Looks, looks and looks. The sound is good and should not be compared with high end speakers for audiophiles.

Price

These speakers are FANTASTIC even though they are over priced if you don't think of them as a piece of artwork as well as speakers. Together with the Beosound 9000 you have a very good sounding music system that looks great. For the few people with highly developed hearing it is not the right speakers. For everyone else (granted that they save up for a while) these are very good speakers.

Sound, Quality, Design & The Finishing Touch

Price

First of all, LISTEN to these speakers. Don't just pop in and have a quick look. Bring your own CD's so you can compare them with the speakers you are used to listen to. If you spend hours of time listening to other speakers then you should do the same and under the same conditions. Maybe the other ones sounded better but maybe you were sitting down in a leather chair in a cubical acoustic room with a glass of champagne in your hand ;-)

It is my experience that a store or reseller is not always the ideal place to spend quality listening time. It depends on various things such as how big the room is. Are the speakers placed in a corner or are they close to a window or are they placed in a cubical room.

When I visited the B&O reseller I was determined to buy the Beolab 4000 series because I thought they simply sounded better then the 8000. This was technically simply impossible. However, since my father has been a B&O owner for several years now, he insisted that I took the Beolab 8000 series because they were simply more powerfull and more impressive.

I must say that I was completely surprised when I got home and installed these speakers. They sounded amazing and completely different then in the store.

And yes, they sound flat sometimes because but if they do then the music was simply recorded that way. Have you ever listened to a classical piece of music like is ment to? If you want more focus then turn up the bass or trebble (that's the reason why they allow you to adjust bass and trebble).

Combined with a Beocenter 3000 it has been worth the money? They sound amazing and they look great. You know, when I moved out from my parents house, I inherited a B&O Television which is about 8 years old now. The cool thing about it is that I still get asked if I bought a new tv. This isn't a Panasonic or Yamaha that you have to hide in some cabinet because you hate looking at it after a year. These things are timeless and that is what you are paying for as well.