The Beolab 90s are a brilliant product. After years of dreaming about them, I finally managed to acquire a pair. Aside from their striking design - they let you straddle the two worlds of audiophile music as well as no fuss home theatre. 

You do, however, need a good source. I have a Vivaldi DCS as the DAC, connected to the XLR inputs and driven by a Roon Nucleus music server, which is connected to my DAC via ethernet. I'm planning on adding a Linn LP12 to the RCA input. One of the key considerations for choosing your DAC is power insulation. Initially I used an Auralic Aries Mini (which I had used successfully to drive a pair of Beolab 17s). With the 90s, the sensitivity of the speakers made noise from the electricity source a real issue. 

If you can get a great DAC, and pump some high quality DSD files through it, and have the speakers well calibrated - you will be amazed at just how good the 90s can sound. Unfortunately, most B&O showrooms don't demonstrate them properly. They will play you a compressed streaming file through a TV, or just Star Wars at full volume - and it completely misses the subtlety of these amazing speakers. 

joey_v wrote:

Do you like the 90?  Are you  moving from it?

No they are “keepers” until the next B&O flagship arrives.....one day.

I am planning - as per the post below to upgrade the Source side with a Melco N1ZH/2 and possibly the SOtM SMS200 Ultra as a bridge. 

10

joey_v wrote:

Do you like the 90?  Are you  moving from it?

No they are “keepers” until the next B&O flagship arrives.....one day.

I am planning - as per the post below to upgrade the Source side with a Melco N1ZH/2 and possibly the SOtM SMS200 Ultra as a bridge. 

10

Interesting info here thx.

mikewalsh wrote:

You do, however, need a good source. I have a Vivaldi DCS as the DAC, connected to the XLR inputs and driven by a Roon Nucleus music server,

Dont quite understand why you would use another DAC because the BL90 will ADC/DAC regardless?

mikewalsh wrote:

One of the key considerations for choosing your DAC is power insulation. Initially I used an Auralic Aries Mini....With the 90s, the sensitivity of the speakers made noise

Interesting because I planned a bit noise control into my pending new setup. The BL90s have their own power filtering and it is specifically recommended not to place power filters on to the main supply. However, I have suspected that the BL90s need a clean low noise signal from a good source. 

mikewalsh wrote:

If you can get a great DAC, and pump some high quality DSD files through it, and have the speakers well calibrated - you will be amazed at just how good the 90s can sound. Unfortunately, most B&O showrooms don't demonstrate them properly. They will play you a compressed streaming file through a TV, or just Star Wars at full volume - and it completely misses the subtlety of these amazing speakers.

The BL90s can only receive 24bit/192k.....so anything above that.....then a pre-BL90 DAC will be needed to drop down to PCM quality?

You are running high resolution music files into a DAC (e.g DSD), which then connects to BL90 via the analog XLR or RCA connections - so there is no restriction of how high res your source file is. But if really want top performance, you do need to make sure you have a very good DAC with no noise interference, otherwise, you would be better off just feeding a digital input into the BL90s and using its own DAC. 

Impressive upstreams.

My Emm will be a couple notches below your Vivaldi but I know the Emm DA2 (one above mine) compares very favorably against the Vivaldi.

My friend has the full 4 box Vivaldi stack and at 110,000$ for the upstreams, it sounds fantastic.  Not much can beat that stack other than an MSB.

I am glad to hear you have successfully mated the 90 with a true source.

as I say, the speaker is only as good as the data it is Fed.

its too bad I would lose my top of the line Audioquest WEL signature speaker wires....

Price is a funny thing,

The price for BEOLAB 90 is actually cheap when we talk high end.

Many other systems are much more expensive then the BEOLAB 90 with amp and cables.

For me I can understand people and for my self a set of Beolab 90 could be possible, also a used market is beginning.

5% of what? your income, or your assets, because if it is your income, then it would be quit easy if you just have lived long enough.

I have BeoLab 90s as my front speakers (and BeoLab 50s as rears). The sound from them is extremely impressive, with an almost holographic soundstage on well-recorded albums. Unlike your sources, all mine are B&O, and vintage (since B&O no longer makes sources of an audiophile quality). I have everything from a quadraphonic turntable and amplifier (connected using attenuators) to a reel-to-reel deck connected. When I get round to it, I'll do a full post on here about my system, including pictures, as it must be among the must unusual B&O setups in the world.

Emil Jensen wrote:

Price is a funny thing,

The price for BEOLAB 90 is actually cheap when we talk high end.

Many other systems are much more expensive then the BEOLAB 90 with amp and cables.

joey_v wrote:

its too bad I would lose my top of the line Audioquest WEL signature speaker wires....

I’d be extremely happy not to need these!