I remember reading interviews with David Lewis. I remember reading about the passion at B&O to make the impossible possible. They were proud of it, and I was proud of B&O. One dream of Mr. Lewis was to make a loudspeaker that would effectively dissappear. In the pursuit, he made slender and descreet speakers, that both blended in with the surroundings, and when noticed, made a statement.BeoLab 8000 and 6000 were deemed impossible by engineers, but Mr. Lewis didn't budge: he said something along the lines "make it possible". And the engineers worked, and worked, and made Mr. Lewis's vision a reality. That resulted in incredible advances in active loudspeaker technology. It resulted in the birth of ICEpower amplifiers: small powerhouses that were built to realise a vision that a speaker should dissappear, or at least never dominate.At that time, Mr. Lewis also had to power to say "no" to a product, when engineers wanted to comporomise a design. He could send the engineers back to work, or have B&O bury the product. He had the "veto" on products – he and the CEO.I see those times as the hayday of B&O. Their products (speakers, in particular) defied the laws of physics and acoustics, and as such were magical. They made engineering marvels that challenged the possibilities of mechanics: BeoSound 9000 comes to mind, and BeoCenter AV5 (even though it was not successful) and BeoCenter 1. Even BeoVision 7 was a wonder: the DVD/Blu-ray mechanism was simply awesome, pure B&O.I remember fondly, with a smile just thinking about them, owning those producs, among a myriad of other.A good designer is hard to replace. You may argue otherwise, but it doesn't change that fact. Sometimes, a corporate culture – the way of doing things – dies with a designer.Looking at B&O's designs since the iconic BL8000, BV5, BS3000, BS9000, I see an obvious lack of designer vision:BeoLab 18: supposedly an improvement of the original. Acoustically, yes. Design? No.BeoLab 20: Why? What was wrong with BeoLab 9? Again, BL20 was just taking David Lewis's design, and tweaking it. Neither BL18 or 20 are anything original. And BeoLab 17, a successor to BeoLab 4000? Please! I'll take the BL4000 over BL17 any given day.Those are just a few examples. I'm not even going to get started on BS Moment.A lot has changed at B&O:It is no longer a design-driven company. It is an engineer & margins driven company.Back in the day, David Lewis was the "face" of B&O. He was at the heart of the whole company, of every product.Today the one and only "face" of B&O I can think of is Geoff Martin. He's simply a genius. An uncompromising genius, true to the B&O heritage. Mr. Martin has made B&O sound better than ever before (some might debate on this, re: BL9 vs BL20). The sound of B&O's flat-screen TVs is today incredible – something where the not-so-flat Avant 32" RF once set the bar.Today, I see Geoff as the heart of B&O. If he ever left the company, B&O would lose the last bit of what makes them stand above the rest. Feel free to challenge this opinion.As for designs, Mr. Martin's approach seems to pose a dilemma: both BL90 and BL50 were acoustic engineering driven loudspeakers. The designer(s) did the best they could to cloth the physics that were required by acoustic realities in a nice design. I like BL50 very much. I only wish it was a tad smaller. Yet, I think BL5 was a more exceptional combination of design & sound – equally.BeoVisions? B&O gave up their core competence in Vision. If I want to buy an LG, I'll buy an LG – at a very realistic cost. B6V was lauched at ~3.500€ (55"), as was B7. I got both less than a year from launch at 2.000€ each. Cheap, I would say.I cannot get past the value proposition of Eclipse. Is the SoundCenter & floor stand really worth ~9.000€ on top of the price of LG 55C7? In my opinion, no. Plus I'd be left with LG GUI in any case.I was happy to pay a considerable price for Avant (CRT, with VCR and later DVD), BeoCenter AV5, BeoCenter 1 and BeoVision 1 and BeoVision 7, 10 and 11, because they all really were like no one else. Is Eclipse "like no one else"? No, the Vision part of the BeoVision is "just like LG – Life's Good". FFS!!So where is B&O heading?With speakers, to heavenly audio, no question. All their speakers sound great – magnificent – but the designs are getting... a bit too big. Perhaps there'll be a baby brother of BL90 and BL50 to replace BL3, the compact little wonder. I'd love the idea of a BeoLab 30 – a BL3 version of BL50, just like BL3 was the smallest offspring of BL5.If I were to consider a B&O speaker now, with regard to design & unimposing size, I can only think of BL20. For me, even that's on the large side of speakers. BL18? No, just no, simply because of the design, having owned BeoLab 8000. One is iconic, the other is a design experiment gone wrong.BeoVisions? When the last remaining BV11 model is gone, and Avant is replaced by Eclipse, there is no _BEO_vision anymore.Audio? BeoSound Shape and the BS1 & 2 & 35 are nice. Especially the Shape. It is truly like no one else, in concept, design & execution.BeoPlay offers some nice audio products: A6 and A9. Good-sounding first purchases for customers to enter the world of B&O. That is, unless the customers run into trouble with their products. Then they are too often faced with customer service that is worse than what you get from Sony, LG or Samsung. Play is a good entry to B&O – as long as the Chinese products work. If they don't, that is a fast way to start loathing B&O. After all, even Play products are not cheap.To cut to the core: I see B&O hanging by two threads: Geoff Martin and BeoPlay. If Geoff goes, only Play will be viable. So this train of thought ends with a question: what is left of B&O as we knew it 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago, when all their core competences were in house – when B&O was still truly a Danish brand with uncompromising values & heritage, design & craftmanship?The day Louis Vuitton starts using fake leather somewhere in their bags, and starts making them in Czech or China, will you still accept the premium because they have LV printed on them?
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Have to agree with this. I would however happily buy a Geoff Martin branded speaker knowing it would be great!
My B&O Icons:
You make several accurate and cogent points. Especially the one about how David Lewis was the heart of B&O, forcing engineers to make his designs sound as good as possible, which was a successful approach. During his years they produced many iconic products that not only were beautiful but sonically very good to extremely good. Now it seems to be engineering then passed off to the designers with instructions to wrap a halfway pretty wrapper around it. I agree with you, while Geoff Martin is a talented engineer, none of the new speakers are particularly attractive, especially as compared with the previous generation of Lewis designs. But, the thing is, there are many well engineered and sonically good products out there from other manufacturers, what I have respected B&O for and why I bought them is the combination of design and performance I got nowhere else. I had owned plenty of high performance gear before, but never good looking high performance gear.
To me, the BL5 was an amazing product, such stunning performance coupled with such radical and beautiful design. Even if the BL50 sounds much better, Jesus is it Ugly to me, it looks like an oversized space heater/room air filter with a pop up turkey timer on top, none of the grace and elegance of the BL5. And it's by no means sure that the well heeled audiophiles will flock to buy the BL90 and 50, as they want more tweakability (different amps and cables for their fetish) and have a long history of looking down their noses at B&O that will be a hard thing for B&O to overcome.
The Beovisions have gone steadily downhill after the BV12/11. Play has had a lot of issues with bad networking and the fact you see the product line churn so rapidly means that despite making money they don't have a cohesive vision. From Beolit 12 to 15 to 17 in how many years? The Moment is still a very troubled product.
B&O faces a difficult enough time as the whole consumer electronics market is in flux and changing due to how people live and access music and video now, and in my opinion they are not rising to the challenge. They are acting like a company run by trendy MBA types with good speaker engineers, not a design focused, devoted, visionary firm anymore. Which upsets me as they were the only company who did what they did, they were unique.
Time will tell where this goes. They have had near death experiences before, but it seems different and more serious now.
The latest BL90 & BL 50 are LIGHTYEARS AHEAD OF the iconic older units.Their design language is as yet unfamiliar to fans.I for one luv themBarry
Something I forgot to include. B&O has many products in the Museum Of Modern Art...which of the current products can you imagine seeing there now?
The moment😂
I love a person with a sense of humor! 🙂
This is a great thread and I can't really add much (though I'll give it good go!) as it has already been said very eloquently by KMA and Jeff.
Like Peter, I am in full agreement with KMA, and the points you raise about current products being tweaked products of the past, I too have mentioned several times in previous months. There are no new designs apart form the Shape (which is great and is B&O in my opinion and the BL90s, which are nice, but not quite as striking as the BL5s albeit acosutically superior. I agree with Peter about the BL5s. I love this product as the design is unlike anything else out there, quite marvellous and striking.
Jeff, 😁 x 100!
Your comment about the heater and turkey made me laugh SO LOUD! Its past midnight here in the UK, I am on my laptop in my bedroom and I burst out laughing so much probably waking up half the street in the process! Thanks for that!! The funny thing is that I agree with you completely! You offer a perfect description. I really don't like the look of the BL50s at all and wonder how the design even got accepted by higher management? I think the wrong people are now employed by B&O. They really have lost focus in so many areas. Are they actively looking for new talent? There must be so many up and coming David Lewis proteges out there just waiting for a chance to be heard. My instincts tell me that B&O are so full of pride and caught up in their own arrogance that they don't even give these young people a chance. Please someone tell me I am wrong!
Altough i agree with you in general i must disagree with you on the bl18's. I've had the bl8000 and now the bl18's, they sound fab but that's not all. The i feel i see more of the pollished alu and the oak blends much nicer than the black frets in my interior. The acoustic lens gives it a funky look and really makes ordinairy speaker people confused about what it is. I get many compliments about them, which i like obviously 😎 call me simple but i do really like the green/red lights too with switching on/off, very nice gimmick and glow. The way i remember the launch of the bl5's, in my circles anyway, it was very polarising. I've only warmed up to the look of them the last 3 to 4 years or so. The sound was always impressive, but you really needed to have an interior to match the looks. Most people i know still don't have an interior modern enough to not make them look out of place. Personally i like the look of the bl5's, but i think they look best in white. Regarding the bl50's i personally like the look of them very much. The only thing i kind of like the least in the front black fret, there is too much of it and makes it look bulky imo. But to my eyes, the bl5's have the same "issue" if one can call it that. I like the look of the penguins/bl20's more than the bl9, same for the sound. However for the pricepoint there isn't enough pollished alu for it to immidiately strike me as b&o other than the aucoustic lens. The thing that strikes me as the most obvious where b&o lost it design way is the eclipse. And by that i don't necessarily mean the design of the tv by itself. The tv by itself looks alright, granted there is too much lg when you turn it on etc. What strikes me is that the bl50's launched about a month ago now, but the eclipse imo doesn't match the look. Its not that they look bad together, but its not a cohesive disign either. If the alu fret on the eclipse was the same kind of pollished, that atleast could pull it a bit together. I find it somewhat strange that the bl18's matched so well with the bv14, that pairing looked very well put together. The bv14 matches better with the bl50's too. This is what strikes me a strange design wise, that a bv14 that is basicly EOL looks better next to a speaker that is brand new than the new BV. To me it feels like there are still good designers at b&o, but there is no design overlord if you will. And to me it seems like that is badly needed when as a company you make so many products that are meant to work together and quite often in the same space too. It feels like a lack of cohesion and therefor no one disigner can push the engineers and it becomes a bit of a shoving match. B&o is still craftsmanship, but it seems to be done a bit on autopilot designwise. I still have much irrational love for the company though, but i gues that is what love is 😎
I see no similarity in the design language of BeoLab 90 and 50. Look-wise, they could be from two totally different brands. Instead, they have the same audio engineering language.It is obvious that the designer has tried to tie BL50 into some other B&O products: BV14 and BL18 with wooden lamellas.In some introductory videos, BL50 had other speaker cover options. One was perforated aluminium, which might unite the look with the Eclipse. Or fabric covers on all three sides, for a fabric covered Eclipse soundbar.I hope we'll have a BeoLab 30, a successor to BeoLab 3, that caters for people who want smaller speakers. What the design of BeoLab 30 would look like, I can only guess... A rounded triangular shape when seen from the top, most likely, for the acoustic purposes. Maybe that's the shape of things to come down the BL90 -> BL50 -> BL30 (?) line. In any case, BL3 needs a successor. Something for the average-sized living-spaces.The latest BL90 & BL 50 are LIGHTYEARS AHEAD OF the iconic older units. Their design language is as yet unfamiliar to fans. I for one luv them Barry
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