Beolab 17 vs Beolab 9 – no comparison?
These are very different speakers so they cannot be compared – or so you might think.
But that’s exactly the position in which I found myself and I’d be interested to see what others who have heard both speakers think.
I wanted some smaller speakers to replace my sonically perfect but too large Focal Diva Utopia.
I was prepared to sacrifice some sound quality and after a lot of looking, came up with BL9 and BL17 on the shortlist. I wasn’t going specifically for B&O, there just seemed to be no other options.
A friend has a pair of the BL9 and I have always been impressed by their effortless power and tautness BUT whenever I heard the BL9, I also found the treble to have a harsh edge. Coming from the Utopias I thought this was perhaps not surprising as I had got used to the super smooth Be tweeter on the Utopias, which are renowned for being very sweet while still utterly revealing.
I then saw a rave youtube review of the BL17. But I almost ruled them out straight away as they only have a 6” bass speaker – far too tiny for my large room I thought.
Happily a local dealer had both some second-user BL17 and BL9 on demo so I went along.
My conclusion
- BL9 tweeter definitely harsh – not just down to the individual pair owned by my friend
- BL17 completely amazing, no treble harshness while every bit as open as the Utopias.
- BL17 did not sound small! It wasn’t a case of “For a small speaker, these are great” They were just fantastic.
Yes the BL17 do lose out on the full scale of the BL9 but that’s a small price to pay.
So – I have the 17’s and I have paired them with a Rel sub (S5) which adds the bottom end power that the BL17 lack on their own. The BL17 do go very low but not with huge power
So – I’m curious to know what do others think about the BL9 vs BL17?
And does the BL20 have a better tweeter than BL9?
These are very different speakers so they cannot be compared – or so you might think.
But that’s exactly the position in which I found myself and I’d be interested to see what others who have heard both speakers think.
I wanted some smaller speakers to replace my sonically perfect but too large Focal Diva Utopia.
I was prepared to sacrifice some sound quality and after a lot of looking, came up with BL9 and BL17 on the shortlist. I wasn’t going specifically for B&O, there just seemed to be no other options.
A friend has a pair of the BL9 and I have always been impressed by their effortless power and tautness BUT whenever I heard the BL9, I also found the treble to have a harsh edge. Coming from the Utopias I thought this was perhaps not surprising as I had got used to the super smooth Be tweeter on the Utopias, which are renowned for being very sweet while still utterly revealing.
I then saw a rave youtube review of the BL17. But I almost ruled them out straight away as they only have a 6” bass speaker – far too tiny for my large room I thought.
Happily a local dealer had both some second-user BL17 and BL9 on demo so I went along.
My conclusion
- BL9 tweeter definitely harsh – not just down to the individual pair owned by my friend
- BL17 completely amazing, no treble harshness while every bit as open as the Utopias.
- BL17 did not sound small! It wasn’t a case of “For a small speaker, these are great” They were just fantastic.
Yes the BL17 do lose out on the full scale of the BL9 but that’s a small price to pay.
So – I have the 17’s and I have paired them with a Rel sub (S5) which adds the bottom end power that the BL17 lack on their own. The BL17 do go very low but not with huge power
So – I’m curious to know what do others think about the BL9 vs BL17?
And does the BL20 have a better tweeter than BL9?
