Alex wrote:

Apples and Oranges sonically.

The B&Ws focus more on time-domain distortion (transparency, resolution etc...) while the BeoLabs are more about tonality, off-axis response etc...

I wouldn't really want to say one is better than the other, although the 802D really is especially superb...

I'd generally agree.  

This is an interesting thread to follow, as whilst I've been a B&W fan for many years, I've also become a fan of B&O's ALT speakers in particular - the Lab 3's, 9's, and of course the 5's.

From a design perspective there are considerable differences.  

Active v's passive amplification/operation is the main one; however the benefits of the B&O active design with onboard electronics extend beyond the advantages of merely active crossovers, to thermal protection for the drivers, Adaptive Bass Linearisation, Room adaption re the bass output tailored for different placement options, and of course the Acoustic Lenses Technology.

By comparison, and as a passive design, the B&W's are much more conventional electronically; however the cabinets and driver design are arguably state of the art.  The Matrix cabinet construction is arguably as good as it gets for an essentially wooden box loudspeaker design re the lower bass cabinet with respect to rigidity and vanishingly low cabinet readout, and the separate marlin head for the midrange driver on the top models is again ultra rigid and ultra low distortion as regards cabinet 'readout' and absorbing unwanted rear radiation from the midrange driver itself.

The drivers themselves are all proprietary to B&W, and again arguably state of the art.  The bass drivers feature 'Rohacell' - essentially a hard polystyrene core, laminated in carbon fibre - B&W claim a 10db reduction of unwanted rear sound radiation coming back out through the driver compared to 'conventional' paper/kevlar drivers.  The midrange is a FST or Fixed suspension Transducer - there is no conventional rubber roll surround to feed back standing waves into the cone as per conventional drivers - the cone edge is simply terminated on a compressed foam surround.  The tweeter features a Vapour deposited manufactured diamond cone that allows tweeter breakup to be pushed well outside the audio band.  Additionally the tweeter and midrange drivers are all mechanically decoupled from the deleterious effects of modulation via cabinet vibration from the bass enclosure and from each other by Iosgel - a gel like substance enclosed in rubber and used as an insulator between drivers and cabinets.

B&W have published white papers on their design features, and I have briefly summarised the main ones them here.  Certainly unless there are design specifications to the contrary available from B&O, I would opinion that as far as design features are concerned, the B&O ALT designs are likely ahead as regards active amplification and control electronics, plus of course the unique and proprietary ALT lenses, but the B&W designs are ahead on driver and cabinet design.  B&O do not state whose OEM drivers they use and are likely bought in perhaps off the shelf, or maybe custom made to their designs - does anyone know who makes the drivers for Lab 9's and 5's and of what materials they are made of for instance?  

B&O state their cabinet design/materials for the Lab 9 and Lab 5 as being of a composite material - reviews call it plastic, but composite as a descriptive term covers many materials, and again whilst this allows them to move away from conventional cabinet forms oft dictated by wood products, whether there are any acoustic advantages in designing in composite materials is an unknown in lieu of white papers or other technical information from B&O.  

I have been told by a dealer that in the Lab 5 B&O use similar techniques to B&W re the isogel isolation of mechanical modulation effects from the cabinets being transmitted to the drivers, but I have no technical resources available to be able to verify this, so it may have merely been invention on the part of the dealer.  Does anyone have a definitive answer to this?

All in all then, from a design viewpoint, cabinet and driver design appears to favour B&W, with electronics, active amplification and the ALT lenses favouring the B&O.  That leaves us with measurement and listening..... which I am sure there are many here who could contribute much more relevant information than myself....

Best Regards

John.... 

Beoboiinoz wrote:

I'd generally agree.  

This is an interesting thread to follow, as whilst I've been a B&W fan for many years, I've also become a fan of B&O's ALT speakers in particular - the Lab 3's, 9's, and of course the 5's.

From a design perspective there are considerable differences.  

...

All in all then, from a design viewpoint, cabinet and driver design appears to favour B&W, with electronics, active amplification and the ALT lenses favouring the B&O.  That leaves us with measurement and listening..... which I am sure there are many here who could contribute much more relevant information than myself....

Best Regards

John.... 

A good post - and yes B&W's driver technology really is superb! The Diamond tweeters really do what they say on the tin!

And btw, don't worry John, I haven't forgotten your email, it's just quite long and taking me a while to come up with a good response! 😂

Good point,but a collegue of mine recently placed a 700W Pass X350.5 with his 802D and still did not get the result he expected on many fronts in an average size living room.It is rare to find a BL9/5 owner seeking out more of the same and most are just happy with them which speaks volumes.

The other issue is the cost to performance ratio,the timbral accuracy achieved with ALT is pretty hard to match for the relatively small outlay.The 802D are over 10k and then theres the rest of it so really it is a 20k set up versus sub 10k set up.

There really is no point comparing because it all comes down to personal preference.

As a previous owner of the B&W 802 and now the BL5 I can say both a fantastic loudspeakers! However, in my room setup the BL5 is able to perform closer to their limits than the 802 due the Bass adjustment. The 802 just had to much of it...

From my expierence I like the lows of the BL5 more than  the 802, the mids better with the 802 but the hights especially with the D version are (at least for me) a little bit to much.

In my new house the BL5 are the better package for me , if I still would have a room to accommodate the 802 I think would not have sold them.

wonderfulelectric wrote:

B&O uses paper and cloth materials for speaker diaphragms which are superior to the diamond or the metal materials in terms of self damping/ time distortion. The fact that the Beolab 9s are sloped at an angle too place a part.

B&O has a reputation of sounding crisp and incessant in the higher registers whereas B&W speakers favor neutrality but is notorious for the lack of integration between the different speaker units that are made of vastly different materials. 

 

Good post Alex.

I am under the understanding that B&O uses silk dome tweeters in the Lab 3, 9 & 5 - but have no knowledge of whether they are an in-house or OEM device, and if so who they are made by - perhaps dynaudio or scanspeak?  I am unaware of the driver materials for the bass or midrange, but paper is certainly a traditional, if conventional in the 21st century, favourite - again I wonder if they are in-house or OEM drivers and again who might make them.

In the 800 series B&W are using their own proprietary drivers - Rohacell for the bass drivers, Kevlar for the midrange and vapour deposited, manufactured diamond domes for the tweeters.  Are these materials inferior to paper and cloth re self damping/time distortion? - I would've thought the newer materials might(?) be better, but have no facts to support an argument either way.

I'd agree that the Lab 9's would have physical time alignment via the cabinet slope, and would think the rounded shape much better than a flat wooden/MDF baffle as regards standing waves/reflections to colour the sound.

I have extensively listened to the previous Nautilus 802 and would agree entirely as to your comments about the sound lacking integration and coherence between the drivers.  However, the latest 800 series would appear to be somewhat better going from reviews; personally I've only heard up to the new 803d as far as the new diamond tweeter models of the range, and thought it much better at integration and coherence/timing than the previous Nautilus 802.

If you have any knowledge as to who makes the drivers for the Lab 3's, 9's and 5's I'd be very interested in that info.

Best Regards

John... 🙂

DirtyDiana wrote:

Good point,but a collegue of mine recently placed a 700W Pass X350.5 with his 802D and still did not get the result he expected on many fronts in an average size living room.It is rare to find a BL9/5 owner seeking out more of the same and most are just happy with them which speaks volumes.

The other issue is the cost to performance ratio,the timbral accuracy achieved with ALT is pretty hard to match for the relatively small outlay.The 802D are over 10k and then theres the rest of it so really it is a 20k set up versus sub 10k set up.

There really is no point comparing because it all comes down to personal preference.

 

 

One of the drawbacks undoubtedly of the 800 series, is that they reputedly require a lot of current to drive them to get the best out of them.  

That means adding commensurately to the cost as a finished speaker/amplifier combination as you clearly point out.  Here in Australia, the 804d is A$12,000.00 and the 803d is A$16,000.00 - both straddling the B&O Lab 9 at A$13,500.00.  

If one was to stretch to 802d's you'd need A$25,000.00 and for the flagship 800d, A$37,000.00 - again straddling a B&O Lab 5 at A$30,000.00.

Of course, if you want the best out of them, the importer and retailer would strongly recommend the likes of Classe CA-M600 monoblocks at A$11,500.00 each, which means an pair of 802d's is going to set you back circa A$48,000.00 if you want to pair them with the 'best' amplification for example.  This is one of the reasons why, IMHO I feel the B&O Lab 5's, despite their formidable cost, are a relative performance bargain in the world of specialist so called high end HiFi.

"There really is no point comparing because it all comes down to personal preference"

I gave this quite a bit of thought, because whilst in principle I agree as regards living in the practical real word, the purist and idealist in me wants to know what is the best speaker between two arguably formidable range of speakers - the B&O ALT Lab series v's the B&W 800 series - by design and engineering details, and measurement and audio assessment, - where the bottom line is which speaker gets closest to the most accurate reproduction of an original musical event - i.e the original tenet of Hifi - the closest approach to the original sound.

Whether we will be able to discuss all the objective details here such as to reach any sort of conclusion is a difficult one though..... 😮

Best Regards

John.... 🙂

Beoboiinoz wrote:

 

I gave this quite a bit of thought, because whilst in principle I agree as regards living in the practical real word, the purist and idealist in me wants to know what is the best speaker between two arguably formidable range of speakers - the B&O ALT Lab series v's the B&W 800 series - by design and engineering details, and measurement and audio assessment, - where the bottom line is which speaker gets closest to the most accurate reproduction of an original musical event - i.e the original tenet of Hifi - the closest approach to the original sound.

Whether we will be able to discuss all the objective details here such as to reach any sort of conclusion is a difficult one though..... 😮

Best Regards

 

John.... 🙂

 

Yes yes yes! I agree with this, very diplomatic of you. My opinion is going to be Beolab 5. When the eyes are closed, i have not heard any other speaker sound so real like BL5.

Interesting debate, but I must admit that I join the "apples vs oranges" team : comparing a pair of active speaker to a pair of passive speaker is very difficult.

With Beolab 9, if you don't win sonically (not so sure...), you are certain that you get the best from them at every volume due to active amplification tailor-made to the speakers and, maybe as important, active crossovers. What amplifier would you pair with a pair of 800? And even if it's a superb Classe  monoblock, it may sound incredibly great at a specified volume, but become flat at a lower volume...

So... You may get a better sound with a 800 series, but you will spend a lot of time and money to get it.

mbee wrote:

With Beolab 9, if you don't win sonically (not so sure...), you are certain that you get the best from them at every volume due to active amplification tailor-made to the speakers and, maybe as important, active crossovers.

There is little doubt that technically speaking, active beats passive, all other things being equal.  

Personally however, I doubt that a Beolab 9 is likely to 'outdo' an B&W 802d - for that I think you'd likely need to be looking at a Lab 5; however I would think that the Lab 9 would be more than competitive with either the B&W 804D or its slightly bigger brother, the 803D.

Alex has mentioned that he knew of a customer who preferred an Beolab 3 to an B&W 804 - whether that was the latest diamond model though I am not sure.... perhaps he could comment?

Best Regards

John... 🙂