trackbeo
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Beosound “Bollard” – love it! Someone at B&O has a sense of humour!
Huh? Vocab-check: It’s a short, thick post on the deck of a ship or on a wharf, to which a ship’s rope may be secured. But in architectural parlance, it’s any short immobile post — nowadays, used mostly to divert (or disable) vehicles!
I’d need persuading just how much B&O DNA is in these.
Yeah, notice that the installation sheet says “must” be ordered as a package with the amp… wonder if they enforce that “DNA” in the dealer’s ROS?
Not something that can be of much use in a danish climate.
Why, does rain in Denmark always go sideways? Maybe not for installation on a North Sea oil platform… A drain plug in the bottom can be left in or opened up, at installer’s option.
I had a long conversation with my dealer today and he said he will probably close down his business in the next 12 months.
He must be getting old: a younger dealer would cut bait then re-open multi-brand, and try to build a business on the back of the B&O “installation book” they built up over the years. The Unique Selling Proposition? “Sounds as good, waaay lower price, spend that leftover money with my cabinet-maker to craft truly custom install for you, not a ‘plop-this-icon-down’ living room intrusion. Oh, and my {Control4|Savant} remote won’t keep dying on you.”
Every little boy dreams about owning a Porsche, Ferrari, girls dream about owning a Hermes Birkin bag. But I have never seen kids in elementary school playing that they have a b&o.
I’m sure back when B&O made (contracted?) their dollhouse miniatures, some dealers and customers made fun of “wasted marketing money.” But if they were here today and available for every “Barbie” house, they could sow the seeds for the future. B&O even made pink anodizations in recent memory! But movie product placement could have cost as much as a Porsche sponsorship, and children can’t increase next quarter’s revenues — which is what any CEO, and the recapitalization investors, *need* nowadays.
Beolab 18’s only went up $250 US, which can be attributed to inflation.
…or to a slow normalization of US prices against EU? 18s have been roughly 30% higher than European prices for a long time now.
Go “Full Proctologist” removing & re-inserting that IEC C7 figure-8 power plug. (Only the Beosound 1 has such a difficult insertion.) It’s perpendicular to all the others and their cords get in the way of your fingers: take ’em all out first. Sure, you have owned this unit for years so you know this, but still… one more try! Then give up and take it for service of the power supply, because it’s too nice to screw around with yourself.
(Notes: Yes, there is a fuse, but it’s internal and would signal something else wrong. Also just in case, what you *should* expect is rapid “tick-tock-TÍck” of the relays, a brief blink of the standby LED and the sledge illuminator, a few tenths of a second all-off (running tests), then the standby LED comes on steady. This happens regardless of whether or not the finger-saving IR pegs are dirty, or the keypad removed, or any Option-setting. Not certain, but I believe the first relay click happens regardless of the electrical condition & internal self-tests for the rest of the sequence (unless the relay is stuck or the fuse blew for too much current being drawn in some prior, failed, power-up).)
[More complicated, but just to be thorough:] Possible by interposing an Apple computer inbetween. Only Apple brand devices can *send* AirPlay, even though they license lots of speakers to *receive*. So you could, if you were willing to dedicate (and hide!) an old Mac Mini with recording software and output its “stage monitor” to system audio output, which, in the latest releases, can be selected to be any AirPlay speaker. (Or buy rogueamoeba.com Loopback or AirFoil?) I suppose the same could be done with an iPad or even an old iPod Touch, if you could find the right utility. A lot of hardware, just to avoid “no”.
That $1614.94 price are “used – like new” from Amazon Warehouse. “No item damage observed during inspection. Minor packaging damage observed,” which would be a great deal if true. The last such I tried was a Beosound 1 2.gen: Alas, it came in a box without a power cord, with some minor scratches on one side,… and it was a 1.gen! So someone else scammed amazon with their return. Thankfully, amazon took my return without questioning my complaints, nor suggesting that *I* was the scammer at that point — who knew since the previous return clearly had *not* been inspected.
Fortunately there is no previous generation of Balance, nevertheless one cannot buy used B&O from amazon without meticulously checking once it arrives. Don’t drop-ship as a gift to your cousin who doesn’t know what to look for, don’t spend on overseas shipping, etc. “доверяй, но проверяй,” as Ronald Reagan said. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify)
Meantime, they jacked up the sale-price of the black one, new, from $2116 yesterday to $2516 today. Natural was, and is, $2599. But the Aluminum are still available, 8 units left today at $2274. [Edit: Price gone as of 8/24 — they sold 1 (8 left -> 7 left in stock) and raised the price to $2890.]
amazon.com has a few aluminum Balance for $2275. (ASIN=B0B69SZNNW) This is vs. B&O website $3250, which is 30% off. Compared to the Balance original release price ($2250) it doesn’t look like such a bargain. But if you wanted the newer aluminum model to match your old gear but were putting it off, now’s your chance!
Inexperienced question: You say “repair the SMD caps” but your yellow dots are highlighting 5 of what look like ordinary electrolytic radial-lead caps? The two unmarked ones on the left (labeled “F” and one below) are flush like SMD pieces, but even they look likely to be ordinary electrolytics. So is this photo of your board *after* you repaired it, with your careful arrangement of the replacements and the yellow dots obscure the original square plastic bases? Or is this what it looked like originally, too?
(For other novices like me, here is what a SMD electrolytic capacitor looks like:)
)
Please pardon the simple question; I have not yet dared to open mine!USA, thru August 23: B&O website “back-to-school” special: A9 previous generation, in black, $2100. Also modest discounts from MSRP on Beoplay EX, HX, Explore: https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/us/back-to-school
amazon.com is running the same price on the white A9 4th gen (ASIN=B08FBMQ6GM) and black, but gold is goofy-priced.
[Edit August 14: B&O website A9 gen.4 gone; August 15: amazon.com now white only, a few left. August 17: amazon.com now black only at that price, white higher from some third-party arbitrageur.]
Also avoid the temptation to use a TOSlink->3.5mm optical adapter with a standard TOSlink cable. The data stream depends on the distance & tolerance of the gap in this friction-fit connector. Too little light output or too much reflection at the junction, and you lose!
What is “accu?”
What do you expect without accu?
As you probably gathered by now, @auric — but just in case — @Die_Bogener means a battery. The abbreviation comes from the rechargeable nature of it, an “energy ACCUmulator”.
Beosound 2, almost-equally iconic, was updated with Mozart. (Understood not mentioned in the same breath above, because not battery-powered and 2.5 times more than BS1-gen.1 cost. But what price beauty… it’s what I would choose except for price, because my BS1 so rarely leaves its AC base.)
Spraying vinegar, or bleach (Clorox Clean-Up™ is bleach&soap&water), can sit on styrofoam without ruining it, I believe… Alas, I think he’s in Australia which makes shipping this oversize monster from the USA kind of a waste?
May I ask which of the sheet products you are using to encapsulate? Folks always suggest Visqueen liners, like they used to put under mobile homes, but that doesn’t work on crushed stone. I once found a multi-layer specialty product, but it isn’t in Google anymore, just dozens of application contractors (thank you SEO companies).
“…and others”, according to the Radiomuseum, “output voltage switchable between 6 – 7,5 – 9 and 12 volts DC,” because why not work with the smaller ones, too — https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/bang_beopower_1000.html
My experience has been that 3rd generation (the with-separate-power-cord type) is still going strong, both as a solid, never-reboot AirPlay2 (with the last firmware) endpoint and as a gateway of wired Ethernet to the “main” Wi-Fi router. The 1st generation (integrated-plug) has started to fail, sometimes seemingly having little Wi-Fi range, though it’s usually the tough-to-repair power supply at fault. Hopefully @XavierItzmann will reply too.
As of July 10, amazon.com is selling their remaing Beosound Edge units at $2,234.81. (Roughly the same as last year’s sale price at Peter Tyson.) Use the search term “Bang & Olufsen 1666130 Beosound Edge” (or its ASIN, B07PMDVX72) because some third-party is also selling some, at near retail price! Natural aluminum, black fabric, USA. As the listing says, “Be sound edge is Wi-Fi enabled… Equipped with bobolink multi room functionality…” (:-) Chirrup to you!
[Edit: July 11, price raised to MSRP. Wonder if they are prepping for “Prime” offer of “fantabulous discount”. View the waterfall price chart at camclcamelcamel.com.]
Could be worse… At $60,000, Linn is getting in on the act: a new Jony-Ive-designed Sondek (LP12-50[th anniversary edition]) debuted today, also limited run, of 250: https://www.linn.co.uk/uk/turntables/lp12-50
It is minimal but it isn’t beautiful — OK, well maybe, to one who has USM Haller everywhere. At least the 72-23 is arguably pretty, and includes “Sond”-making equipment with the turntable!
+1 @Sandyb: At least this item conjures up some real money, maybe even enough to pay for a designer or two for another year. Versus calculate how much extra profit there was for making “gradient green” BeoSound 2’s, given they limited the production run to 15 — that’s right, fif-teen! — units. Even if the excess MSRP went 100% to B&O and the margin on the base sale price also went to them and not dealers, that amounts to a hill of beans. They shoulda done 100-999 if they wanted to make extra money, that’s not what it’s about. [Edit: Website vague, might be 15 “per market”, still de minimus.] Will we see “ombré orange” & “variegated violet”, and will that matter to the bottom line either? IF they can sell all the 72-23’s, no matter what pejorative you apply to the “man-pad” decor, it’s a good thing for everyone, both here, and in Streuer. The only way it’s bad for us here is if they are so successful that they decide to double or treble the current prices on everything else because “it worked!”
