Hi all,
Today I dropped by my B&O dealer and low and behold, the BL11 was just in! The dealer was kind enough to hand one over to me so I could test it at home. I'll have to return it on Tuesday, but I guess I won't. The only thing he's going to get on Tuesday is my payment, because WOW what an improvement this is!
For your information, I'm using a BV7 with BL7.1, BL6000's as front speakers an BL4000's as rears.
The first thing I noticed was that I didn't really notice the sub at all. But what I DID notice was that my BL6000's sounded like they never, ever did before. I never knew their midrange and their highs were so good. In fact, they never were, until I connected the BL11. The soundstage has improved a lot as well: instead of one wall of sound, which the 6000's usually produce, all instruments seem much better placed now and much better to discern from each other.
I expected a sub to be a huge improvement on the lowend, but the greatest improvement seems to be on the mid and high. Weird.
But now, about the lowend. The BL11 definitely is not a vicious thunder cloud. But... what it IS, in my opinion, is a bass producer with laser precision. Bass tended to be kind of a mess on the BL6000 (on some songs, like George Michael's Freeek, it was just a bunch of rumble). The BL11 does a much, much better job. Bass really is razor sharp, but not thunder strong.
I also watched one movie tonight, James Bond's Casino Royale, and in this mode (speaker 5) effects where the same as in speaker 2 for music. Much better placement of all sounds, bullets flying through the room with a lot more precision than ever before.
The overall feel of the addition of the BL11 to the set described above is, that the music just flows out a lot more naturally. The BL6000's seem to be tired to play the music, while with the added BL11 they're a lot more happy, and so am I 🙂.
Finally, a test I did was the following. Sometimes I used to switch from speaker 2 to speaker 1 (so using the BL7.1 instead of the BL6000) and sound always was a huge improvement on the high-end. No doubt at all. Now, with the added BL11, this is not the case anymore, by far. The highs are comparable. But the BL6000+BL11 combination does sound a lot better on the mid and low-end.
So, to summarize: the BL11 breaths an incredible lot of new life in the BL6000's. It won't add the big thunder boom, but it does improve sound on the complete spectrum to a level which I never thought possible with the BL6000's.
And even the wife likes its looks!
100% recommended for 'smaller' speaker owners.
