Duels wrote:

Have you listened to the BL50s seethroughyou? They are incredible speakers. Sure if you can get 90s for a decent price then do it. But the 50s are well worth a listen at £23k.

Ok, I spent 90 minutes yesterday listening to BL90 and BL50 very carefully. Both speakers were calibrated fully. Having seen the BL50s in the flesh they sadly didn't do anything for me in the looks department. I got the impression the designers weren't sure what to include so they threw everything into mix - wood? Yes! Aluminium? Yep? Cloth? Yes, let's have that too....! I agree with someone else here who said they look like a big room air purifier/heater or from my perspective a large shiny suppository.

The BL50 are a step up in sound quality. More detail, more ambient information, less screechy and abrasive, about the same bass but tighter compared to their predecessor the BL5. All in all about 10-20% improvement no more (if I had to quantify it). Would I spend £23k on them? Well the shiny suppository look doesn't do anything for me but even if I adored the way they looked they aren't to my mind a sufficiently big step up in performance. In isolation they sound good but in comparison, they sound constricted and hollow compared to the BL90. Not a bad effort but not enough in my book. I had reservations about them using the acoustic lens and this has been confirmed. They should have ditched it, the treble and midrange still don't sound at all right compared to some good studio monitors. Perhaps they can't ditch it given the budget and volume constraints. Perhaps this is all they can achieve given these compromises and to do more requires multiple drivers and more volume. That leaves me with the BL90, well they still leave me with butterflies in my stomach and as I sat there I could feel the same butterflies from track to track. The detail and ambience between the notes is spectacular, if you close your eyes you can hear the soundboard on the piano reverb and multiple warm tones come through. As the pianist slides to the left, the piano should start to rumble with sub frequencies travelling across the room and filling your seat - you can feel that with these speakers. You can hear the double basses and plucked cellos which you can sort of hear but can't feel in the BL50s. The BL50s locate the phantom centre nicely but the BL90 do that and more by placing the piano about 6ft behind the wall of the dealer's showroom. This sounds silly but they give a 3-dimensional effect to the sound giving a realistic glimpse I to live music; it's almost like you're listening to a surround sound blu-ray of the performance but only with 2-channel.

Great review SeeThroughYou !

Thanks for replying with that in-depth review Seethroughyou. Good to get feedback from someone who has listened properly to both. I don't quite agree about them looking like suppositories but you made me smile anyway.

If I had £20k ish to spend on speakers I'd buy the 30s tomorrow. If I had >£50k to spend I'd buy the 90s. Simple as that. I hope you do find a pair of 90s and pull the trigger. It would be great to hear ongoing updates as you got to know them better.