I think there is room for both - the Linn fanatic will be unimpressed with the B&O system sound and the B&O fanatic will despise the compromises to life necessitated by the Linn system. Both will be partly correct - the B&O will sound extremely good and the Linn will no doubt allow tweaking of the sound in all sorts of unimaginable ways.

Peter wrote:

I think there is room for both - the Linn fanatic will be unimpressed with the B&O system sound and the B&O fanatic will despise the compromises to life necessitated by the Linn system. Both will be partly correct - the B&O will sound extremely good and the Linn will no doubt allow tweaking of the sound in all sorts of unimaginable ways.

Interesting post.

From my reading and browsing on Beoworld, owners/contributors appear to fall into a number of camps.

Without wishing to be rude or offensive in any way to anyone, and to generalise:

I am wealthy, can afford the 'best' have good taste and want the 'best' and am lead to believe B&O is the best and it looks fabulous, therefore I buy B&O.

I am not overly wealthy and B&O is very expensive, but I love the design, as I'm a design freak, and the sound is very good, therefore I lust after/aspire to B&O and would buy it in preference to anything else.  Where I may not be able to afford new, I go with classic components from a bygone era.

I am a recovering audiophile.  I have been down the path of PRaT, Flat Earth, and Air and Space Round Earth sound philosophies, and found nothing but angst and dissatisfaction amongst an OCD desire for constant upgrading and expense.  I realise that I spent far more time listening anxiously to the kit and it's 'performance' rather than the music, and am just heartily sick of the whole experience.  B&O promises a science and engineering lead approach to sound, where the design goal is that of the original tenet of HiFi "the closest approach to the original sound" and not the pseudo science subjective clap trap pedalled by entrepreneurial cottage industry audiophiles.  B&O looks fantastic, has a wonderful freedom from racks, cables, clutter, and subjective BS as regards sound assessment, and has a pedigree of science lead R&D amongst the best in the word.  My therapist suggested B&O as an antidote to my HiFi OCD woes, and I am hooked.  Nirvana and true satisfaction at last.  I buy B&O having learnt the painful lessons of the past.

Well, I am having a little fun here and generalising, but certainly I fit into the last camp/group as far as being a recovering audiophile and highly appreciative of what B&O offer.

I would suggest that Linn and Naim (speaking as an ex Naimee) will as you assert allow tweaking the sound in all sorts of ways, but it does lead to a fixation on the performance of the kit, rather than the performance of the music.  

Linn/Naim fanatics do indeed look down their noses at B&O - I had to cringe a few weeks back reading a thread on a flat earth forum basically rubbishing B&O into the ground - it was truly horrible and I wish I had some B&O online friends to call into action to defend B&O from such unjustified and objectively completely erroneous and totally unfair criticism.

Having been burnt by the whole audiophool subjective High End scene, the major appeal for me of B&O is not that it is pretty, or a design statement, but that it is so seriously lead from an engineering and science based POV when it comes to acoustic design and approach to sound reproduction.  The only other commercial concern that I'm aware of that takes so much care and effort re "the closest approach to the original sound" is Harmon International and in some ways B&W with their R&D labs in Steynning.

B&O lab 5's are some of the most lifelike and realistic/believable sound transducers that I have ever heard over the many years I've been involved in this hobby.  Most professional reviews that have been made of them have described them as being an acoustic and engineering masterpiece - in one case described as re-inventing the loudspeaker as we know it.

Compared to hair shirt high end specialist assembler audiophool designs, the Lab 5 is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of electrical engineering and acoustic design, and is supreme value by the time one purchases a speaker of similar upfront cost, and then doubles that to provide supposedly commensurate amplification to drive them.

Doubtless the Naimee or Linn fanatic will prefer their choice and good luck to them, but whereas they will argue with subjective pseudo scientific audiophile speak, and tweak and play ad infinitum with the kit, always obsessively seeking 'better' performance from it, and spending thousands on cables for example that will do no better job than something equally capable electrically, but thousands cheaper, let alone stands, racks, and all the rest of the audiophile gadget and tweaking lexicon, B&O will speak with maths, science, electrical and acoustic engineering, ABX blind testing and a staff of very highly qualified tertiary trained experts in their field - importantly including those involved with psycho-acoustics, and in my view the products sound reproduction results, and owner satisfaction, speaks for itself.

Best regards

John... 🙂

John wrote:

Interesting post.

And your's is a FANTASTIC post

Loved your descriptions of the three categories of Beophiles

Can you come up with a few more ?

John, I'm a nr 3.

😂

+1 😐

Fair point, but SHOUTING isn't very B&O is it? ;)

Indeed it is 🙂

There must a be few more categories!

John wrote:

I am not overly wealthy and B&O is very expensive, but I love the design, ...  Where I may not be able to afford new, I go with classic components from a bygone era.

I am a recovering audiophile.

Well John, I think I fall into both of these categories. 

Having owned B&O on and off for 40 years now, the 'off' bit was mostly during a period where I bought into the myth of the Linn Sondek LP12.   Apart from the paraphenalia of setting the thing up initially, I then spent the next 2 years or so listening to the Hi Fi rather than the music, wondering incessantly if the thing was working properly to the point where in the end, to paraphrase the strap line for Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr Strangelove', I learned to 'stop worrying and love B&O'.  I then spent the next 20 years of so in peaceful harmony with a BS 2500.

Then I found this site and read Tim Jarman's book. 

So now, whilst I no longer worry about the quality of my kits' ability to play music - and my Beosystem 8000 with a CDX and MC120.2s for example, is pretty good at doing that - I admire the quality of the design so much, one system isn't enough.  I now enjoy owning and using many of the 'classic components from a bygone era' you mention, which even if they didn't reproduce music, are intrinsically beautiful.  I get a great deal of musical and aesthetic satisfaction for what has been, relatively speaking, a low financial outlay. 

It's just a question of how to stop buying more B&O - a problem not unknown on this site!

Cleve

A very good post from John.

I spent over 12 years setting up and installing Linn and Naim systems, followed by 15 years in the B&O distribution ( from installer - shop manager - Dealer Principal) but have now stood down from 'active service' to return to education in Sept.

I knw both sectors well, from the inside as well as being a 'user'....and I recognise the tweaky, never satisfied nature of owning "audiophile" kit - my own LP12 spent more time being adjusted than listened to - whereas my beogram 7000 has spent 5 years on the same shelf and only ever gets used to play lP's....not to fiddle with for hours.

Both sectors of the industry have merits - and for me personally, I found many parallels between Linn and B&O ( not in the kit, but in the ethos and integrity of the people.  Trips up to Glasgow had a similar "feel" as trips to Winnersh and over to Struer.... dealing with people who cared and believe in what they do)

My LP12/Naim/Isobarik system was a thing of grace and beauty....it sounded effortless in a way few systems can....but each speaker was the size of a cupboard, and the cables thicker than hosepipe.  I rally enjoyed it....but i couldn't leave it allone !!!!🙁  the urge to tweak/adjust/modify just became too much, and that was true at work as well, hence my change of track to B&O.

Rather like petrol and deisel, the audiophile and the Beofan music systems just don't mix, despite having the same function.