Whatever it's called, has anybody yet heard the BeoLab 90 and compared it to the BeoLab 5?

John wrote:

Playdrv4me wrote:

I don't see enough substance here, at least until some professional reviewers can get their hands on them or we get to hear them (and how many dealers will carry them?). 

The problem once again just like BL5 is that B&O seems to have thrown a bunch of drivers in a cabinet in an effort to create a wider "sweet spot" within an entire room to enjoy the music without losing details. Ok, that's fine. But there's no mention of any driver improvements to increase the *resolution and imaging* starting with the driver itself. Sure, the B&W 800 Series Diamond speakers don't have this incredible ability to bounce off every surface in a room and still keep a convincing stereo soundstage but... so what? If you ARE sitting in the sweet spot and even further, if you have a good Room EQ, the dividends are incredible with the diamond tweeter and the FST midrange. 

I certainly hope that for 70,000.00 or whatever silly price these things will cost, there's more substance here than novel placement of cooling fins and beam width control. Yes, I read about both of these innovations on Geoff's site, but even with all the supposed innovation in the BL5 that stood since 2003, it still doesn't sound better than even an 804 Diamond D2 which is the smallest floor stander. In some ways, the BL5 doesn't really sound much better than my Penta IIIs. Sure, it throws sound out wider, but that doesn't matter when I sit down for serious listening anyway as I'm not going to sit off in a corner of the room. Transducer technology has advanced SO far in the last 20 years that you can not just ignore that part of the equation. 

One of the performance aspects and advantages of the Beolab 5 design with the acoustic lenses, over contemporary designs such as the B&W 800 series, is that by reducing midrange and treble beaming and consequently giving a very even polar, or 'power' response, deleterious room reflections propagated by an uneven polar response, are largely negated.  This in turn helps with the sense of correct spatial perspectives as heard in real life - i.e. a concert hall with classical music for example, as well as a very well balanced frequency response at the listening position - regardless whether one is listening tightly on axis to the speaker drivers.

As to the drivers in the new Beolab 90, Scanspeaks Illuminators and Revelators are widely regarded to be amongst the very best 'audiophile' speaker transducers available.

The big advantage of the B&O design as always, will be a fully active speaker with prodigious DSP; something no passive design can hope to emulate in performance and control  terms.  

Certainly in terms of earlier B&W designs with the 800 series, excellent speakers though they are, the decision was made to NOT follow with active designs, not for technical, but purely commercial reasons.  Audiophiles prefer to mix and match and tweak as the 'hobby', and as such, despite the proven advantages of fully active speakers, it would've been commercial folly for B&W to go down that path - most unfortunately I must say.

I accept that it's quite subjective and personal, but I respectfully disagree re the B&W 804 D re a Beolab 5 comparision.  If the sense of not so much very high quality HiFi reproduction, but rather that one could suspend disbelief that one is listening to a real life performance and not a recording, then it is the Beolab 5 everytime when listening to 'natural' acoustic instruments.

In terms of bass extension and volume a B&W 804 D would simply be unable to compete - the Lab 5 is capable of clean output to around 16z on measured figures.

I'm not bagging B&W - I owned a pair of B&W speakers for the best part of 20 odd years - but I'd put my Beolab 9's somewhere between 803d's and 802d's in many ways, IF the closest approach to the original sound is the criteria.  And the Beolab 5 sits well above a Beolab 9 in outright performance terms.

Personally, I think the speakers are aimed at different markets - B&W's 800 speakers are utterly superb - and aimed at the 'serious' audiophile; B&O's designs on the other hand, are equally superb, but aimed more or less at the music and film connoisseur; someone who has the resources to pay for very high quality speakers, and is mostly interested in the result, not in the method of getting there with wrist thick speaker cables sitting on cable risers on the floor, angle iron amplifier racks and microwave oven sized amplifiers making 'audiophile' statements in a room.

Speaking as a classical music lover and trained classical musician, and 'ex' audiophile (well, the neurotic kind at least!) B&O floats my boat better than any other 'brand' or design ethos I've come across in the HiF/AV/Audiophile world.  But that's just me... :-)

 

Kind regards

 

John... 😐

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned in a previous post, the post above went into moderation for some reason and got posted AFTER I discovered B&O were using scanspeak drivers in the BL90. Which is a good thing, as the Sony SS-AR1 and many other audiophile designs also use those. Of course, I find them hideous and likely hideously overpriced so the proof will be in the listening. 

As for the 804 Diamond (D2) versus BeoLab 5 comparison. All I can say is that in my listening room (albeit a small one), with the speakers placed in the same position, it is no contest between the BeoLab 5 and the 804 Diamond. Somehow B&W have managed to extract an amazing amount of bass out of those small enclosures, but it's tight, well articulated and not boomy or tubby in the least. For some reason, perhaps because of just how large the bass driver in the BL5 is, it just didn't seem to have much presence in this room unless there was very specific types of music going to it. I had them out in the larger living room where my Pentas are now, and oddly enough I still wasn't terribly impressed with them. Of course, listening is subjective, but one place where the BL5 can not compete is in the mid range and high frequencies which B&W have mastered with the diamond tweeter and the FST mid range. 

And even if you want to argue that the D2 generation of 804 isn't better than the BL5, the D3 generation with the continuum mid range, and the new Aerofoil bass drivers that dip even further in the frequency spectrum is out. 

So yes, it is purely subjective, but after having owned numerous pairs of BL5s over the years and knowing them very well, I can absolutely endorse their ability to "disappear" within a room if you value that ability and being able to listen from (almost) anywhere in a listening space with good results. But I prefer listening to music I know well with the B&Ws. The BL5s have been sold and I now must begin my journey to take them to their new owner halfway across the country. Sadly, this will probably be the last pair I end up having around for resale as they're just not bringing the dollars and interest they used to, possibly because of all the interest in B&O's upcoming speaker anticipation. Of course, the BL90 is another price category altogether, so it SHOULDN'T have any impact, but I think everyone seems relatively convinced that something else might end up slotting beneath, or that the tech from BL90 will trickle down like it did with the BL5/BL9. 

MGBGTV8 wrote:

 

Scanspeak illuminators that must confirm them as the very best which is thier reputation and wonder why the 5 never had them

 

This is a good question. With the BeoLab 90 it seems that B&O are changing course on some of their previous approaches to loudspeaker design in a big way. Curiously, someone said above that the Penta also used Scan-Speak drivers (though I don't believe in the mids), and that may partially explain why they sound so amazing after all these years. 

I think B&O finally figured out that in this new era that I've discussed at length in various threads on this forum... Meaning a world that now has no real middle ground where B&O used to play in the past, between "Ultra HiFi" and "lifestyle" type electronics used with iPods and such, you can not rest on average components bolted together in a promise of something different or unique. The BeoLab 5 drivers were never all that special, and much was made in some circles about how that didn't matter. Well, the dramatic turn to exclusively Scan-Speak drivers in the BL90, the use of high end amps even above icepower from what I'm reading in this thread, and EVEN the most remarkable thing people seem to be missing... the admittance that the "sweet spot" DOES exist and is the best place for a single person listening to the speakers, mean B&O are going down the right path in my opinion. 

I may not like the way they look, and I don't like picking up ANY speaker much beyond the weight of the BL5, but everything I am reading in the specs of the BL90 in so far as connection types (XLR is amazing to see, probably not fully balanced, but if it is, even better), supported formats, and moving even power link forward into the digital realm, means that this product will play seriously in the high end speaker market alongside any of the other big names. I can only hope that given their cost (which is less than I expected) that they will be somehow upgradeable when formats change in the future. 

politician wrote:

Whatever it's called, has anybody yet heard the BeoLab 90 and compared it to the BeoLab 5?

I could be grossly mistaken, but based on everything I am seeing and reading the BL90 will likely be in another class entirely to the BL5. That's nearly 15 years of advancement and finally using high end drivers for you. 

Playdrv4me wrote:

XLR is amazing to see, probably not fully balanced, but if it is, even better

It is. (to be explicit: it is both differential and impedance balanced)

Cheers

- geoff

Does anyone know what drivers are used in the current speaker range, especially the Beolab 20s?

Evan wrote:

The XLR enables integration with some serious preamplifiers now

The idea behind BeoLab 90's many inputs was that you do not need a preamplifier, since it's built into the loudspeaker itself (depending, of course, on the number of sources you have and their outputs)

Cheers

- geoff

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