An informational blog with news and commentaries about streaming audio, radio, gadgets, music and artists

Now before I share my findings, let me set up a little backgrounder. The particular manufacturer I'm referring to above is Bang & Olufsen (B&O) of Denmark. I have a certain affinity for this particular manufacturer of high end audio equipment. It was back between 1978 to 1980 (or something like that) when I was first introduced to the B&O Beomaster 2000. It's an integrated amplifier for those of you not in the know .

I managed to swipe a picture of this particular product from the web and I have to say, it was no easy task! Anyway this picture really does not do justice to the beauty of the product. Bang & Olufsen is as much into style as they are into making audiophile level equipment. When I saw the Beomaster 2000 for the first time, I thought it came straight out of the popular sci-fi tv shows of that era like UFO or Space:1999. The unit looked great and it pretty much sounded even greater!

Enough reminiscing for now. About five or six years ago, B&O decided to venture into the mp3 player arena. Naturally the reaction at the time was that why would a manufacture of audio equipment targeted mainly to audiophiles want to venture into this area? Obviously they knew what they're doing because five plus years later, they're still making these units.

The particular product model that put Bang & Olufsen on the digital audio player map was the Beosound 2. If you visit this page at C-Net, you'll see that they gave this unit a low rating (4 out of 10). It was mainly dragged down by its outlandish price tag. Otherwise they say that it sounded awesome. I really don't know what the qualifications of the reviewers at C-Net are so I took what they said with the proverbial grain of salt.

Scrolling down the page you'd see users' reviews. Ah, this should be more reliable, I thought to myself. The average rating of 8 out of 10 pretty much blew me away. There was one review that gave the product a 2, and the person promptly got two flames for his/her effort. But it was quite obvious that the person was just there to bash the product and very likely didn't own it so that person really deserved the flames.

Off I went to engadget.com and the review there basically was devoid of objectivity and they only highlighted all the negative aspects. Scrolling down the page is also where the user reviews are. There must have been about forty posts and again I was amazed. Out of all the reviews and aside from about two really lame-brained posts, the rest were defending the product. What was even more amazing was that a lot of them didn't have kind words for the iPod! And this is supposed to be an iPod dominated world!

The Beosound 2 was succeeded by two other models whose stylishness just simply outdid the previous one. Just recently Bang & Olufsen released the Beosound 6. The look of this model is a total 360-degree turn fromt he usually stylish touch that B&O gave to their mp3 players. And because this model is still new, there have been no user reviews to be found yet. However there is an apparent trend of rabid loyalty among B&O's followers so no matter how much more the so-called experts bash their products, I'm quite sure the reviews will be overwhelmingly in favor of B&O.

So is there a market for high-priced mp3 players? From the looks of things there obviously is. But I'm going to venture and say that none of B&O's mp3 loyalists can be considered audiophiles even though their products are supposed to be made for audiophiles. No self-respecting audiophile is going to patronize a mp3 player. That'd be like shifting from cognac to beer.

It's quite clear that Bang & Olufsen decided to manufacture and market new products to a new audience and that appears to have paid off. Even if they're not out to market these gadgets to their usual affluent audiophile audience, they sure can go after their kids. After all, there is also a natural progression in the making of an audiophile--from expensive to even more expensive. And that, I'm sorry to say, pretty much excludes the rest of us.