Great threed.

It is very hard to tell about BL5 and BL9, they are speak for themselves ....

One thing I can mention is, that I was test-compare them with my friend's BL5's in Ljubljana last weekend, it was side by side comparation in the home environment, and .... no one will believe me right now but there is so SMALL difference between them! I was expected huge difference, but not ... I will put this way, up to volume 40 you can not tell the difference, the are absolutely the same ! above 40 up to 65 the only thing you hear is little bit more bass ( it is hard to believe, but I was witness to that ), above 60 ( you must agree that only 2% of the time you listen music above 60 ) Bl5 dominate with stronger bass which put your kidney up to your neck ( I like my kidneys to stay as they are ) ....

simply BL9 are the best speaker for that money I ever heard ...

And BL5 is .... astonishing !

Hi Rookie

How did the BL5's sound with the BL2? I have one that i'm thinking of adding, even though it seems so wrong :)

ollie75 wrote:

Hi Rookie

How did the BL5's sound with the BL2? I have one that i'm thinking of adding, even though it seems so wrong :)

It is not wrong, it is utter, utter madness. 😁

You have 2 large subwoofers already - omnipoles, with tremendous power behind them. They can deliver, just check your setup and find what's wrong.

For instance - you could try Pure Music. It's free for a two week trial period, and it has EQ-filtering possibilities that will add whatever oomph you are missing now, in selected frequency ranges.

I had our BL5's connected via the digital link and wasn't completely happy with the sound as I couldn't adjust the tone controls.

I now run the speakers on Powerlink alone and have the bass up one notch but no loudness. This is likely not as B&O intends and probably considered blasphemy to the purists but to my ears I like the sound this way.

The sound that the 5's produce from a CD or movie still amazes me. They are by far my favourite piece of B&O and they still bring a smile to my face when we sit down for a good listen to some music.

But at the end of the day if a pair of BL4000's or a pair of BL9's sound better to your ears go for it as you are the one that will be listening to them.

Peter

Hearing is individual and very subjective!

While person A thinks "wow, my speakers sound amazing!", person B just thinks "I wouldn't buy them even for ONE Euro!".

So why don't you accept when Razlaws ears tell him: "I don't like the speakers"? You can't except that the music sounds the same for another person as it sounds for you :)

If he's disappointed from the Beolab 5 it shouldn't be a problem. Perhaps you should try out the listening experience at home and if you aren't convinced: Buy another speaker system. No problem. Everybody should only buy the speakers he's comfortable with :)

If you're happy with a valve amp and some Nubert speakers connected to a Beosound 3000: Just be happy with it :)

So, enjoy YOUR speakers and have a nice weekend while sharing the same B&O passion.

Not sure who you're responding to, TWG, but as you'll see earlier in the thread, I'm making the recommendation that people should go with the speakers they are comfortable with, and not take something home that they hope they'll get accustomed to or grow to like. "Listening ease" is very important - you need to feel at ease with the components you are listening to, in order to enjoy the music.

When that is said, it's also possible to question a decision to add a BL2 to BL5s. If one feels a need for that, then the dealer doesn't know how to set up the BL5s, or something is wrong with them. Think about it - to send the low frequencies to a separate sub, you are decoupling the subwoofers on the BL5s and taking them out of the action. Two enormous subwoofers, each moving 1.8 litres of air per pulse, providing you with the added precision of having two subwoofers where your other drivers are ...

Of course, the dealer might be happy if they get to sell a subwoofer together with a pair of speakers that have 2xsubwoofers and 2xwoofers ... 😁

A simple control of your playback, would be to use the Audio Filters in Pure Music, from ChannelD. This is playback software with a number of very good features. It has a two-week free trial period.

Using Audio Setup on Pure Music, you can access the Audio Filters feature. There, you can choose a number of parametric filters, and tweak the power of frequency ranges that you specify (or just use the graphic equalizer for a quick and dirty test).

After your BL5s are calibrated to the room, you can then enhance how they perform in particular regions of their frequency range - and you can easily bypass your settings, to compare before and after.

15 days free tryout here - for Mac OSX: http://www.channld.com/puremusic/

For fun I set my BL5s to extinguish the flame in a Stelton-lamp I had in my listening room.

Sorry Folks, I feel really stupid to ask this question. Is it important how the BL5 mains are connected? I'm thinking, if the direction of the socket influence the fase of the drivers? My instinct says of course... But then again, if really so, I think the first advice to someone experiencing low bass output would be. "Do a 180 on one of the mains sockets!" 

I'm one of those who have been experiencing bass output less than desired on my BL5s. Today I finally got some measurements with my Behringer ECM8000 mic and FuzzMeasure Pro 3 and I must say, that the results of the first measurements done with both speakers doing a sinesweep simultanously showed a result much to my expectations. Really low bass below 400hz. Result inserted below.

After doing this I got the idea to change the mains socket direction on one of the speakers. The result was very different, indeed! It's overall linear though it has significant dips and highs, but probably nothing you wouldn't expect from a livingroom with no acoustic treament at all. Measurements where similar to what a measured on each speaker sweeping individually.

I have not seen this discussed before and not mentioned in the Belab 5 user manual, so I look forward to your comments. If it's left up to chance to turn both mains sockets in the same direction, I have been among the unlucky 50% until now!

Btw. My measurements was done from a mac mini connected to the bl5s with spdif through a tc eectronics firewire interface. 

Login to view image

kimchr wrote:

Sorry Folks, I feel really stupid to ask this question. Is it important how the BL5 mains are connected? I'm thinking, if the direction of the socket influence the fase of the drivers? My instinct says of course... But then again, if really so, I think the first advice to someone experiencing low bass output would be. "Do a 180 on one of the mains sockets!"

I'm one of those who have been experiencing bass output less than desired on my BL5s. Today I finally got some measurements with my Behringer ECM8000 mic and FuzzMeasure Pro 3 and I must say, that the results of the first measurements done with both speakers doing a sinesweep simultanously showed a result much to my expectations. Really low bass below 400hz. Result inserted below.

After doing this I got the idea to change the mains socket direction on one of the speakers. The result was very different, indeed! It's overall linear though it has significant dips and highs, but probably nothing you wouldn't expect from a livingroom with no acoustic treament at all. Measurements where similar to what a measured on each speaker sweeping individually.

I have not seen this discussed before and not mentioned in the Belab 5 user manual, so I look forward to your comments. If it's left up to chance to turn both mains sockets in the same direction, I have been among the unlucky 50% until now!

Btw. My measurements was done from a mac mini connected to the bl5s with spdif through a tc eectronics firewire interface.

 

I can't think of a single potential reason why this would be true - the first thing that happens in the mains path after entering the BL5 is that it is converted to DC.

How repeatable are your measurements - if you repeat the test how much variation do you get, test to test? Were you standing in exactly the same position for each test?

Has someone already done a blind test (I actually mean blindfolded) between BeoLab 9 and BeoLab 5 in the same room with the same music connected to the same system? Comparing BeoLab 9 at home with BeoLab 5 somewhere else is never a good test! It is like comparing for instance an Audi A4 with an Audi A8 and saying that the A4 has a better drive, but not saying that you drove the A4 on a smooth road and the A8 on a cobblestone road...... 

What also is important and what B&O does not say is that BeoLab 5 can be calibrated in ALMOST every room, in some conditions you simply cannot get the optimal result. But in those cases you will also not get the optimal result with any other speaker!