Ok, so I did it.  Yesterday I got a Smoked Oak A9 MKII.  My earlier posts were obviously pretty serious as I now have one in my home.  I picked this up because I was given the opportunity to try it for 30 days and return it if I did not love it.  So far I'm not completely in love.  But let's start with what I do like and / or love.

Yeah, it's gorgeous it's absolutely even more beautiful in person than I had anticipated it would be.  The quality of the finish on the metal bits, the cloth cover and the wood are all so, so, so nicely done.  Even the black back plastic is very nice for being plastic.  The black back is more appealing to me than the white plastic was after seeing the two version.

The oak legs are amazing...I learned yesterday that they are called Smoked Oak because the legs actually get their color from being smoked and then rubbed with a Danish Oil.  So I love this part of the product, it's that extra effort that makes B&O stand out.  These legs (oak, maple, walnut) are quality furniture grade wood and it shows.  

The cloth cover  on this model is also exceptional, love it.  This blended weave adds a bit of dimension to the cover that takes the A9 up a notch in appearance.  Also, I noticed after seeing a White and Black A9 model that their very sheer covers, at times, reveal a bit of the circles cut into the plastic below the fabric, this blended Kvadrat fabric does not do that as it hides those small holes from showing through.  The Kvadrat cover is a big improvement over the standard cover and if you have considered buying one for your A9 I would say it's worth the cost. 

The top controls so far are a "Like", it's nice that they are there but it's really easy to use them wrong or accidentally bump and change the input source, etc.  I suspect that it's just a matter of getting used to those controls and how they work.  It's just natural to want to walk over to the A9 and touch it without thinking about it and suddenly you've changed input or volume, etc.  

Sound.....still debating there.  The system so far is not as loud as I had anticipated it would be.  Also, I found the bass to be lacking when free standing.  I've now placed the unit in the corner of our dining room and put the selection switch into free standing mode.  With the unit in the corner and in free standing mode there is much more bass available and I like the bass sound then.  The quality of the sound is really good, maybe great.  However, honestly where the sound quality is concerned I need to put more time into listening to my favorite sounds through the A9 before I can decide.  I have not had enough time in to determine how it is going to perform across my quite varied music interests.

WIFI connectivity.  The unit does connect consistently to my wifi however, I notice that the radius that I can connect within is not very large.  When I first set up the A9 I was going to set it up and test it in our Master Bedroom.  I was able to connect to the A9 with the setup app and get my WIFI settings put in but the unit would not connect to my wifi and would only yield a solid red network light, I thought I did something wrong and reset it and set it back up twice before I realized that it was simply not connecting. I have other WIFI connected devices in my Master Bedroom that regularly connect and stream media (to the TV) without issue.  My Sony Blue Ray Player is App ready and I stream Vudo and Netflix all the time to my TV there via WIFI without issue.  The A9 was not able to see my network in that room, I had to move it to a part of the house closer to my WIFI router but really it being in the main part of the house is better anyhow.  I just wanted to test the unit in the Master Bedroom before moving it elsewhere in the house.

Now for the bad, really bad.  The Beo Music app for Android is just flat out non-functional.  Initially, the Beo Music app would see the A9 and I could play a track or two but the app would quit.  I would then try to connect again and the Beo Music app would simply search and search and NEVER FIND the A9. I could go and tap the A9 to put it into the Internet Radio mode, the A9 would be streaming music just fine but the Beo Music app would say it's not on the network.  I could connect to the A9 with the Setup App and find it just fine and its status would show to be normal with Excellent WIFI signal but to the Beo Music App the A9 just does not exist.  If I uninstall the Beo Music app and reinstall it the app will work again for a short time but ultimately stop seeing the A9 again.  

I put the Apple version of the Beo Music app on my iPad and it worked better but not great.  The volume control would sometimes not work.....I could move the volume right and left but no change in volume would occur......now to be fair this iPad is older (second generation) and perhaps the app is not intended for that version of iOS....I have not checked that out.

The new "Bang & Olufsen" app (the one still in Beta) would see the A9 too but it will only offer me streaming music sources.  I don't care to stream internet content at all, I want to play my own music on my server.   When I can fire up the A9 with the Beo Music app the new Beta app will see that it is playing a track from my server and give the queue list and name of current track but you cannot use the app to browse your Twonky server and initiate play. 

So what am I supposed to do with the beautiful and expensive system?  I'm not readily able to control it with the Beo Music App for Android.  I have a nearly a month yet to decide but so far as far as I can tell....it could be going back.  If this Beo Music Android app would work reliably I would be quite enamored at this point.  Right now I'm concerned that I might not be able to control it with the necessary app.

I need to figure out how to post pictures to this forum and I will post a few for you all to see.

Critter