Bang & Olufsen.

Accurate is unquantifiable in hi-fi terms. I don’t see why it’s a consideration here. My view is they’re largely ugly but some of them sound great whilst others do not.

Hi

A lot of the B&O speakers are properly actively powered with separate amps for the woofer and tweeters. They are often very nice units.

I power a pair of SBL’s actively off the amps from a Century and although they use ABL you can dial it out somewhat because they have a digital bass and treble control. I think they sound great. Especially vs the Mission Cyrus One (passively) I compared them with.

So for me B&O is definitely HiFI.

I will always be grateful to B & O. When I was about 14 [1971 or 2] my friend’s parents had a Beogram 1500 (combined record deck, pre-amp and 8 watt power amp). It was light years ahead of my parents’ crappy radiogram bought, I think, from Makro. The hifi bug started there. I moved to Linn in the 1980s and Naim in the 1990s. Were it not for B & O, who knows? I have Bella 18 speakers which complement the TV but the sound is not really engaging. They are a pretty good compromise, though. The aesthetics are great.

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Gosh, takes me back! The first piece of audio equipment I owned, as a teenager, was a B&O reel-to-reel tape deck/audio system. It had a fully detachable lid which split into two, with speakers in each half to give stereo sound. Was it hifi? Probably not, but it did get me started on my hifi journey.

Roger

th had one of these around 1975, I was absolutely sold on the looks. Swapped it 77/78 for a Phillips GA212, not as nice to look at but won hands down on performance.

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Have a Bang and olufsen beovision 11 55 " tv they are extremely good. This is my third B O tv expensive (yes) last years and superb picture. Wouldn’t buy any other. Regarding Bang and olufsen as a hi fi system, nope Naim for me :grin:

That sounds like the Beocord 2000K. Seriously good machine for its time!

B&O made GREAT reel to reel and cassette recorders in the 1960s and the rest of their offerings of that era were pretty good. Don’t have any experience with their post-1970 gear.

B&O turntables and cartridges were also solid performers in their day. High prices but decent sound in a quality system. I still enjoy my vintage 1800 today and it would cost real money to improve things.

What is meant when you all say something is ”lifestyle”? Isn’t a Naim-system also a lifestyle item - just a different lifestyle?

How about the latest article on the Linn blog on ”Countering throwaway culture in consumer electronics”. Is that a ”lifestyle” statement by the brand? They certainly give that stupid Sonos policy a whipping. Perhaps they could have discussed the Naim 272?

Maybe it is just a language thing that I don’t understand. On this forum a lifestyle seem to be something negative - something everybody else has.

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I’d say form over function. However I think that these are on par at B&O and that that’s exactly their quality.

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I certainly think your audio system should look good and sound good.

Fortunately I happily single so have no other half who may have a different perspective

Visually unobtrusive with a low box count and a premium charged for a level of quality that is greatly above mass market stuff of the same size. No quality comparison made upwards to or sideways to non space saving offerings.

i.e. it works around your “lifestyle”. It is in no way part of your lifestyle.

The Philips 212 has become a sought after turntable

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I have had a three-room wired B&O system since 1995 based, in the Master Bedroom, extended to the Master Bath and Guest Bedroom. I added a B&O TV in 2013 and the new version on the BEO4 remote for the TV was perfectly backward compatible, and easy to use by feel in total darkness.

My Naim 500 system in the Living Room is wired into the Aux on the Beocenter FM/CD/Cassette main unit hanging on the bedroom wall. The B&O system is discerning enough that the Naim sources played through B&O sound obviously better than the onboard CD and FM.

The latest B&O stuff is less compatible with the old BEO4-controlled systems, which is a shame.

Considering the use I have gotten out of it (in two homes), it has been great VFM, and the quality has exceeded my requirements and expectations all these years.

All that said, I only briefly considered B&O for my main system, before choosing Denon for 5.1 and Naim to integrate with that, before retiring the 5.1 main system, distilling down to 2.0, using just the Naim 500 system as the center of the whole-house system.

My first piece was a Beogram 2000 in 1988. I replaced it with a Planar3 in 2009? only because replacement styli were hard to get for B&O at the time. My impression was that the Rega sounded better than the Beogram ever had — hard to be certain without good styli on both at the same time. No regrets moving on, though fully automatic play was nice. Rega sound quality more than compensated.

Nick

That TT makes my grey RP3 look a bit ‘rustic’. Very nice :grinning:

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