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Beosound 2- not a review

Posted by ChasLieb (A) on October 19, 2017 at 16:43:31

I happened to be in Manhattan in the vicinity of the Bang and Olufsen store and thought I would look at the new Beosound 2s which are conical shaped speakers that have a upfiring tweeter to a diffuser and opposing side mounted midranges and a down firing woofer. The vision in their ads is a visual combination of the MBL 105 and Davone Mojo.

When I wandered in the store I told the sales rep that I was interested in the 2 and he pointed to a wall where a single 2 was mounted and said I could choose from music on their ipad. The speaker is self powered and includes a bluetooth and wifi receiver as well as an internal dac and ICE powered amps.

I asked if there was a way to listen in stereo but the salesman was not sure. Later investigation shows that these cannot be used in stereo pairs, which seems a poor marketing decision to prevent a user from purchasing two instead of one. The music available at the store was a lot of pop with some easy listening, pop, rock and rap. No lossless FLAC or other formats, much less hires music. No acoustic, jazz or classical. If you are not listening to Adele or Dead Mouse, you are not the target audience. I tried some Bob Marley which sounded sibilant and compressed, which could be the speakers, the ICE amplifiers, which I have still not liked in any prior form ive heard, or the music which could have been compressed to hell and back.

As there was no point listening there I asked if I could hear the much larger and more expensive Beolab 50 speakers. These are upwards of 25k a pair and represent the "audiophile" offering at the store. These were hooked up to a tv and again there were no hires or lossless files. I asked to go onto youtube to look for a hires audio file but the sales rep only found a celine dion track that was horribly compressed and again was sibilant. Only someone who has never heard better sound than an MP3 on earbuds would be interested in that display.

I cannot say whether the speakers are worth a listen as the garbage in could only yield garbage out. Also a foolish decision to rule out the use of the Beosound 2 in stereo pairs. I can attest the the amazing imaging that my own MBL speakers give when the 360 degree soundstage of each speaker combines with a mate.

Apparently B&O is just being marketed as a lifestyle product that has no place in the homes of music lovers, but its a shame as some engineers probably dedicated wasted years to the development of products that may never see their proper potential.

At the end of the day, opportunity lost.

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