Reply To: Beolab 17 vs Beosound Balance

[BeoCom 1401]

I may be one of the few people who can answer this with significant experience. I owned a stereo pair of the Balance and sold them. Now I own a pair of 17s.

The Balance were great speakers, but I never loved the way they looked. That’s a personal preference thing, and shouldn’t affect anyone else’s decision. I had the natural oak/gold tone and I just never fell for them. Gold isn’t my thing, which was a significant factor. If the silver aluminum that’s available now were available back then I might still have Balances.

But the bigger reason I sold them was a lack of reliability. Stereo pairing, when Mozart first enabled it, was buggy. They consistently lost connection with each other and I was forced to factory reset them over and over again. They may have fixed this by now, but between the bugs and the design, it was an easy decision for me to move to the 17s when I was able to score a pair for a great price.

Some people find the 17s design to be bland by B&O standards, but I am not one of those people. I love the way the 17s look, and I love the way they sound even more. They are shockingly capable for their size, and really shouldn’t be compared to any other Beolab, as they’re quite unique in the range. No other Beolab bookshelf has a 6.5″ driver, and (more importantly) no other Beolab bookshelf was designed under Geoff Martin, who I think we all regard as a genius.

The Balance is known for having excellent bass, and it does. It produces a ton of bass from the 5.25″ woofers. But in my opinion the 17 produces better, more controlled bass. The Balance is probably the more bass heavy speaker overall, but I prefer the sound of the low end from the 17. Honestly, I prefer the sound of the 17 throughout the range. While the mid range is comparable between the two, the highs sound far more precise from the 17s. The Balance does win on scale and soundstage. They sound huge and wide, which makes sense given their omnidirectional design. But that comes at the cost of precision.

The best way I can describe the difference is that the 17s sound like incredible stereo speakers and the Balances sound like speakers from the future, which haven’t quite been perfected yet. I think the tech in the Balance will continue to evolve in future generations and create wonderful things for a long time. But in the here and now, I’ll take the 17s 10/10 times.

One last thought – if I were going to use them as front L/R with a Theatre, I might consider the Balance in that situation, as the Theatre will handle the center channel precision, placing vocals exactly where they should be, and allowing the Balances to provide a very wide soundstage. Perhaps that will be my future, and I’ll move the 17s to rear channels. But since the Theatre doesn’t yet support Mozart, that’s something to consider down the road.

Hope this helps.