Is the rumour true that the beolab 8000 soon be upgraded with a NEW amplifier.

I have no information personally but it wouldn't be too surprising - they have already updated the 4000. There are economic advantages. I do hope they don't use the amplifier from the Beolab 4 though.

How do you think they can make the beolab 8000 a little bit better.

The Beolab 8000 will probably have the same treatment as the Beolab 4000. This means that the Class AB amplifiers will be replaced by Class D (ICE) amplifiers. The Class D amplifiers are smaller and maybe there will be room to fit another driver. I don't think the revised Beolab 8000 will get ALT technology. That would be rather difficult to incorporate in that lovely shape.

I think it likely that any update will involve simply swapping the amplifiers. I doubt any structural changes will be made - tthis will be for production reasons - they have not announced the 4000 'upgrade' at all!

Peter:

I do hope they don't use the amplifier from the Beolab 4 though.

Why not? Is that one different than the other ICE amplifiers?
 

The design of the Beolab 4 is interesting and is clearly used partly for cost and partly for space reasons. The nature of ICE amplifiers mean that there is a high switching frequency used which is well outside the hearing levels. This is not a problem. Most of the ICE amplifiers use a coil to remove this switching frequency and this works well.The Beolab 4 uses the voice coil of the speaker and this can result in harmonics from the normal sound frequencies and switching frequencies interfering with sound. Bit theoretical I would agree, but not an economy I would expect in a Hi-Fi speaker.

There is a perception that ICE is good and Class AB is bad. I would dispute this! Class D amplifiers have advantages of efficiency and give large power delivery for relatively small cost. They are however sensitive to hum and Class AB have the benefits of being very well developed.  

i suggested that to b&o over 18 months a go  got a reply categorically saying it is not feasible to use ice power in beolab 8000

I made exactly the same suggestion when BeoLab 7-1 was released: why not use the amps & speakers from BeoLab 7-1 and put them inside the 8000? You would finally get at least 37 Hz from these beauties, as this is what Lab 7 produces, in a 4 liter cabinet....and the present Lab 8000 has a 5.3 ltr cabinet, with normal amps: which means they could get more cabinet volume and even lower bass than Lab 7-1 if B&O worked on that! And to me it really doesn't look complicated, and the final price of a pair of 8000s is not far from Lab 7, and there is no more BeoLab between the 3 (50 Hz) and the 9 (30 Hz) in terms of bass response, so...please make this come true!

Regarding the "upgrade" on BeoLab 4000, I checked the maintenance guide of the ICE powered Lab 4000, and was horrified when I saw the distortion rate: 4%! Absolutely not within any hi-fi standard...and B&O of course says nothing about this..maybe people hear no difference -which I doubt- but I hope they choose good amps when they work on the 8000.

 

Can't be done. The drive cones from the BeoLab 7-1 are too big for the BeoLab 8000.

Chrisreunion:

I made exactly the same suggestion when BeoLab 7-1 was released: why not use the amps & speakers from BeoLab 7-1 and put them inside the 8000? You would finally get at least 37 Hz from these beauties, as this is what Lab 7 produces, in a 4 liter cabinet....and the present Lab 8000 has a 5.3 ltr cabinet, with normal amps: which means they could get more cabinet volume and even lower bass than Lab 7-1 if B&O worked on that! And to me it really doesn't look complicated, and the final price of a pair of 8000s is not far from Lab 7, and there is no more BeoLab between the 3 (50 Hz) and the 9 (30 Hz) in terms of bass response, so...please make this come true!

If you think you are going to get more bass out of those cheap, tiny drivers then you are kidding yourself. Even if mounted in a 50 litre cabinet!!

The limitation of the column speakers is not the cabinet volume. BeoLab 3s have less cabinet volume than BeoLab 6000s, let alone 8000s, and they go deeper than both. The limitation of the column speakers is in their very nature - they're columns, meaning you can only fit a small driver. This was part of the problem with the BeoLab 1 too, for it's size, it should really have a much larger bass driver.

what I can't understand is why B&O use for there beolab 8000 cheap, tiny drivers?

Why not good drivers,the speakers are expencive enough!

I also find that the beolab 8000 are not worth that kind of many (not a good sound)

They can't exactly use large drivers can they?

Everybody always goes on about the cost of the drivers, but bear in mind that you can get very high quality drivers for very little cost...

And these ones are not! They use cheap ones because they can! One can 'tune' the amplifier to suit the driver so you can get away with cheap ones. I agree that better drivers would be preferable.

Alex:

They can't exactly use large drivers can they?

Everybody always goes on about the cost of the drivers, but bear in mind that you can get very high quality drivers for very little cost...

there are many speakers with small drivers who sound much and much better Alex

For that kind of money they can (must) do better!

Oh I know they aren't exactly the best drivers available. You only need to listen to the B&W XT4s to hear what modern technology can do with a column speaker, but they are slightly wider than the BeoLab 8000s and closer to a stretched out BeoLab 3 in terms of the driver size...

These speakers cost 1250 Euro,they outperform the beolab 8000 a 100 times.

Come B&O make these speaker better.......

when I looked they were £1700 / pair and the styling is much more "chunky"  - not really to my taste. Can't argue about the sound quality though (well maybe I could claim the "100 times" is somewhat of an exageration)