What a great question. I've often imagined what it would be like to use Beolab 5's and now Beolab 90's as speakers for live music. I'm curious if their design would allow for that use, but then again, the speakers themselves don't know what's being played or how. I lack the knowledge to offer anything concrete. That being said, I've been to plenty of Philip Glass Ensemble concerts with keyboards and amplified woodwinds, and they bring their own equipment. The Beolab 90's are simply svelte compared to the boxes and boxes of amps and speakers that they have to travel with, and they are certainly prettier, and I"m sure powerful enough to fill a medium (even largish) hall with plenty of sound, and clear to boot!

Placement might be an issue right? I mean the concert halls I've been to have the speakers raised high or placed at odd locations, maybe that's not an issue with the BL90s?

I'm looking forward to reading replies.

I think it depends on what you are doing. Beolab speakers are hifi speakers with a corresponding sound tuning.

Recording studios are using special/dedicated monitor speakers that are tuned to a flat / neutral frequency response as they have to reproduce the sounds 100% accurate and natural to allow a good mix down in the studio and to hear every "wrong" tone, every dominant or missing frequencies etc.
In a studio setup the Beolabs are clearly not at home or you just use them as typical secondary speakers to control the sound of your mix if it will sound appropriate on standard hifi speakers.

Using the Beolab 90 for "jamming" must be very funny, I guess! :)

Hi TWG,

Yes, that is an interesting point.  I found that Pentas can give a very close match to Yamaha near-field monitor speakers once carefully tweaked and positioned within the room.  Beolab 5s work REALLY well as monitors, due to their linear frequency and phase response.  My Beolab 3000s give quite an uneven sound (although pleasing), so they are really just used as a comparison speaker.

Has anyone used any other speakers that work well?

Kind regards, Steve.

Well, I've never used B&O speakers, but back in the day when I worked in a stereo store, we got tapped to do the sound system for the back room of the bar/restaurant across the street from our shop in a tony end of town. The place, as you might expect for  the 70's, specialized in folk artists in the back room. We used two pair of Tannoy dual concentric speakers, can't even recall the models but one I think was Cheviot. We hung, tilted down, two large Tannoys on either side of the small stage, and two of the smallest ones in the back corners, also tilted down, driven by a stack of Spectro Acoustics electronics (preamp, equalizer, amps) and a small, simple mic preamp/mixer. This worked amazingly well, it didn't sound like a PA system or such, it just seemed that you could hear the music all over the room, it completely didn't call attention to itself. I told my boss that if the speakers ever fell off the walls we would have to leave the country, as when they fell they'd surely kill someone they were so heavy.

It was a great thing for a poor college kid...every week or two when they changed artists, the manager of the place would have me come over and reset the EQ and check out the setup (artist would play with the EQ to get the sound they wanted), and give me a steak dinner and a couple of beers for my trouble. I thought that was more than fair for 10 minutes of "work." 😁

I've seen B&O in two restaurants, in Jackson, Wyoming, CX50s and 100s, in black, used as background music for a dining room. And at a good Chinese restaurant in Orlando, FL, they had on the wall in between the doors for the two rest rooms(!) a horizontally wall mounted BS9000 with two Pentas, one on each side, and a BL2000 mounted on the wall above the cashier/hostess station as their background music. When they sold the place to a new owner, when I went in I wasn't surprised the whole B&O setup was gone.

Not sure of the wisdom of using b&o speakers for any sort of "professional" use. So getting destroyed by weather or thrown beers are not a big issue. They're very fine home/indoor sets that's for sure but for live you want high SPL and robustness. Studio use is as mentioned about true boring flat response, impulse response and, precise imagining. As much as I like listening to my BL8000s, they're terribly inaccurate, very wide but vague stereo image and nearly non existent low mid response.

For comparison I also have a pair of Klein & Hummel O300D which are about as flat as a nearfield can get. Also I've used Yamaha, Focal and PMC. Truly 'accurate' monitors are vital tools for hearing all the imperfections but horrible to "listen" to.

Live use, just get a Mackie all in one or if SPL needs are higher some combo set up from QSC, JBL, Crown or like.

My brother smoked my parents stereo (Zenith Console) back in the 70s playing his guitar through it.  Blew the speakers.  

Certainly, the BL90s (and A9) are in a different class, but it just seems like there's too much opportunity for sonically bad things to happen when playing live - think about feedback, spikes when equipment is plugged/unplugged, "oops, I turned it up to 11", etc.  I doubt if B&O designs for these use cases.  Perhaps for a home studio where you're in charge, but why risk it? 

I have seen BL4000s in an upscale hotel bar in Chicago - they seemed to work pretty good, but, again, recorded music, not live.

Stan

I swear that I read somewhere, in some article probably tucked away in the deepest part of the net, that the Beolab 9's were designed specifically with music production in mind - or at least they were modeled after studio monitors. 

Earle wrote:

I swear that I read somewhere, in some article probably tucked away in the deepest part of the net, that the Beolab 9's were designed specifically with music production in mind - or at least they were modeled after studio monitors. 

TWG wrote:

and there's one man reading our forum that could answer the question: Our beloved Geoff Martin :)

Interesteting to know, certainly starting with a conventional three way design and totally sealed usually equates to decent impulse response which true studio monitors are made for.

As an aside, one major differentiating facet of b&o are the fact they've embraced active/powered loudspeakers, something commonplace in professional monitors for decades. Why home audio with passive designs, lots of separates and audiophooley are stuck in the 70s  tube amps and vinyl I have no idea? Nearly all pro gear uses balanced connections and active power amps as a matter of efficiency.

For example you can run your FoH desk 200m to your 20kW stacks with no interference issues. A decent sized open air concert is probably in the 100kW range. Coverage delay becomes a major issue as 30ms delay at 90+ dBSPL to even a layman starts becoming audible. That kind of power is not at all efficient using, unbalanced lines, passive stacks and long runs to the poweramps.

Again one is not 'worse' or 'better' than the other, just different use cases.