I'm afraid that you are right kammeri.

Still I hope for a 'huge' upgrade.

I agree completely - a conversion to ICE power will be for cost reasons. These are far cheaper and standardising them across the range would seem to be an obvious move. I see no technical reason why they cannot do this - but the limit will still be the drivers. I doubt there will be much difference in sound quality unless the speakers have a major redesign - which I doubt. I hope they do not use the Beolab 4 amplifiers though.

I'm afraid I'm with you in what I expect but one can always hope - look at what they have achieved in the meantime with the BL3 (forgetting the lens) in terms of dragging performance out of a small enclosure!

It depends whether there's any real re-engineering or as you say just a VI exercise.

The update will not be conducted for cost reasons, but in order to comply with the EU regulations about max stand-by power usage.

Both 6000 and 8000 will be upgraded "soon".

EU regulations? Again? Seriously, they focus on the 2 w stand-by consumption of a loudspeaker but don't bother at all when plasma screens use more than 500 W in use..? Brussels must be a place as isolated from the rest of humanity as Struer can be sometimes.😎

Going back to the topic, the main reasons for an upgrade to ICE amps in the column speakers for me would be:

- reduction of costs, yes, if they use the same 125 W ICE amps as in Lab 3 or 7, I don't expect less in terms of power

- make Lab 8000 become a 3-way 3-amped speaker, the ICE amps being smaller could be 3 instead of 2, the smaller volume dedicated to the amps could be used to increase the cabinet volume for the bass reflex system, and the lower woofer could play only bass and provide much lower bass than the current speaker (think Lab 7-1 frequency response!).

- reduction of power consumption both in use and in stand-by 🙂

An extra bass driver could be an advantage, but the re-design of the drivers and cabinet would need to be substantial in order to make the new thiele-small parameters between the cones and the cabinet match up.

The cost of doing so would essentially warranty a complete technical redesign from the ground up, by which time, B&O could simply design a new speaker from scratch.

And there would be no difference in terms of standby power. That's to do with the circuitry required to keep the speaker ticking over to accept PowerLink on/off signals and control the amps.

In terms of sonic advantages, ICE Power only really has a true advantage over conventional class A and A/B amps when you start needing large amounts of power (ala BeoLab 5) or when you consider signal to noise ratio (hiss).

Just my 2c. An upgrade to ICE Power would not be for sonic improvements.

I was not thinking of adding a 4th driver, but rather making one of the 4' drivers a real bass woofer, and the other dedicated to midrange only.

Look at BeoLab 7-1: in size & volume, it is a stereo BeoLab 8000 fitting in the cabinet of a single BeoLab 8000! So I'm really certain it's quite easy for B&O to fit the electronics & drivers of BeoLab 7 inside the 8000, which would also bring a real sonic similarity to the system in a home-theater setup (namely BV7 range with 7-1 as center and 8000 as front/rears), not to mention the quite similar looks.

But part of the reason the BeoLab 8000 can produce so much low-end from small drivers is because they're so close together, they couple, and you get between 4 and 6 dB of gain at lower frequencies. Fewer cones moving = less air being pushed about = less bass.

I know what you mean about dedicating a driver to the midrange. I do think the BeoLab 8000 and 6000 both suffer to a degree from intermodulation distortion, which is why the midband cleans up so much when you add in a subwoofer.

A bit offtopic but I didn't want to start a new one for a question related.

The overview in the products section states that one might be less happy combining a BL2 sub with for example BL8000 for stereo listening. This would exactly be the case that I am planning for, adding a BL2 with the BL8000 to fill in the lower sounds and dynamics the BL8000 lack.

That saying I love the sound of my Pentas when listening to music with the exeption of the shadowed mids. What I would be looking for with the combination of BL8000 and BL2 would be (rather) crisp and detailed mids and highs of the BL8000 with Pentalike lows. Does anyone have experience of this combination in this regard?