Beofan2:

Peter if you haven´t seen and tryed it yet, go to your dealer! It´s not big at all, the dimensions are perfect from my point of view. The wheels works easy and logic. You learn how to use it in 5 min. top. If you want you can add your own playlists but MOTS is great. The screen and userinterface are really nice. Probably no surprice but I ordered one friday evening at the VIP event I joined.

Call me a cynic if you will but at the moment the trial systems are pre-loaded with the same music (or so I believe). Now if I was doing that and I wanted the software to be seen in it's best possible light then I would make pretty sure that the MOTS system worked very well with the installed selection.

Then again B&O are probably not as devious as I

It looks sweet.  All my music is digital.  The day someone figures out how to hack it so that OS X and iTunes run on it, I'll get one.

Genius playlists > MOTS 

Well I haven't used MOTS yet, but I will say that Genius is by enlarge, useless for me. It never gets things right, even though my Library is very well tagged.

Alex:

Well I haven't used MOTS yet, but I will say that Genius is by enlarge, useless for me. It never gets things right, even though my Library is very well tagged.

I think the Genius function is interesting but I don't use it.  MOTS might be a better algorithm but again I wouldn't use it.  Can it be turned off? I already have playlists and selections that I like already set.  When they are all played, I want the system to stop.  I must sound grouchy but I don't need to rediscover any music on my iTunes or Beomedia.  It was me that ripped the music.  I surely think I know what's in the system and what music I want to play.  I admit, I might use MOTS while giving a party but that would be all.

I find it interesting there is a lot of comparison done between BS5 and iTunes.  Itunes is free no cost software!  However I do want a Beosound 5.  I haven't quite figured out where to put it in my apartment.  I don't think it would look good next to a Beocenter 2.

BS5 MOTS functionality compares over 20 variables compared to GENUS which uses at the most 4-6. Genius is not to be compared with MOTS. It is lightyears between these two.

Also BM5 offers the best sound output available for digital music. 

You have to admit it looks lovely and is probably joy to use. I haven't ever found ripping CD's to a PC to be a headache but I'm just wondering is the sound quality from your installed as standard 99 dollar CDRW/DVDRW good enough to give you the same quality of sound even in lossless format as a B&O player

I don't profess to be particularly techno savy but is your standard PC equipment going to mean lossless=flawless when ripping CD's and if not what else do you need to buy?

kalleanka70:

=Also BM5 offers the best sound output available for digital music. 

While I'm sure the quality is good I'm not sure I'd make any claim of it being the best available.

Edit: having said that, although there may be "better" DAC chips available I suspect the differences may be measureable rather than audible.

Impossible to compare. The digital outputs will be identical I believe, as long as your music is stored in some lossless form. Not sure about the analogue outputs as there's no way of comparing the two at present...

With exactly the same music recorded at the correct bit-rate (we don't even know what bitrate the music currently on the BeoSound 5s is).

I have not decided whether to buy yet;

Design is great, a real stunner. I also assume the sound quality to be great, true uncompromised HIFI (if not, then it's obviously a deal-breaker). I do not agree with the complaints about the lack of radio and CD; After all, you get thousands of internet radio stations and CDs will be faded out soon anyway as people will increasingly download through the internet (especially as services like MusicGiants offers downloads of huge libraries in true lossless downloads - currently limited to the US but hopefully worldwide soon). Admittedly, it would have benefitted from a sleak blueray DVD player hidden under the display, but the lack thereof is not a deal-breaker for me (I'm too lazy to change DVDs anyway so I'd want a 200 DVD changer hidden away and controlled by the B&O remote via a Lintronic). So for me it really comes down to two questions:

1) Satisfactory link room control. How is it done - maneuvering with a remote control in the blind surely cannot be the solution. I guess possible solutions include (a) using a user interface displayed on a link room TV, (b) adding a link room Beosound 5 (i.e. two or more Beosound 5s connected to a central Beomaster 5) and (c) the introduction of a(nother) new control panel (probably unlike as it would "cannibalise" Beosound 5 which is made for that very purpose?).

2) Handling of music files; (a) is the search function practical (if you have several thousand tracks it should for example be possible to jump straight to "U" when looking for U2 tracks, so you don't have to turn the wheel until your hands fall off), (b) how does it syncronise with the PC, most importantly how do you make/syncronise manual playlists (I assume that producing playlists on the PC will indeed be possible, if not then we are probably talking deal-breaker material for me unless B&O has another smart solution which doesn't include doing it manually on the Beosound 5....). 

I should probably elaborate why it is extremely important to me that Beosound 5 allows importing playlists (not just tracks) from a PC and, in consequence, why I do not want to have to do it manually on the Beosound 5 (and no, MOTS will not render playlists obsolete - I want to be able to decide myself what to listen to....); 

Most of us presumably use an iPod or other kind of portable musicplayer which syncronises with the PC we use to download music. If it wasn't possible for the PC to export its playlists to the Beomaster 5, then you would have to maintain two music libraries which obviously makes no sense. Therefore, I want to PC to be the "master" which syncronises to my portable player as well as to the Beomaster 5.

I.e.: PC = master, Beosound 5 = slave (but an intelligent slave which knows how to do "More Of The Same" o). 

Alex:

With exactly the same music recorded at the correct bit-rate (we don't even know what bitrate the music currently on the BeoSound 5s is).

Lossless!

So I don't see any trouble to compare

sorenfelden:

...(a) is the search function practical (if you have several thousand tracks it should for example be possible to jump straight to "U" when looking for U2 tracks, so you don't have to turn the wheel until your hands fall off), ...

This is really easy, you just select artist, and then spin the wheel fast, and you will reach U in about a second, then you stop the wheel from spinning with your hand. When the wheel is spinning fast, the first letter of the artist will be enlarged a displayed next to the actual artist, making this search easy.