Hi,

Of course I can't answer the "what's next" questions - but I'd like to address a couple of things that you mention.

The first is the statement that I said it is a speaker for people with friends. This is only part of the story. The Beolab 90 has a selectable directivity and a selectable room compensation. Therefore, if you are home alone, and actively listening to music, you can put it in "Narrow" mode, with an ARC (Active Room Compensation) for the sweet spot, and get a listening experience for one. Then, if friends come to visit, you can put it in "Wide" mode, and choose an ARC setting for a larger listening area to optimise the experience for a wider group. The two experiences are very different, but each is best suited to the situation. In other words, it's a one-chair-no-friends loudspeaker AND a social-listening-with-friends loudspeaker AND a party loudspeaker - all selectable (or automate-able by source) in real time.

The 360 degree sound is not really true (except in Omni mode). The drivers facing to the sides and rear are primarily there to control the directivity of the loudspeaker - in some frequency bands, the drivers are "absorbing" (actually cancelling) the sound in some directions to reduce the energy sent towards the walls. Yes, this takes more energy, however, at typical listening levels, you're probably talking in the range of approximately 200 W per loudspeaker. The 18,000 W peak is there if you need it, but that's only true for a peak (as stated in the Technical Sound Guide, you can get 18 kW for less than 1 ms).

I also can't answer your questions about surround. However, I can say that, in order for the directivity control to work, you have to be at least about 1.5 m from the loudspeaker. So, if you're thinking of using Beolab 90's as surround loudspeakers, unless you can put them more than 1.5 m from the listening position, I would suggest that you consider a different solution.

It calibrates itself to a room (or, an area within a room - it's up to you) using a microphone and running a calibration sequence. You (or your installer) decides where to place the microphone (you can make multiple measurements) to optimise not only for the room, but a specific location or locations within it.

To understand the technologies inside the loudspeaker better, and to get an idea of how it would be used in "real life", I would recommend that you read the Technical Sound Guide for the Beolab 90. It's available

Michael wrote:

In the demonstration video Geoff talks about it as a speaker for people with friends. It probably is a good way to describe the speakers features but - do you really need a super car expensive speaker to enjoy music with friends?

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the post, I think it will trigger an interesting discussion and I will look forward to hearing everyone's opinions.

Just to pick up on the point above - one of the truly unique features of the BL90 is the variable beam width.

Geoff describes it better than I ever could but the problem that the BL90 has been designed to overcome here is that for listening on your own, in a chair in a fixed position, with no 'friends' in the room, you want a very narrow beam angle. This reduces reflections from the walls and allows you to place the position of each instrument very precisely as if you were sat in the room where the recording was made.

A number of "audiophile" manufacturers have produced speakers like this. The problem is that whilst they sound great in that one listening position, the narrow beam angle means they sound poor in any other position (or to your friends, unless you give up your seat to them!).

So when you have friends visiting, or are moving around, you want a wider beam angle. Most speakers are manufactured with a somewhat wider beam angle than the type mentioned above for this reason, and the ALT on the BL5 is particularly good at giving this "all around" sound, but this comes at a cost - you no longer have that ability to pinpoint all the instruments in the original recording whilst sat in your favourite listening position, so you lose the ability to close your eyes and imagine the performers are stood there in front of you.

The BL90 is unique in allowing either option, so you no longer need to choose to buy one type of speaker or the other (narrow vs wide beam angle), you can simply switch between these modes with the press of a button.

The cost of the BL90 is undoubtedly outside of the budget of many people and depending on the level of sales, I'd imagine it is entirely possible the product in isolation will not cover it's own R&D costs - but these technologies will without doubt filter down into other products in time so some of these costs can ultimately be offset against these subsequent products too. You can think of this in a similar way to Formula One, the costs for a manufacturer to compete are huge, but at the same time it pushes the technological boundaries by driving the R&D side of the business whilst simultaneously working as a marketing tool to drive sales of their other products. Actually, perhaps the Bugatti Veyron is an even better example if we're comparing to the motor industry.

Kind Regards,

Martin.

riverstyx wrote:

Geoff describes it better than I ever could

Hmm, not only did Geoff prove me right, but he beat me to it by a decent margin. That'll teach me to stop for a cuppa half way through writing a post 😁

riverstyx wrote:

Hmm, not only did Geoff prove me right, but he beat me to it by a decent margin. That'll teach me to stop for a cuppa half way through writing a post 😁

Actually, I thought that your explanation was great!

Cheers

-geoff

Michael wrote:

One question I was thinking about was if two Beolab 90 could be used as a full surround setup, in the sweet spot. I mean to simulate surround sound almost like a sound bar.

Ah! Now I understand the "surround" part of the question. The short answer to this is "no". In this regard, the Beolab 90 currently behaves as a "normal" loudspeaker (with one small caveat...). In other words, each loudspeaker only reproduces the audio channel that goes into it: left front input, left front output.

The caveat is quite specific. Since the Active Room Compensation is multichannel in its design, then this means that the room compensation signal for each audio channel is output from both loudspeakers (albeit differently). So, the left loudspeaker is producing the left input AND the room compensation signals for the left and the right channels.

However, you cannot buy a single Beolab 90 and use it to produce a pseudo stereo effect.

Cheers

-geoff

My confusion , and I've tried to resist airing it as I couldn't afford a magnificent speaker like the Beolab 90, concerns its appearance. What happened to B&O understated and beautiful design. I speak as a mere Designer.

Simonbeo wrote:

My confusion , and I've tried to resist airing it as I couldn't afford a magnificent speaker like the Beolab 90, concerns its appearance. What happened to B&O understated and beautiful design. I speak as a mere Designer.

We have a case here of the engineering dictating the form, and the final appearance is making the best of what can be done. The alternative is to have an attractive design and to ask the technical guys to get the best sound out that they can manage.

The same issues are seen in large scale construction. Usually civil engineers design bridges or power stations, and get an architect to play around with the details. The engineering dictates the form. Alternatively, an architect can design a fancy building and ask the engineers to make it stand up. Of course there are exceptions to this rule; the Millenium Bridge saw an architect taking the credit for a design until it failed to perform.... at which point the engineers were declared to be responsible.

Graham

Michael wrote:

Should we start saving up for these speakers?

If you are the kind of guy, who needs to 'start saving up for these speakers', you probably aren't in the target group for these.

On the other hand: starting to save up isn't that bad at all - just in case something else would turn up within the next year or so....

.....whatever (speaker) that might be ;-)

MM