if you follow this channel you know by now that i am a fan of bang and olufsen products but more
than just being a fan i'm actually a long time customer going back about 20 years now after
reviewing one of their latest loudspeakers the bo lab 28 i started to wonder if it would be possible
to make my older bang olufsen speakers look and sound like the newer models here's how it went
well the blm28 will no doubt go down in history at least to me as one of the finest speakers bno has
made to date some of my favorite bang and olufsen products were manufactured during the 90s or what
i lovingly referred to as peak b o in the 90s bang olufsen was everywhere in the
u.s with stores in most major high-end malls giving giving people access to high-end hi-fi
sound in ways few brands have ever been able to replicate it was during this time that i fell
in love with the brand lusting after products like the iconic beolab 8000
and penta loudspeakers simply put if you were at all into hifi or home theater during this time
no one and i mean no one was making products that looked sounded or performed like b o my
very first b o purchase was a pair of second hand bolab 6000 towers that purchase led to another
and then to another and well you get the idea over the years the 1bno speaker that has remained
in my collection has been the beolab 4000 bang and olufsen's wildly popular two-way bookshelf speaker
and the 4000 is a class a b powered monitor that features a one-inch soft dome tweeter mated to a
four-ish inch woofer which is good for a reported frequency response of about 50
hertz to 20 kilohertz while the 4 thousands will work in a variety of setups i find them
best suited for small to medium rooms their maximum spl rating is about 97 db which
is loud but when you approach that volume high distortion sets in hard but don't be too concerned
for most of us really listen above 80 db or so and while then 4 000's can be used as main speakers
they absolutely excel as center speaker surrounds or in a desktop environment where
you're not likely going to be going for broke the same way that you might with say a pair of klipsch
forte fours the four thousands were way ahead of their time when they were first manufactured
back in the mid 90s and for a 25 year old speaker they sure don't look like it that said they don't
look like current b o products like the b o lab 28 either while i toyed with the idea of having the
4000's aluminum refinished possibly even vinyl wrapped in a new color i ultimately stuck with
the speaker's original black because well still look good but the original grilles they needed
some love and while i could have run down to the local fabric store and maybe bought a new fabric
in order to recover them that wouldn't really give me the new bno look i was after so i reached
out to prestige creators who make aftermarket wood grills for vintage b o speakers that look
virtually indistinguishable from the grills you're going to find on products like the bo lab 28
and the new wood grills look great and fit to the speakers magnetically as if they were
specked from the factory they're not what i would call cheap at least not here in the states a pair
of wood grills from prestige creators is going to set you back about 500 u.s but i personally
i think it's totally worth it once installed my 20 plus year old bo lab 4 thousands look
as if they rolled off the factory line yesterday looking completely at home next to the bo lab 28
now a used pair of four thousands will run you around 500 bucks for the pair so even when you're
factoring in the cost of the new grills you may still be able to come in under a thousand dollars
but there is more to the bang olufsen experience than mir looks now part of what i love about their
modern products is their functionality especially as it relates to app support and connectivity now
by vintage standards bno products have always been incredibly flexible with respect to their
connection and setup options the 4000s feature the ability to be connected to existing bno hardware
via the brand's proprietary powerlink cable or to traditional hifi products using a line level or
rca style connection admittedly i have always relied on the latter for i usually
connected my vintage bo lab speakers to stereo preamps or av processors rather than to other
b o products like cd players and whatnot now in order to add a vintage bno speaker
to the brand's existing ecosystem meaning full bang olufsen app support and compatibility
one needs to purchase the bang olufsen core which is a small hub or hockey puck looking device that
effectively acts as the new brain for older b o products now because the core is new it utilizes
bno's current input output ports which look a lot like ethernet ports but they're not to use
these ports with vintage gear you're going to need adapter cables and the best place for vintage and
adapted b o cables is sounds heavenly and they totally hooked me up with all of the original
blink cables i needed for my system as well as the adapter cable to connect my vintage 4000s to the
new core now with everything connected to the core i was now able to see and control my blab 4000s
with the same benganovison app we used to control our bo sound level and the blab 28s with one
rather large caveat one of the best things about the bang olufsen app is the ability to tune new
bno speakers to sound essentially however you want simply dragging your finger around the
virtual dial will effectively change their sound to your liking and i i was really hoping for
that level of customization on my 4 thousands via the core but sadly it's just not there don't get
me wrong the core is still a great b o accessory especially when blending new products with old but
one of its best features for me is just sadly mia now i'm not sure if the missing eq is unique to
90s era products or if newer products would fare a little bit better if you know please do let me
know down in the comments below what i could do with the core attached was connect my bolab 4000s
to my sony tv and apple tv using airplay or i could stream directly to the speakers through the
app on my phone i could also pair my vintage speakers with other b o products in my house for
a whole home b o distributed audio system in this respect the core brought my decades-old bo lab
4000s into the present but if i'm being honest it didn't give me the customization and flexibility
that i was ultimately after so i ditched the core and went a different i think better route enter
the blue sound node because most vintage bengals and speakers from the 90s the 4000s included have
line level inputs and that makes connecting them to devices like the node really easy what's more
the node allows for greater streaming capability not to mention it adds hdmi connectivity and
the ability to do proper base management in the form of a dedicated subwoofer out with crossover
filters being set inside the blue os app let us not forget that the node costs nearly half as much
as the core as cool as the core is the node proved to be a far better hub for my old blab 4000s
where i paired them with my new clip subwoofer this made a huge difference in their overall
sound quality when paired with a capable sub like our klipsch spl 100 the sonic difference between
my 20 year old beolab 4000s and the blab 28s in their narrow mode was actually pretty comparable
i'm not going to say the two are the same but they are closer than i expected while the bl sound 28
is still the superior speaker for a total cost of less than two thousand dollars all in for my blab
4000 setup i'm pretty happy with their performance not to mention the 12 thousand dollars of savings
so unless you have an extensive b o collection already with most of your equipment being
relatively new i say ditch the core and go with something like the blue sound node
so in the end was i ultimately able to make my older be a lab 4000s look and sound like a pair
of beolab 28s well yes and no yes and that the new wood grills make my aging 4000s look
current and no they didn't exactly outperform the 28s sonically that said i was not prepared
for how close i did get minus the ultimate flexibility and tuning that the 28s give you
using the blue sound node and a third-party subwoofer the 4000s put up quite a sonic
fight even being comparable to the 28s in their narrow mode with respect to clarity
and transparency if anything my old 4000 sounded a little less digital and more warm in comparison
now which sound signature is ultimately best is going to be up to you but for
me this entire experiment was an eye-opening one one that i could see myself repeating with
other vintage b o products in the future so that is how i updated a pair of vintage
bo lab 4000 so before we sign off let's see if christy has anything to add to this experiment
this was kind of a pain in the butt really yeah don't pretend it wasn't we've been working on
this for probably four to six months oh at least at least i mean look i i i think that you were
you were successful in your your experiment but would i choose to do it again no no
no um i mean i i love the idea of like the concept of taking something old and modernizing it is
really cool but there is something to be be said for just being able to go and buy the new thing
get it in your house and it works and like and you're done you can kind of move on with your life
i mean what people don't know is how we had to buy more than one pair of the speakers because one
the first pair we bought one of the speakers yeah stopped working
the stands which are really cool but you should know they are aren't they are they are they
vintage or something yes those stands were the stands that you're seeing in the b-roll of this
video are purpose built for the four thousands and i don't know if maybe bang olufsen back in
the 90s didn't manufacture a lot or if people were buying the speakers and not using the stands
choosing to wall mount them or table mount them the stands are insanely hard to get your hands on
and i think they were actually more expensive they were the most expensive thing in this experiment
so when you add the cost of the stands and everything else it could start to border on
is this worth it territory well i mean but if you're really into the if you're really into
the brand and and you like to tinker then i'm sure that the answer to that question will for
you would be absolutely well i mean look had i not wanted to do this experiment out in our main room
i wouldn't have had to hunt the stands down because the 4000s have been my desktop speakers
for you know pretty much all of 2021 it was only when i started to look at them and go i wonder if
we can get close to the 28 did they suddenly stop being what they've always been and needed to be
something else and in that respect yes one of the hardest things to source were the stance now if
you live across the pond if you're over in europe your experience may differ dramatically from mine
oh yeah because b o is basically free over there yeah you guys are just swimming in this stuff but
here in the states on good old ebay or facebook marketplace it is slim pickins um and one of the
the things if you're if you're thinking about doing this if you're like oh well you know what
andrew that looks really good and that kind of a system for less than two thousand dollars appeals
to me uh by all means go for it go for it but understand you're buying something secondhand
you're buying something out of warranty there is a lot of trial and error you may have to rely on
say the larger b o community online to help you out but one of the key things that i will
say about buying vintage b o speakers make sure if you can't see them in person prior to buying
them make sure there are very detailed photos and the number one thing at least for me to look for
is yes they power on but secondly there's no foam rot around the drivers you will find a ton
of b o speakers for cheap on ebay but when you look at the actual drivers themselves they are all
rotted out if you have experience re-foaming drivers knock yourself out go to town
but if you're like me and you're like i can do some diy but i don't want to do all the diy make
sure you buy a pair or pay a little bit more to ensure that you get a pair of four thousand six
thousand eight thousands without any age related rot if you do that these speakers will last
should i i don't want to say it will last a lifetime because one of you is going to
be like i bought one and it died in six months um which actually happened which happened well
okay i have been rocking a pair on my desk like i said every single day for a while and then
one of the amplifiers in that just kind of started to slowly fade away and i could have
just sent that one in for service but it turns out that it was actually cheaper to just go on
ebay find another pair and buy it then repair it so speaks to the cost effectiveness i still have
the broken one by the way i still have the broken one i still plan on fixing it because
it's still a good speaker and maybe i'll use it as a center channel i don't know um
but yeah that's just one of the things to look out for but anyway they it was it was a fun experiment
and i they do sound really good so if you can't afford the brand new bang and all of sins then
this could you give you a good way to experiment one of the things i wanted to ask you though was
is there something current from bno that is similar to the bookshelf speaker they
discontinued it there was a speaker that the that replaced the 4000 um it it was the
oh no the bno fam is going to come for me uh bl blab 17 bo sound 17 um which is the newer
wesa wi-fi enabled version if you will of the 4 thousands but that was recently discontinued and
as of right now there is nothing that is like a direct a descendant of the four thousand now bang
and olufsen and i've even heard some people in the bang olufsen community shout out to you guys um
say that uh the bl sound level which we have we've reviewed on this channel and some of their
new bluetooth speakers are kind of what they're going for as a replacement for the 4000s because
you can pair two of them together for stereo imaging and whatnot and to that and to that degree
um i think i would actually agree i think the bo sound level is probably the closest facsimile to
the old four thousands um it is infinitely more flexible it doesn't require the core and things
like that so if you're looking for something with the same amount of maybe flexibility
with more of that future connectivity options and wireless stuff built in full app support um
yeah a pair of levels probably get the job done yeah yeah the the core not working
like you wanted it to was the biggest that was the biggest disappointment but honestly like did
you really think that they were going to give you that i did i legitimately did um i think i
think that's wishful thinking because then why would people need to buy the new stuff yeah but
i also think that by adding that functionality in um you are giving your existing customer base
more longevity and you can sit there and laugh and be like well at some point we're going to
want them to read up and maybe maybe that's true but i don't know i just it's literally the only
thing missing is the the customization of the eq you still get tone controls but you don't get that
that dsp and uh i really did for a thousand bucks i expected it to be in there yeah i really did
um but node to the rescue man that node is something else i that that's a that's
a decent product we may have to give that a full review who knows yeah all right so that is now uh
my odyssey with with my vintage bang and all this and bo lab 4 thousands what did you guys think
cool experiment wasted my time spent way too much money uh let me know down in the comments below
and while you're down there i have a question of the day for you and that is what older b o
product would you revive in 2022 let me know i am curious uh if you like this video please do
give it a thumbs up like and subscribe go ahead and ring that bell so you're notified when new
videos come out if you use any of the links that christy left for you down below know that that is
a great way that you've continued to show your support for this channel and the work that we
do here and we thank you very much for doing that um follow me on instagram at recovering audiophile
and that is it for us today final video i think of 2021 happy new year to all of you uh so remember
the only person who has to like the sound of your system is you so happy listening
everybody thank you again for watching and we will see you in the new year happy new year bye