Bang & Olufsen says no.

Call me a sceptic if you will but if there was the slightest improvement in performance I'm pretty sure B&O would have been more than pleased to tell us about it. I believe the amp change was more about meeting standby power legislation for domestic AV appliances than any other motive (except perhaps being less expensive to manufacture).

My expectation would be the same performance at best, unless the manufacturers are willing to even hint that they may be better.

To be fair to the previous poster, I haven't heard both side by side, in the same listening session. Perhaps he can expand on his comparison experience.

The term ICEpower is not neccessarily a measure of audio quality!

Puncher wrote:

Call me a sceptic if you will but if there was the slightest improvement in performance I'm pretty sure B&O would have been more than pleased to tell us about it. 

I agree. Isn't this a placebo effect where you're so determined there must be changes, you come away thinking "that sounds cleaner, sharper and more defined"? You expect it, so can be talked in to it. Good sales people do this very well. I notice there's a guy at my dealer who always agrees that anything I buy is the best in the range and improved over the previous version, however minor the upgrade.

There are moving pressures and ever tighter legislation on domestic appliance manufacturers to reduce standby or idle power consumption. This means that everything from fridges and freezers through hifi, TV's, AV amps to even mobile phone chargers must reduce the overall or mean power taken from the mains supply. This particularly applies to things permanently connected to the supply, whereby idle power (i.e. power consumed while not "active") becimes a big deal. This, I believe is the real reason for the 6000/8000 upgrade, the old analogue circuitry being less likely to comply with standby power legislation than the class D switching amplifiers that are called ICEpower, which when "off" can be truly off. The resulting higher efficiency will almost certainly make them cheaper to manufacture. The fact that they match the performance of the previous AB amps is a bonus, I wouldn't judge these implementatitions necessarily the same as the DSP controlled and driven BL5's - just compare the range of quality of class AB amps, the amp topology is not a measure of quality!

edit : sorry, this post was begun before the previous poster and is not to be considered a reply to that. In all such cases, listen and judge for yourself.

Timeless elegance! The most beautiful B&O speaker ever. I've seen these for 18 years and I still love them! One day when im really old and ive lived all of my adventures, I will have a pair of these in my little beach house!

Puncher wrote:

There are moving pressures and ever tighter legislation on domestic appliance manufacturers to reduce standby or idle power consumption. This means that everything from fridges and freezers through hifi, TV's, AV amps to even mobile phone chargers must reduce the overall or mean power taken from the mains supply. This particularly applies to things permanently connected to the supply, whereby idle power (i.e. power consumed while not "active") becimes a big deal. This, I believe is the real reason for the 6000/8000 upgrade, the old analogue circuitry being less likely to comply with standby power legislation than the class D switching amplifiers that are called ICEpower, which when "off" can be truly off. The resulting higher efficiency will almost certainly make them cheaper to manufacture. The fact that they match the performance of the previous AB amps is a bonus, I wouldn't judge these implementatitions necessarily the same as the DSP controlled and driven BL5's - just compare the range of quality of class AB amps, the amp topology is not a measure of quality!

Even if I generally agree with this post I think that the old amps are not a power concumption problem. B&O uses relay switches so when they are off they are really off. The idle power consumption is likely the same with the new amps, or if improved it is because of better design of the monitoring circutry that switches the speaker on or better idle power supply design.

Manufacturing cost and less power consumption when on is more likely the reason behind the switch to ICEpower.

Style wrote:

Even if I generally agree with this post I think that the old amps are not a power concumption problem. B&O uses relay switches so when they are off they are really off.

You're right regarding Beolab 6000s - like most other Beolabs of this era they weren't the worst offenders, as they have a separate small transformer for standby circuitry, but still consume almost double the allowed 1W per unit on standby. I'm sure the standby circuitry could've been easily redesigned to pass the limit, but it would've still been a redesign with a lot of mechanical changes, and I believe B&O saw this as a good opportinity to modernize the rest of the product as well. I suppose the cash flow to the manufacturers of the old hybrid amp modules wasn't trivial either - much of that stays now in house due to the ICEpower amps.

The only B&O devices that go completely off are those with a mechanical on/off switch... Even if the main power supply may be switched by a relay, something must control that relay, meaning that parts of the device are on all the time even on standby. The early 80s single transformer units with their NMOS microcontrollers really are rather bad regarding standby power consumption. Even more modern kit such as Beocenter 9500 stay noticeably warm all the time.

EU has worked out some really stupid regulations, but this really isn't one of them. The number of devices that used several watts round the clock mostly doing nothing was getting out of hand even in a typical household. I can clearly see the time I started collecting B&O in my electric bill history, and that was in a really small flat with only a few units constantly plugged in!