Hi

Just wondered on what your thought are on above unit, I installed for a customer, and while I thought it looked ok, I thought the build quality was not up to Bang & Olufsen usual standard, and I did not like the remote, why not make it work with Beo 4. Also when docked with an iPhone, Itouch it does not look right, look good with the Ipad, what I find strange is they discontinued the Beosound 1, for the price the sound was very good, why not just take the cd unit away and put a dock on it. Come on Bang & Olufsen, looked into the crystal ball and produce some products that will create the want factor again,

:)

The beosound 1 has been discontinued? 

I literally cannot keep these in stock. We're selling as many as we can make. So I think that the "want" factor is alive and well out there in the real world. 

And it does work with the Beo4

Had a quick play yesterday - sounds great and I had no problem with build quality. As fas as I can see, the only problem to start with was supply. As Trip says, they seem to just walk out of the stores!

Regarding the succesful sales B&o will see themselves confirmed this is the right way to go. As a comercial business, making money is a primary objective for B&o.

Playing an iPod on the Beosound 8, soundwise you're dependend upon the quality of DAC in the iPod, or am I wrong? (apart from the codec ofcourse) 

Well that's good to hear it's doing well, and that you can control it with the Beo 4. :)

Sound is of course one of the subjective things but personally i think the sound spectrum of BS8 is quite thin compared to other docks. It was not the quality i would have expected from B&O, even if it's only an iPod dock.

Bigger failure IMHO is that you cannot control everything from the BS8, you need to go between the player and Beosound. I asked about this from 2 dealers here in finland and the first one explained that B&O didn't get some kind of license from Apple (?) to do a rotary control. The other dealer told me that B&O wasn't able to manufacture rotary control up to their standards with this schedule...? Both explanations sounded so absurd i wasn't able to comment them in either of the situations.

If the BS8 remote were available as an independent product sold without anything else, i'd vote it as the worst B&O product so far.

BS8 is nice looking though. :)

 

-Olli

redfresnel:

the first one explained that B&O didn't get some kind of license from Apple (?) to do a rotary control.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple had managed to patent a rotary control, perhaps in a limited context for this purpose. After that, it's a question of licensing, and how much extra would you like the BS8 to cost to have one?

As much as it'd take for being able to control everything from BS8.

jc:

Playing an iPod on the Beosound 8, soundwise you're dependend upon the quality of DAC in the iPod, or am I wrong? (apart from the codec ofcourse) 

Actually yes. The BeoSound 8 is one of the few products that's taking the output from the digital pins and using our own DAC. It's one of the advantages of some higher end docks. 

TripEnglish:

jc:

Playing an iPod on the Beosound 8, soundwise you're dependend upon the quality of DAC in the iPod, or am I wrong? (apart from the codec ofcourse) 

Actually yes. The BeoSound 8 is one of the few products that's taking the output from the digital pins and using our own DAC. It's one of the advantages of some higher end docks. 

 

It's a shame B&O don't help themsleves by advertising the technical features and inbuilt engineering more than they do!

THIS B&W page makes sure you know about the engineering effort and expertise that has gone into the latest Zeppelin Air (including "audiophile" DAC for internal and exterrnal sources) - The BS8 hopepage is quite bland and uniformative in comparison (IMO, of course)

I completely agree about the lack of technical explanation, and all the work and research B&O puts, is always ignored. Something that might go some way to answering the critics of B&O. The Zeppelin has B&O ICE in it by the way

redfresnel:

i think the sound spectrum of BS8 is quite thin

I am not sure, that I got the meaning of this sentence right, but if it means that the sound quality of the Beosound 8 is poor there are only two possibilities:

1. You work for B&W, Bose or Sony

2. You used poor MP3s

I do not call myself a real audiophile but I do care about good audio quality: And it is easily noticeable, that with poor source MP3 the Beosound 8 sounds not very well. But if you use an audio-file (lossless) ripped from a very good CD (I used a CD from Denon, with classical music - a really good sounding CD) the Beosound 8 blows the competition out of the water! Of course it is not a beolab 3, But the B&W Zeppelin sounds so unbalanced in comparison and the bose sounddock just sounds to "loudnessy" if you know what I mean - Sony just sounds like it looks: cheap.

Whatever you say, there are always things to cry about (think Beolab 3 - OH! The acoustic lenses are only made of PLASTIC!) the beosound 8:

- The remote is to light (ok, I agree to this one),

- It looks to much like a dock,

- It does not look like B&O (well i think it does!)

- It is made for products of this horrible fruit-company (how dare they!),

- there is too much plastic (oh come on), not enough metal (500% more than the competition, they hardly use it at all because it is to expensive), 

- The remote has not enough functions (Did you notice, that you can sleep an alarm with the remote in the morning?)

- It has no FM-radio (read: internet radio, CD, Television, DAB, Bluray, other generic audio/video source,...) 

- It has no real link room capability

- It has no Airplay

Please come on!

This thing is an iPhone/iPod/iPod nano/iPad Dock, and it has to provide good sound.

And it is hands-down the best sounding iDock on the market! Made by B&O! For below 1000 EUR!

This thing is a bargain regarding the sound it delivers- not more and not less!

redfresnel:

f the BS8 remote were available as an independent product sold without anything else, i'd vote it as the worst B&O product so far.

The remote is to light, it should have bean made from cast iron (or whatever the Beo4/5/6 is made of) but it works good and it looks great, the surface is made from metal.

Did you even look at the remotes of the competition? Show me only one (!) remote that has better material and looks! 

Please wait I'll help you out:

Remote of B&W Zeppelin:

 

Bose Dock: Old and new remote:

Sony remote (down left):

 

or were you talking about the new Sony super remote with the ultimate-black-plastic-brick design:

Shouldn't we compare this Sony remote to this one:

And now - let's look again at the beosound 8 remote:

It may be B&Os worst product till now (how you say it), but it is hands-down the most beautiful iDock remote on the market (and works as advertised by the way).

tournedos:

redfresnel:

the first one explained that B&O didn't get some kind of license from Apple (?) to do a rotary control.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple had managed to patent a rotary control, perhaps in a limited context for this purpose. After that, it's a question of licensing, and how much extra would you like the BS8 to cost to have one?

 

 

This is why I have no respect for Apple and do not support them in any way - they seem to take ideas that have been around for a long time in one form or another and slap a patent on it. I just hope more manufacturers start fighting this ridiculous company! FFS HTC somehow managed to infringe 20 apple patents with their phones and ended up fighting in court! How utterly pathetic! Not sure what the outcome of this was / will be I might look actually..

Tim:

redfresnel:

i think the sound spectrum of BS8 is quite thin

I am not sure, that I got the meaning of this sentence right, but if it means that the sound quality of the Beosound 8 is poor there are only two possibilities:

1. You work for B&W, Bose or Sony

2. You used poor MP3s

I do not call myself a real audiophile but I do care about good audio quality: And it is easily noticeable, that with poor source MP3 the Beosound 8 sounds not very well. But if you use an audio-file (lossless) ripped from a very good CD (I used a CD from Denon, with classical music - a really good sounding CD) the Beosound 8 blows the competition out of the water! Of course it is not a beolab 3, But the B&W Zeppelin sounds so unbalanced in comparison and the bose sounddock just sounds to "loudnessy" if you know what I mean - Sony just sounds like it looks: cheap.

I don't work for any of the companies, sorry.

I was going to add about the sound being thin that i have listened to other docks with the same mp3 files. They are 192kbps/44kHz and some people may say i should use lossless or 256kbps+ bitrate or something else but these files are for an mp3 player which is portable and has capacity of 8GB. I don't know how much for example lossless files take space but i'd guess quite a lot. If someone here has earphones with which they can really hear the difference between 192 and 256 for example outside when jogging then i understand, but i still think usually this is not the case. BS8 is however indeed for mp3 players and not an interface for xTB capacity media server (like BM5). Of course it's up to you how good quality files you use but all i'm saying is that i have listened to several docks with the same files and compared the sound and in my humble opinion BS8 did not sound as good as i expected. I also consider the sound thin meaning the lack of low and high freqencies.

I don't know about the quality of Denon player, i used MacMini when ripping.

 

 

Step1:

tournedos:

redfresnel:

the first one explained that B&O didn't get some kind of license from Apple (?) to do a rotary control.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple had managed to patent a rotary control, perhaps in a limited context for this purpose. After that, it's a question of licensing, and how much extra would you like the BS8 to cost to have one?

 

 

This is why I have no respect for Apple and do not support them in any way - they seem to take ideas that have been around for a long time in one form or another and slap a patent on it. I just hope more manufacturers start fighting this ridiculous company! FFS HTC somehow managed to infringe 20 apple patents with their phones and ended up fighting in court! How utterly pathetic! Not sure what the outcome of this was / will be I might look actually..

I ifind this pantent thing quite ambiguous. Nowadays it seems to be ok to patent things as long as you are not a huge company. I am not for Apple on this one but if you mean the patent should have been owned by for example B&O for decades now, i just would like to know why it isn't. Maybe there is difference in thinking between these two.

-Olli

redfresnel:

Step1:

tournedos:

redfresnel:

the first one explained that B&O didn't get some kind of license from Apple (?) to do a rotary control.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple had managed to patent a rotary control, perhaps in a limited context for this purpose. After that, it's a question of licensing, and how much extra would you like the BS8 to cost to have one?

This is why I have no respect for Apple and do not support them in any way - they seem to take ideas that have been around for a long time in one form or another and slap a patent on it. I just hope more manufacturers start fighting this ridiculous company! FFS HTC somehow managed to infringe 20 apple patents with their phones and ended up fighting in court! How utterly pathetic! Not sure what the outcome of this was / will be I might look actually..

I ifind this pantent thing quite ambiguous. Nowadays it seems to be ok to patent things as long as you are not a huge company. I am not for Apple on this one but if you mean the patent should have been owned by for example B&O for decades now, i just would like to know why it isn't. Maybe there is difference in thinking between these two.

-Olli

(First of all, let me stress that I do not know if there actually are any patents involving this particular issue)

This is business as usual on the mobile phone front. Apple, Nokia and others sue each other all the time over real or alledged patent infringements, then comes somebody like Qualcomm and sues them all. These are often settled and I have no idea how much money actually moves around these issues, and which way.

The difference is that Nokia's patents usually involve some hard core engineering, while Apple's patents centralize on user interface, external design and stuff that is quite easy to stumble upon by accident without any purposeful infringements. Apple has recently patented for example a logo being used as an antenna, and using a rotary control to emulate a rotary dialler of an old phone.

My view is that patent applications for silly little obvious things shouldn't be accepted to begin with, but that's US patent office for you...

tournedos:

My view is that patent applications for silly little obvious things shouldn't be accepted to begin with, but that's US patent office for you...

Agreed. :)

 

redfresnel:

tournedos:

My view is that patent applications for silly little obvious things shouldn't be accepted to begin with, but that's US patent office for you...

Agreed. :)

How dare you question the US PATENT OFFICE!

burantek:

How dare you question the US PATENT OFFICE!

Ordered. That's the wife's birthday present sorted. Cheers Jaff

 

redfresnel:

I don't work for any of the companies, sorry.

I was going to add about the sound being thin that i have listened to other docks with the same mp3 files. They are 192kbps/44kHz and some people may say i should use lossless or 256kbps+ bitrate or something else but these files are for an mp3 player which is portable and has capacity of 8GB. I don't know how much for example lossless files take space but i'd guess quite a lot. If someone here has earphones with which they can really hear the difference between 192 and 256 for example outside when jogging then i understand, but i still think usually this is not the case. BS8 is however indeed for mp3 players and not an interface for xTB capacity media server (like BM5). Of course it's up to you how good quality files you use but all i'm saying is that i have listened to several docks with the same files and compared the sound and in my humble opinion BS8 did not sound as good as i expected. I also consider the sound thin meaning the lack of low and high freqencies.

I don't know about the quality of Denon player, i used MacMini when ripping.

 

I can only assume it was something to do with the room acoustics in which you heard the BeoSound 8, or that the position switch was incorrect; was it mounted against a wall? When I've listened to the BeoSound 8, I've been very impressed with the bass extension and power. More impressive than BeoLab 6000s for instance IMO.

 

Alex:

or that the position switch was incorrect

 

That could easily be the case - with a decent MP3 at 320Kb and direct comparasion the Beosound should easily win against the competition.

Alex:

The BeoSound 8 is the first dock I've listened to which I'd be happy to live with as a sound system,

+1

Personally I think MP3's even at 320 kb do sound thin, compared to FM radio on my Beosound 3, so that will be the same for the beosound 8. Anything other than lossless is responsable for a worse-than-can-be sound on your dock.