detail, etc., but I suspect that in a proper listening room environment, they would sound quite good.
The Beolab 8000 seemed unremarkable in the surround setup playing a concert. They just seemed absent from the experience. I don't really have much to say about them.
The standout experience at the B&O store was the televisions, Beovision 9 and Beovision 7. OH MY GOD, I have never seen a better picture with my own two eyes than the 7. According to the salesman, the displays have an excellent scaler (obvious to me) and also incorporates mosquito noise reduction and block artifact reduction right in the TV. I couldn't find any type of jaggie or artifact anywhere in the picture using a standard HD cable box source. Blacks were black, reds were red and whites were white. Simply unbelievable image, but should be for $13K for a 40" LCD. The other neat thing is that the displays are modular, with replaceable components. The DVD player is built in and when B&O goes Blu-Ray you just pop out the DVD drive and insert the BD drive. The back panel opens up and you pull the chip and pop in a new chip. Displays also come with an integrated center channel and surround processors, so the TV is your hub. The display processes the incoming signal and sends the appropriate channels to any of the above mentioned self-powered speakers.
One other note, every B&O product is chock full of technical wizardry, a technophile's wet dream, from auto light correction and motorized swivels in the displays to built in bass correction in the Beolab 5. If I had money, serious money, I'd get some B&O products just to play with them like fancy toys even though they do have some very attractive performance features.
