Beosound 3200: Good Bang (and Olufsen) for the buck?
Someone once asked, so here’s a video featuring a now classic B&O HiFi - the Beosound 3200. Given the vagaries of YouTube - this will inevitably prove to have been a very costly fools errand, but at least I gave it a go.
Once a video has been uploaded to and processed by YouTube I always watch it back again one final time just to check that something hasn’t gone wrong during the process. On this one I experienced an issue with the video playback intermittently freezing. Since all other YouTube videos seemed to stream without issue I re-rendered and re-uploaded the video yet again. The version you are seeing should play normally - but if there’s an issue, please let me know.
I’ve little of note to add this week other than that I’ve got quite a few medical appointments lined up over the next few days (routine annual reviews etc), which might result in the next video being pushed back due to lost work time.
Nothing else to add, so I’ll wish everyone here all the best and we’ll catch up again soon.
Comments (56)
Pretty sure the "awkward" UI is an intentional part of the design, to be "different" from anyone else on purpose to make the buyers of the expensive things feel a bit more exclusive...
I’m so glad that you finally took a look at the world of B&O. Over the last few years, I have really fallen in love with their equipment. I will admit that for both the turntable and cassette deck that I have from them, I did need to sit down with the manual first and get a better understanding of how to operate them - for example, the cassette deck allows you to dial-in an exact time you wish to skip to, and that was from the 1980s. However, it is just a joy to use them every time; they are items which when you walk by they just seem to call out to you. That being said, I place a heavy emphasis on the design and quality. I’m glad you got to see that while they are pricey, they do have excellent design and build.
Wow quite a unique piece of kit. Surprised how good the sound was for such a little unit. Another lovely review :)
Cool! I always wondered when you would do a B&O system. I bought the cheapest amp + cassette deck from B&O a while ago (it looks like a space ship). Fairly easy to service. But for me, that isn't it. Something like the one you tried looks more like it (as a mini system substitute, as I gave my Sony system to a good friend).
I've recently started dabbling in some vintage B&O component systems. To me, the Beomaster 2400 and 3000 series receivers are classic B&O: clean wedge-shaped design, the less-used controls hidden under a hinged aluminum lid, and the frequently-used controls are touch-activated and illuminated. Although they look slim and delicate, I was surprised to find out how solid and heavy they actually are - I think they were good designs and they didn't pinch pennies on the quality of the electronics. I think B&O are kind of niche products - I probably wouldn't use it as a "daily driver" or main system, but as a secondary system in another part of the house where you want a decent-sounding system with cool aesthetics. That's where the 3200 and 9000 also seem to fit.
I never had a thing for B&O. I wanted an amp from Electrocompaniet. Comically expensive, but actually good stuff. I remember seeing them in a showroom for the first time. All the competitor's amps were adorned with multiple LEDs, buttons, displays, etc. on the front. Electrocompaniet's amps were all blank, except for the logo. No LEDs, nothing. Classic. :)
Weird, same for me. Electrocompaniet. Strange really, as it is a fairly small Norwegian company. Never heard stuff from them so far, but I like the look, I know they are good, and they supposedly are a bit warmer sounding, which sounds good. But indeed, even today, those devices are expensive....
Out of curiosity, what makes for a better sounding radio output on a stereo? You praised the B&O's FM sound. I assume it's not just reception.
I don’t really know - it must be a combination of things, picking up a strong signal accurately, lack of interference and drifting, combined with speakers that suit the sound - I couldn’t pin it down but it sounded good to me.
I know this sounds silly, but I get the feeling that B&O stuff is only really suited to certain genres and artists. Hearing Miles Davis or Air coming from a B&O hifi would be right, but something like AC/DC or The Prodigy would be completely wrong. I couldn't bring myself to own a hi-fi that I'd only feel comfortable playing some of my CD collection on.
Great video on an odd unit -- thanks! FYI, maybe it was just me, but I found I had to adjust the volume several times for different segments -- if you haven't yet uploaded to YT, you might want to try to equalize them out a bit more.
I’ve gone through it again and it all sounded pretty level to me, there’s tonal variations between microphones as well as the positioning of them relative to me, but as far as the volume goes it seems to be in the same ballpark overall.
You did a Bang-up job on the review.
"Alien, offputting and unwelcoming" - beautifully put, and absolutely spot on. No reflection on you Mat, but the longer the video went on, the more my eyes glazed over and the more irritated I got with how unintuitive and unneccesary even the simplest things were! Everything seems so deliberately convoluted and provocative, it put me in mind of the big designer fashion shows where the main aim seems to be to make their models look as ridiculous as possible and if we scoff, it's just because we "don't get it".
Great, that confirms my view. I had categorised it with Bose as all talk and no trousers. I'm sure the engineering is very solid and it looks like it should be fairly easy to maintain but, having heard some, I don't think the sound quality is particularly great though that is subjective. My impression was "comfortable" like a big deep armchair - not engaging.
Reminds me of the house in Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle. We had a Beomaster 900 when I was a kid in the 1960s. That and the Beomaster 1000 were very nice. B&O are Danish and the Danes pride themselves on their design. It seems to be a part of their national identity.
I'm guessing the cheaper unit may be a Beosystem 10 Gentrified Neighbourhood Soother :-) If I had made a video about getting mine going it would be about ten hours long, although it is nicely made and sounds good. There are just certain knacks in putting it back together e.g. due to the use of sliders to turn internal rotary controls.
It's the same stereo as I'm Alan Partridge s01e06 which Alan buys... Happened on the episode only a few hours after watching this video. Spooky
If the automatic doors were used I’m going to assume he says something like “Nice action”
It seems like they are trying too hard to be different. Probably so only the rich person can operate his stereo and his poor friends couldn't. Everything has been redesigned for the sake of it. Typical high end design nonsense. An audio representation of what you'd get on a catwalk, lol. The speakers look to have a pass through for power so maybe you just have to directly power 1 speaker and use an extension cable from the powered speaker over to the other one. I'd be interested to see what would happen if you took the hard drive out, put it in an external enclosure and connected it directly to a computer. I wonder if it could read and written to in order to add more CDs more quickly. The folder name may even be the displayed name making it quicker to add the album names (and remove the African music that's already on there).
I just discovered that Denon made a similar CD / Hard Drive audio unit. Having other parts of the system I was quite interested until someone on a forum gave details of the convoluted method they had worked out to get the hard drive capacity up to a maximum of 160GByte.
If I had have known better, I think Apple modelled their walled garden and aesthetic based on B&O except now a lot more accepted, mainstream and commercial.
I anticipate the Apple analogy will be used a great deal and when it comes to the most heinous of Jonny Ive’s crimes of design over function I understand why. Slim dysfunctional keyboards, carpel tunnel inducing mice etc. However when it comes to their user interface design B&O are diametrically opposite to Apple. One tries to make their products intuitive and accessible, including to those who need additional assistance while the other seemingly would happily replace buttons with unmarked spikes if it looked good. A blind person would have a great deal more immediate success browsing the net via an iPhone than they would playing a CD in a Beosound 3200.
B&O equipment is totally not my jam, but I respect it a lot. The sound quality is never less than a Practical Level Of Excellent and with that established, the design and engineering and expense goes towards creating a functioning piece of art. I mean, I, too adore the aesthetics of a piece of gear with loads of buttons and switches and lights and meters. But the appearance of traditional hifi hardware is assertive, not harmonious; like a bagpipe, it will always demand your attention on its own terms, apart from everything else on the stage. Whereas the visuals and the presence of that B&O CD player play nicely with the other design and decorative elements of the room it sits in.
In movies, a single male who owns a B&O stereo is always some kind of self-absorbed dick. A single woman who owns a B&O stereo has focused her life on her career and icily insists that falling in love and having children was never something she ever even remotely desired. A married couple who own a B&O stereo got married for the tax break and/or to afford to live in an exclusive property, and stopped bothering to conceal their affairs from each other after like the third or fourth time. These are the facts. A director never puts a Bang & Olufsen into a set to communicate anything positive about the owner.
BRILLIANT! 😻😻😻 Though, I just looked up that "HEY PAUL!" scene in American Psycho and he (un?)fortunately has Harmon Kardon and Pioneer. https://filmandfurniture.com/product/harman-kardon-stereo-music-system-in-american-psycho/
Very pretentious system, but I did have a friend with one and can confirm the sound quality was excellent. Hope all continues to be well with your health.
Love the snake nest of power cord extensions! The interface feels like the designer committed to that grid of buttons without any thought as to what they would do. Very odd indeed.
Good luck with the appointments Mat, and great video as always.
My sister has more money than sense and had some B&O stuff and it seemed very much about style over substance. Sound was decent but no match for a real amp and speakers.
Kinda reminds me of my friend's Tesla - complicated just for the sake of it
This sound system was a perfect fit for every Saab owner
By the looks of it, this device was designed by eccentrics for eccentrics. Don't get me wrong, it definitely has its appeal and those sliding doors intrigue me more than they should. That user experience though... The layout of the buttons was probably decided early on in the design process just to achieve a certain look. At a later stage, the designer then tried to work out what functions these buttons should have… Thank you for the glimpse into the slightly bizarre world of high-priced designer HiFi. Oddly fascinating.
On a related matter, Posy (a sort of arty Dutch Techmoan) has recently made a video about an older B&O product: https://youtu.be/j378m3v7hL0?si=lGBi1buXObzKrBb3
Thank you for satisfying my curiosity. I've always suspected that B&O stuff is different for the sake of being different. Rightly or wrongly, this video confirms my prejudices and makes me feel that I probably won't get one of these when the mythical lottery win happens. I can get stuff with poor ergonomics for far less, even if it doesn't look as pretty. Beyond the oddities you show, what seems strange to me is that this system seems designed to be used with the speakers very close to the main unit with little notion of stereo separation. On the subject of CD players that rip discs, have you ever considered doing a video about a Brennan product? I can't quite work out whether they're brilliant or just for people who don't know how to use a computer to perform the same task.
I often think about featuring a Brennan but there’s a few things put me off them - I suppose the biggest one is the cost, since the audience for a review would only be in the UK it would likely be a very unpopular and therefore costly video. Basically it’d be cheaper to take a week off than review one.
Great video! It pretty much confirmed my preconceived ideas about B&O. But the one feature I don't get is the password protection, I doubt your average thief would know about it so it wouldn't prevent the system from being stolen, and as it only activates after the power has been disconnected you couldn't use it to prevent your butler playing the system in your absence.
On https://beoworld.org/faq_view.asp?id=23 is stated: "In Denmark, burglaries of Bang & Olufsen products fell by almost 20% after PIN codes were introduced." Of course without substantiating it in any way. Another interesting tidbit from one of the service manuals: "If the PIN code protection is activated and the product is in a service situation, there is a possibility of 12 hours service by entering a 5 digit Service Master Code which is 11111. This gives 12 hours of full functionality to service the product. If two hours are used the first time, there will be 10 hours remaining". Apparently, the ⏪ button needs to pressed three times before entering the Service Master Code.
This will surprise folk, but we had a B&O cassette/tuner/amp around 1976, at school. Yes, it was sleek and 3ft long, but it was the only all-in-one suitable for recording schools' broadcasts to tape and then trucking it around to the classroom to play it back.
Great video. I've got a couple of B & O items.. Their super basic Beocenter 2000 and a nice stand alone turntable Beogram 2200. I love both of them. They're just lovely to use. There is a world of hurt in replacement styluses though. Just something you have to accept. One thing that's noticable is that they weren't afraid of using plastic. It gets a bad rep, but B & O probably made the best black plastic hifi gear ever.
I love design, but the user interface of this would drive me nuts. Having to spend extra time and effort to do even the most simple things, when paying such a high price is a big fail in my book. I'm sure at the time of it's release, being able to store your music on a hard drive would have seemed amazing - but what a chore to enter them in! Thanks for choosing this though. I really enjoyed the walk through - rather you than me!
I guess I was used to e.g. the red dot being the standby button. We also had the huge remote (Master control thing) and it was just WOW! But yeah, it is more for show and "I'll play that damn CD/record start to finish, and I'll only listen to my preset stations". Design>function
Thank you for the video. I am very biased because I grew up in a household with mainly B&O devices in the living room. The Beosystem 2500 was my dream Hifi as a teenager and just within the last 12 months or so, I finally managed to get my hands on a Beosystem 2500 and Ouverture (4000). I had to fix a few things, all motivated by watching your channel, so thanks again. I also bought a few other devices for fixing, some of which were successful, but the cassette players were too far gone. At least the Beosystem works fully! I fully agree with your assessment that they put design first. There is this almost black and white opinion of B&O where supports say it's the best quality whereas other say they price is not reflected in the sound quality. I found, especially while tearing the devices apart, that they were designed extremely well, with serviceability in mind. The sound is superb, and I finally get to enjoy the visuals I was dreaming of in my youth.
• My life is going to hell right now, so your videos are one of the things keeping me going. • Does expensive = complicated? • Your thumbnail amuses me - your image on the 'CD mirror' - as it correlates to the mirror image of you throughout the video. • It seemed irritating that you had to order some din cables and speakers. • I am glad the sound quality is excellent, although the speakers look more plasticky than I expected. • Agreed that I would have preferred the cassette version, but I love cassettes more than CDs. • You're a guy that deserves the sports car, snooker room, and grand estate home. Thanks for all you do; and if I don't comment on the next video consider that things have gone completely pear-shaped for me. 🤍
Well whatever is going on - I wish you the best and hope that everything works out in a positive manner.
One of three things happened in the design of this. Either, the designer had never seen or used a CD player before, or he was laughing all the way through the process at how confused those rich purchasers would be trying to figure it out, of his view was that if you could afford one of these then you must have staff who could set it up for you.
I suspect it was like a car manufacturer deciding that after a century of steering wheels people had been getting it all wrong and what you really need is a "yoke".
Very interesting video, thank you very much! I guess my opinion about B&O is quite similar to yours, which gives it a nice explanation "on my wavelength" :-D. And I really can imagine that it sounds good! They have their own philosophy, which I kind of like, but also a bit strange that they go for a completely different user interface. And the proprietary connections, but that might also just be for the vendor lock-in... Reminds me a bit of stuff from the 1960s and before, when the convention we're used to nowadays didn't exist yet, like an arrow pointing downwards to a line for play (aka the head on the tape), rotary switches instead of buttons etc.
Those old in/out symbols have really confused me in the past - Grundig loved using them and it’s like deciphering hieroglyphics - I found a page of them once online, the Rosetta Stone of audio connections.
Just had to say that ‘Bourgeois & Odd’ is how I’m going to refer to B&O from now until the day I die. 😂😂
Get them to do an oil and filter change while you're on the ramp. Get your dipstick checked, but don't let the mechanic put their finger up your exhaust pipe. Well, not unless they buy you dinner first 😂
Good luck with the medical checkups!
Good luck, wishing you the best with the med stuff
I've been revising for my blood test.
It's a design classic, that and 9000 I always wanted
I was looking into how I could make a 9000 work with my HiFi - and it turns out it's more trouble than it's worth - which is a shame as I always liked the look of them.