Beolab 5 reliability?

78 replies
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So if B&O can refurbish a BL5 chassis, why can’t a service center?

Hi Mr anders,

Which year are your BL5 MK2 ?

Cheers,

 

I have been thinking about this specific topic for a long time, maybe now is the right time to bring it up... I'm curious if anyone else has considered the same thing.

As a person who also wants a pair of BeoLab 5s eventually, I also have the fear of buying something that will have a huge, costly repair ahead. 

At any rate, the idea popped into my head that it could be possible to break this cycle by building/procuring a set of amps and a DSP to use externally from the speaker itself. This is an ambitious project and I know its much more difficult (and possibly more expensive) than an official chassis replacement but it could also add to the flexibility and maybe even ease of use to the system.

I know this method would compromise many parts of the speaker (performance and features) without expert implementation but it is technically an alternative. Who's interested in an open source BeoLab 5?? 😁 

Location: San Francisco

I'm an automotive audio and acoustic engineer. I design loudspeakers and full sound systems for new automobiles. I also dabble with studio, consumer and pro audio projects from time to time.

I've build speakers myself for about roughly 30 years ago.
My experience was that you when you start such a project, you will always have the question on how to improve the sound during listening sessions. 

So, I ended up buying a set of Beovox S45-2's at that time. What a revelation it was. Proper designed, build and tuned at the Cube.

Just my thought.

Location: Utrecht

Quite a challenge to achieve "Less is More" while having the Beovirus.
GuyHUI wrote:

Hi Mr anders,

Which year are your BL5 MK2 ?

Cheers,

BV10 46" - BL8000 - BL4000 - BL2 - BS Ouverture

Hi!

MK2

My BL5s are from 2003. I bought them as demo models from my dealer in 2005.

One of them had two repairs since then - first in 2008 - this was 250 euros for the chassis - I had to pay nothing for the work....

Next exchange was in 2018 - this time I had to pay 1500 euros :(

So, all in all, repair costs were 1750 euros - this is less than 10% of the prize new in 17 years.

If my car had repairs less than 10% of the prize in 17 years I would call it reliable.

And so are my BL5s.

No, they are not for sale:)

Stefan

 

Mikipidia wrote:
Obviously it’s not a foolproof manner, but it makes the mic think the room is bigger as not all the bass comes back 😎 it’s one of those roundabout way of doing it if you either don’t want to fully clear the filters or take them to a bigger room or outside. It works but outcomes may vary 😎

Hello Mikipedia,

I have seen many of your videos on your Youtube Channel.

May be you can help me to get these answers regarding the BL5 Year of production and its MK version.

  • MK1 : From 2003 to 20xx ?
  • MK2 : From 20xx to 20xx ?
  • MK3 : From 20xx to 20xx ?
  • MK4 : From 20xx to 2017 ?
More detail in this thread :
Iam getting help finding out.

The answer so far is that there are only mk1 and mk2

Mk1 went to ~2006

Mk2 started with pin code from ~2006

This is preliminairy and i’ll post it when i know more info. Later sw versions don’t count as “mk’s” as the hardware stayed (mostly?) the same.

Hope that helps for now?

Thanks for your help.

That's a good start to understand how MK version rules are made.

It seems B&0 retaielrs spoke abut MK3 and MK4.

 

Thanks Mikipidia, very helpfull answer.

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