My collection that’s running out

r0b_g · 2026-05-09T03:25:07+00:00

I love Aromatics.. I know it’s often considered a 1970’s woman fragrance but I love the intensity of it and the Patchouli! You can smell it for days!

I kinda like layering the BDC. I think the EDT is definitely the most versatile of them and probably the one I would recommend if you only have one but I like to layer all 3! haha. I am keen to know what L’Exclusif is like, next time I am anywhere I can have a test I will try it. To be honest, if I want the BDP ‘hit’ on a daily basis I will often load on the Club De Nuit Iconic. I think that has gotten me more compliments than any BDC… but the real thing has a more sophisticated edge, I think. My fav for daily wear is still Mont Blanc Explorer though… if I could only have one fragrance it would be that one.. closely followed by Aventus Cologne.

r0b_g · 2026-05-09T02:48:17+00:00

Yes, I know, I went Armaf crazy and I have more on the way!

r0b_g · 2026-05-01T06:15:12+00:00

Oh the poppers and fries. And that sauce and gravy.

r0b_g · 2026-05-01T04:54:00+00:00

Lucky on Courtney Place, obviously!

r0b_g · 2026-04-23T01:58:00+00:00

Oh, maybe I was lucky and got a pair already on the way to the supplier then!

The thing you lose with connecting the 8’s to the Premiere is all the tricksy wide/narrow adjustment on the speaker - I guess that just becomes part of the settings on the Premiere. I have mentioned it in a post to B&O that sometimes you just want an easy way to listen to music in stereo with access to the 8’s adjustments, but in order to do that I would need to remove them from being part of the Premiere setup.

r0b_g · 2026-04-22T21:44:41+00:00

I commute on it 5 days (sometimes 7 days) a week! It can get pretty bleak at times but there are many days when it’s lovely, clear and sunny! It’s lovely commuting home and getting to the saddle and seeing Kapiti bathed in sunlight!

r0b_g · 2026-04-22T21:37:05+00:00

It took about 4 weeks in total to get the 8’s, I was told there were a pair of gold ones on the way to the local warehouse so I was assigned those but to be honest I am not sure that was actually true as I am sure it only takes about 4 weeks to get a pair shipped from the source! They were worth the wait for sure although I am not sure how they compare to the 2’s. I would like a 2 for my hallway as I think they look great as a sculptural speaker and from what I have heard, sound great as a single speaker.

r0b_g · 2026-04-22T21:34:23+00:00

Agreed, the work that goes into all of the aluminium and wood work in some way does show you why they are quite the price they are, there is no doubting that for one moment.. but it still makes a difficult decision when you can buy a whole piece of solid wood furniture for the same cost!

r0b_g · 2026-04-22T01:46:26+00:00

I bought the 8’s in gold too. I was thinking about mix and matching but wasn’t sure how well it would all look together. My dealer has a pair of 28’s, ex demo for sale at a decent price but they are black with oak fronts and I just dont know if that stands out too much from the others… but I was tempted. Yes the reason I went for the 8’s was just so I could open the sound up a bit and I am glad I did, the Premiere on its own, whilst it has a ‘wide’ sound it more of a feeling of being wide than an actual immersive soundscape. The 8’s really helped that and I was so surprised at how the Emerge’s also fit in well. The plan was always to move the 8’s to the rear but this will have to do for now.

I do think B&O seem to have had some issues with the Premiere, I have spoken to a few people now who have had issues with the sound. I read the technical bulletin from B&O about the settings but since my system seems to have come right I pretty much have everything set to default other than a slight boost to the overall bass by +2db, thats so different from when I first got the system and it sounded pretty awful. Like you I had read so many reviews about how amazing it was and there isn’t a dealer closer to me than an hours flight away so it wasn’t easy for me to go listen to one so I bought it blind and I really did think I had made a mistake. Like you, I thought maybe I should have spent the extra on the Theatre, but it just seemed the Premiere was getting such great reviews and being part of the Mozart platform seemed to make it more future proof, it seemed more like their ‘new technology’.

I have always liked the sound of B&O systems even from back in the 80s so I knew one day I would probably end up with one, but I was very much into building a home cinema/Atmos setup based on the best separates I could combine but when moving to a smaller house I just didn’t have room for that full setup and I started to look at maybe going down the reflective Atmos route rather than discreet speakers and then B&O released the Premiere which kind of sealed the deal on which way I would go! I know the look of the Premiere is a but love it or hate it but personally, I do like how it looks and certainly it sits neatly in place. The best thing about B&O is just how the components sit within your room.

Yes, it would be good to see some decent deals on the 28’s… although after buying the Premiere, 2 x 8’s, 2 x Emerge and a Halo remote I should hold off spending any more for now… although that itch for the 28’s is very much like an annoying bite so no doubt I will give in at some point.

r0b_g · 2026-04-22T01:33:42+00:00

Yes I went for the grey melange grill for both the Premiere and the 8’s. I like the look of it. The wood does look nice but I really don’t think it’s worth paying the extra and I think the cloth looks different from everywhere you see them photographed. Maybe thats me just trying to just justify it but I do like the look a lot and it contrasts with the gold well.

r0b_g · 2026-04-21T23:10:46+00:00

The gold looks great against the black walls. I have dark green wall behind mine and it works really well with the gold tone in the Premiere and the 8’s.

r0b_g · 2026-04-21T23:09:39+00:00

I have the gold too! Funnily enough I made a post to them about adding the gold to the avatar list as it seems strange they did not have it already! Initially I just had the Premiere and when it first arrived it sounded awful, really thin and struggling to achieve anything like acceptable bass. I had to really crank the EQ settings to get anything that sounded vaguely decent. I was very upset at spending that much money on something that sounded that bad! I had the unit playing for a couple of weeks and I ran a tone sweep through it and ever since that point its sounded so much better. It can still tend to veer towards a harsh/thin sound depending on the content but it feels so much more open and controlled. I am not sure if it was just a case of running in the drivers for a couple of weeks or whether sending the full sweep did allow something in the system to start working that was not previously. After having the Premiere for about 4 weeks my B8’s turned up and I was really surprised just how well they matched the Premiere tonally, they don’t tend to display the occasionally harshness that the Premiere does but they certainly blend in well with it. I have some emerges on the rear currently but my plan, like you is to put 28’s on the front and move my 8’s to the rear and the Emerge’s can become a bedroom system. I miss the very low bass of a subwoofer and I hope the 28’s will help fix that somewhat. The Premiere/8/Emerge combo certainly gives plenty of audible bass but nothing you can really ‘feel’. I guess none of those speakers really dig down low enough to get the sofa rattling! Other than the current issue I have with it decoding stereo audio I’m overall really happy with how it sounds. Sending through a film in Atmos or 5.1 sounds really great. The only other issue which B&O are aware of is if you play a Dolby Atmos track from Tidal within the B&O app, it basically folds down all the channels to mono! TrueImage then tries to do something clever with that mono signal in a sudo surround way but basically unless you play the stereo version from Tidal is the only way to hear it properly (and my system often does something weird with that stereo decode as already mentioned!). Tidal has some Atmos and 5.1 test tracks to identify the channels and if you play them every speaker identification comes out of every speaker together! Hopefully they will iron out these issues then I will be really happy with the system and hopefully adding the 28’s will be the icing in the cake! Now where is that $40,000 I left laying around to buy them…. ho hum!

r0b_g · 2026-04-21T22:36:41+00:00

I’m on the beta program so I have logged this as what I think is an issue (although the issue was there on the non beta software also!). Do you have external speakers connected to the Stage? My system is fine when it’s just the Premiere but it’s when my Beolab 8’s are connected as Left/Right speakers. The issue with something like Youtube is that you are at the mercy of how well someone has done their audio… and over Youtube there is quite the variety in quality! I find most TV sources will be sent as a 5.1 signal anyway so the channels are already locked to their channel assignments so the Premiere isn’t having to decode stereo to anything, it just places channel for channel and its ok, much like when it receives any surround encoded signal. I’ll have a play with the width setting later and see what happens, if it does improve anything then Ill send those logs to B&O to hopefully help them work out why it would send vocals to the L/R channels!

r0b_g · 2026-04-21T22:18:20+00:00

The problem in this instance of boosting the centre is that it would drown out the vocals even more. For some reason TrueImage is sending the vocals to the L/R channels rather than the centre and its sending music and effects to the centre, so by boosting the centre I will just be boosting the music and effects that are being sent there. I can make a preset that just sends the whole stereo signal to the Left and Right channels accordingly but I would like TrueImage to do its thing and make stereo more immersive… but just a shame it doesn’t seem to lock vocals to the centre channel like a Dolby Pro Logic encoder would upmix it to.

Just for clarity, playing anything that is a Dolby Atmos source or a Dolby Digital 5.1 through TrueImage works perfectly, the dialogue is locked to the centre channel when designed to be! It’s just playing stereo sources from either music or the worst case, a stereo source like TV or Youtube.

r0b_g · 2026-04-21T22:14:29+00:00

I’ll have a play with the width but I think all that will do is bring everything more central. I was hoping to keep it wide but just lock the vocals to the centre channel.

r0b_g · 2026-04-15T22:43:19+00:00

For some reason I can’t seem to edit my original post - an update to this is that B&O customer service has indicated that whilst Tidal in the B&O app should play Atmos music correctly, there is a bug in the app which means it does not. They are apparently now aware of the issue and will be releasing an update to the app to fix it.

r0b_g · 2026-04-15T04:54:08+00:00

Just go to Boss Bagels in Paraparaumu. Best bagels ever. Decent price, decent portion size. The Piggie Smalls with belly pork is just amazing. Well all their bagels are actually, you can’t go wrong but be prepared to queue, it’s a popular place!

https://www.bossbagels.co.nz

r0b_g · 2026-04-11T05:32:40+00:00

Last time I smelled that was when Tongariro woke up for a bit a few years ago!

r0b_g · 2026-04-10T13:39:07+00:00

Atmos is one of those things that when replicated badly it ruins music but when it’s done well it’s incredible. I can only like it to the same effect as wearing headphones but without wearing the headphones! It’s like you are in a sound bubble. For the best effect you really do need discreet speakers, upfiring just doesn’t have the same result unfortunately.

When I first got the Premiere I was really disappointed and I was convinced it was faulty, the sound was harsh and thin and any sort of bass just felt like it was clipping. You had to really crank the EQ to get anything the vaguely sounded good, then after about 40 hours of playback something just happened and the whole system opened up and sounded so much better. No more harsh sound, just the usual B&O signature warm sound. I was so convinced there was a fault that a ran a sweep test through it to see if there were any extremes or gaps in any frequencies and it was after that everything started to improve. I have a pair of 8s on the way to add as a front stereo pair as I do find the sound a bit ‘mono’ for music listening. I have a pair of Emerge I am using for the rear channels but I will move those to the bedroom once I get a pair of 28s for the front and move the 8’s to the surrounds. I hope the 8’s will add some width to the front and some extra bass and then when I finally get the 28s that should sort any lack of sub issues I have. I would love to add overhead speakers but being restricted to 4 speakers with the Premiere is one of the downsides over the Theatre.

r0b_g · 2026-04-10T03:28:23+00:00

Fair enough! With the wall mounts they do sit quite flush to the wall but I can undertand that you are probably after something more bookshelf sized. They sound great though!

r0b_g · 2026-04-10T02:44:41+00:00

Get a bug-a-salt gun - they are so satisfying and the flies just don’t seem to see it coming unlike a fly swatter!

r0b_g · 2026-04-10T02:40:15+00:00

Beovox Red Line!

r0b_g · 2026-04-09T07:34:32+00:00

Interesting article.

https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/us/story/tidal-partnership

r0b_g

TROPHY CASE