Does a lot, costs even more
Anyone out there still thinking that B&O are a bit of a stuffy, sniffy bunch who'd rather cut off their expensively dressed arm than make a music system for 'PC music files' is in for a shock today.
For B&O has informed us that from March next year it's going to be rolling out a music system designed to deliver premium playback and easy organisation of all your audio files courtesy of an innovative new operating system and a huge 500GB hard drive.
The BeoSound 5, as this premium digital music player will be known, is based around a really rather cool-looking, full-colour LCD screen interface, navigated by a funky aluminium wheel and pointer system on the right-hand side.
Not surprisingly this svelte control device is not actually where the 500GB of music files get stored, though. They go on the BeoMaster 5, which is essentially an accompanying 'big black box' designed to sit in a cupboard or kit rack somewhere while you use the BeoSound 5 interface unit to impress the neighbours.
Connections on the BeoMaster unit include three USB 2.0 ports and an ethernet jack, with supported audio formats including WMA, WMA Lossless, MP3, WAV, ASF and AAC, together with internet radio streams in WMA, MP3, ASX and M3U.
Learning to like the same music you do
The support for lossless music playback appears to keep B&O's hi-fi credentials intact, while extra innovation comes from a nifty algorithm dubbed More Of The Same that allows the system to automatically detect similar pieces of music based around parameters such as rhythm, syncopation, key tonality and vocal harmonies.
Whether this music-searching system is actually any more effective than other similar systems that have been tried over the years remains to be seen. Though apparently More Of The Same has won some award or other, so we guess it might have more going for it than most.
If this all sounds irresistible to you and the credit crunch is just something that's happening to other people, the BeoSound 5 will be available from March for around £3,500.
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