The BeoPlay H8 headphones are scheduled to be released on Feb. 26 with an MSRP of $499. Expect Amazon.com to offer them at a lower price eventually.
They’re wireless Bluetooth ‘phones with Active Noise Canceling and a built-in microphone making it possible to use them for iPhone voice and Face Time calls. In short, they do pretty much everything I can imagine headphones doing.
I’m listening to Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Fourth Movement at the moment and the sound is phenomenal in its range and subtlety. The sound reproduction is what I would call “neutral” without the amped up bass so common with ‘phones aimed at the younger hip-hop crowd. These are headphones for grownups.
And I am a grownup.
The controls on the right earpad are highly intuitive and it took me no time at all to navigate them with ease.
I’ve been a headphone junkie ever since my first encounter with a pair at a listening post in a Lafayette, Ind. music store around 1958. The ability to hear the music with proper dynamics and spatial imaging blew me away like no experience with speakers ever could.
And the Bang & Olufsen H8s are the best I’ve ever heard. They are showing me things in my music I never knew were there.
Bang & Olufsen is a Danish company known for high quality audio products with distinctive design features. So far as I know, this is their first Bluetooth headphone offering and it sounds like they got it very very right.
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