Buying B&O = enjoying great music with integrated, simple and great looking stuff

Buying Audiophile stuff = never ending upgrading cables and strange components like magical stones to make your speaker sound better. You never relax and enjoy music, you just listen again and again to the same "perfect audiophile test track" to analyse where your stuff can be improved.

First of all I think Audiophile might be a lot of things. One of them the placebo effect. A lot of audiophiles uses very expensive cables with a lot of marketing bullshit and so on. That might or might not sound better in reality, but might sound better in thought because of the placebo effect. Then there is very expensive, very precise equipment that is made to sound really good, or really powerful etc. Those systems are often compromised of different hardware, ugly setups, thick cables and so on.

It is not very easy to find  ONE kind of audiophile, it is rather a interest one might have. Perhaps you want big speakers, or speakers that produces great sound (no matter how they look or cost) or maybe you want both looks and good quality. 

I would say B&O is the latter. Good design, good quality and good sound. I don't think you can find the "best" sound, you have to choose. But for what you get you do get really good sound, and looks, and simplicity. There is no other high quality speakers that is so easy to use as B&O. Nor to they look as good. So yes, you do pay for the style, but thats what you also expect when you go to B&O (Yes, you can have style and be an audiophile).

If you go out to eat dinner, would you say that it just looks good? I don't think so. When we eat we use our senses and it is the same when we listen to music or watch a movie. You live with the equipment and B&O makes that quite easy.  

The question regarding how the ear might adopt to different sound, well I think it is like with many other things: we like different things. Some like black, some like blue. Some people like bassy sound, some doesn't. I think most people sounds different through a microphone than they do in reality (not only because of the microphone itself but because of them often singing in echo free rooms and being mixed in the sound booth). B&O tries to reproduce the sound as much as the recorded sound is supposed to sound and that is what a speaker should do, except for looking good :-). 

I completely agree with this. I just stopped with the comparing, and now I am just enjoying :)

Being an audiophile for me also means you are able to consistently find and keep absolutely best audio sources like excellently recorded LPs, high-bitrate wonderful digital recordings etc.

With my daily agenda (business+private), I just can't imagine when would I be able to build and maintain a collection like this. I understand there are people who are able to do it and it is out of sheer love for excellence which I do not share to that great extent. However I admire their passion.

I also can't afford a dedicated music listening room, and my living room certainly does not qualify for an audiophile-approved badge.

So when I put all variables into an equation - well, I can't and won't invest that kind of effort for the qualitative increment which I can't enjoy. Is it exponential, like the price is? Don't know, but also it is not (only) about money.

I do very much enjoy my B&O sound sig from A9MKII playing Deezer, and realize at the same time there is better. Only I can't find energy and time to care.

I think it's 100% personal taste isn't it. Maybe an audiophile needs to seriously explore other interests in life and around them and it's just possible that they are not appreciating the actual music. B&O for me is too flat and safe sounding, infact lifeless, not exciting or engaging but many people out there like that and I guess it's suited to classical music which is probably the only genre that I really dislike.

I'm sure a B&O fan will argue that theirs is indeed top audiophile in quality and indeed convince themselves that it is. You certainly can not argue with another persons ears. It's personal choice, I guess just like the person that you date :) Truly personal. It doesn't make you wrong and it doesn't make other people right or wrong. You decide.

Being an audiophile means constantly obsessing over what the other guy has and never being satisfied with your own setup.

Agree, I stopped obsessing about the equipment and learnt to enjoy it and B&O gives you that with wonderful aesthetics that you can live.

That said, others have mentioned quality of recordings and I agree that probably makes a massive difference as does the room you listen to music in, when you listen and how seriously you listen. I have tweaked my system and I am happy to now leave it alone and enjoy the music. I love the fact that with B&O you can select something to listen too and it is all over the house, it wakes me up in the morning with the radio, is on all day with classical music for the dog whilst I am out and is there when I get home and want to listen to music or watch TV - I usually end up pressing pause on a film and watching the rest in bed. I'm not sure there is anything else out there that offers the same ease of access to your sources, everywhere and with such ease. After 20 years with the same system, more or less, I doubt I would go up the audiophile route - perhaps in my study,  but certainly not  to live with on a day to day basis.

Like all manufacturers B&O have had their ups and downs - the thing they've always been really good at is integration and that is always the thing that draws me to B&O. Audio, Video and lights all controlled from a remote that is simple and intuitive. Previous integrated systems I've used left my wife baffled and angry at not being able to do simple things (like turn off the lights!)

in terms of sound quality some B&O products have been a bit mediocre, and bearing in mind the studio monitors used to record, mix and master orignial recordings can cost substantially less than top of the line beolabs I guess it's possible to argue that sound quality is not the only aspect of B&O that people value! Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love B&O stuff but for me it's about good to occasionally outstanding sound from products that I'm happy to share my home with design wise. In particular the ability to reproduce good sound from very compact speakers is a huge bonus; lots of 'audiophile' equipment and speakers I've seen are real eyesores.