Have you shown your wife the Penta? The Penta and 8000 are close relatives to many people here and have been compared frequetly.

I would love some BL9s or 5s, but there is no way my wife would let me get them either.  She barely put up with the BL3s I have in one room, and thins the BL8000s look like rockets.  Maybe if I had a space ship theme....

If she really does not like the 9s´ I would also go for the 5s´. 

I am soo glad that there is no need to have that kind of discussion at my home.

I'm with your wife and Paul Winn on this. We can talk about quality of construction and sound and vision and integration and all of that techie stuff but surely the real reason we own B&O stuff is that we want to be different. BL8000s are the very definition of B&O - elegant, striking, real conversation pieces - and I have my wife's approval to say this ;-)

The base ring can be removed and is rather heavy. The rest of the unit is a solid unit not really designed to be taken apart for transport.

If BL5 are out of the question too bad, but go and listen to BL1! I definitely prefer them to BL9 and also (slightly)to my lovely penta's. Both are great in fact. Anyway, if you already would have BL2, you will have a great system. Btw, my wife agreed for complete new set-up in 2013 when we build our house. Fortunately, she has no problem with BL5, she calls them "the mars men"!