Beo Player

Beo Player is a free mp3 player made by Bang & Olufsen for Windows. The program is currently in its 5th version, now with support for picture management since the 4th version. There is no video playing capability yet, and it is likely that Bang & Olufsen won’t include video playing at least in the near future.

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Despite in version 5, the program has not much changes since the very first one. It still retaining the same look, and as expected, there is no EQ control at all. This may be surprising for many but Bang & Olufsen claimed that this player produce “honest sound” so there is no need for an equalizer. This might be true considering that Bang & Olufsen is well known for producing premium-priced audio-video products as well as being one of the oldest consumer electronic company that still survive since the World War II (they made the communication radio for the war veterans on that time!). Perhaps even their physical products range don’t have EQ as well? Who knows, unless we buy them and have a try ourselves, but that is not likely since the price to pay may cost us both of our arms and legs. Even their 256 MB mp3 player costs more than the latest generation of iPod (which have tens more of gigabytes for your music at the same price)! Luxury, quality or stupidity? Anyways, just live it at that.

As mentioned earlier, Bang & Olufsen claimed the player to have the most honest sound (playing the music as it was recorded). Well, at least it is true at both theoretical and software level but not in practice. In the test, Beo Player was compared head to head with other 2 much-loved players, namely iTunes and Winamp. Since Beo Player does not come with any EQ, so to make the competition fair, both Winamp and iTunes EQ are disabled. During the test, there was no noticeable difference or perhaps no difference at all between those players when playing music. Therefore, Bang & Olufsen’s claim of the so-called “honest sound” is not necessarily true. If it is just about being minimalized player, even low profile players like Freeamp and Liteamp do much better, and both of the latter even comes with EQ. Bang & Olufsen seems to have bad karma with EQ and mysteriously keeps avoiding to incorporate that feature in their products range. Music may need to be listened as it was intended but it is a fact that different people have different hearings. Therefore some people may need enhanced bass or treble in order to enjoy the music. iTunes is better in providing this, by allowing different songs to have different EQ settings; perhaps because different music needs different adjustment? Winamp also can be enhanced to do the similar thing by using the RTEQ plugin (Realtime Equalizer), a kind of dynamic equalizer that adjusted automatically based on initial user settings. The reason of this one is, on the hand might be “because different parts of music need different sets of equalizer settings”? Again, just leave it at that for now.

Beo Player also is not really having small footprint. It occupies almost 80 MB of disk space upon installation and another 8 MB of system memory when running idle. Not to mention the 30 MB requirement of system resources when playing the music. 8 MB is maybe small enough for a media player but to run on, Beo Player needs a background program called Beotray that occupies 5 MB of system memory. That is ridiculous for being a background program, especially for something that only appear on system tray and only have the ‘Exit’ command. It should have occupied smaller resource or at least do more things than just closing the program.

The interface is prretty simple but may be confusing and not straight forward for first timer. Unlike any other existing media player out there, it has no application window at all. All there are only vertical autohiding player bar on the righthand side of the screen and the autohiding library bar on the other. The info and scan ‘window’ only appear between these bars, covering the entire screen when you click on the assosicated buttons. The available buttons are the resemblance of those found on BeoSound 2000 (mp3 player) and Beo remote control. You might not have the slightest idea to know what this and that button do unless you are ready to experimenting with them, and there is no tooltip to guide you. Luckily, just like the buttons on iPod, there are very few of them on Beo Player and you’ll master them in no time. There’s also a cool-looking and extensive help file should you need assistance, and the guide is also available in several European languages as well, if English is not for you (not surprising as Bang & Olufsen is based in Germany after all).

On functionality, the player also features speedy CD ripping, one of the feature should hae been found in any media player these days, although Winamp still shamefully offer restrictive function for that (the full speed ripping is locked until you purchase it! Damn!). Media is added to the library by scanning the hard drive and there is no way to selectively scan only certain folders so you will have to wait longer if you have your music scattered in your local disk. Songs are divided by Playlists, Albums, Genres, Artists, Folders and Titles. The library looks pleasing too, as if it is an AJAX website. It also features album art display, if you have any (you should have, if your mp3s are original!).

The most annying part of this player is the software keeps bugging you to register before you could run it, although this can be skipped by simply canceling the process. This is weird for a free software to do, and Bang & Olufsen should know there are many people who choose to stay completely in privacy by refusing to register any software at all. If you are lucky, you’ll see the window with the checkbox “Stop reminding me” after several times (usually when it detected active internet connection). Choose it and the bugging registration window will gone and you can continue using the software. However, some people may not lucky enough where the player refuses to run. This usually occur you refuse to register when the internet connection is present. In this case, those who are on older Windows will be out of luck but for Windows XP and Vista user, if you still despereately need to run this software, you can just create another user account and use it there (regardless the privileges).

Overall, this player may get 2.5 points out of 10 and is not really recommended for those who used to EQ-enhanced music.

Get Beo Player here:
https://www.bang-olufsen.com/beoplayer/software-downloads