Beolab 8 review video

[Steve at Sounds Heavenly]

Hi Beoworlders,

I am pleased to confirm that Beolab 8 is finally here!  If you want to know what is it like to live with B&O’s new speakers, then you can find out in this video…

Kind regards, Steve.

[Millemissen]

Thank you, Steve!

[syrianos82]

What would the impact be of having two BL8 as left and right for a BS TH and a pair of BL28 as surround?

 

my BL28 are setup behind the sofa since they project sound better into my living space driven by the BS TH with an additional BL19 for stereo music listening. When watching tv they operate as back or surround speakers depending if I chose a listening position with a pair of BL 17 as surround and the 28 as back.

I feel the BL28 performs better when used as surrounds. So I’m thinking adding a pair of 8’s as front L and R. The lack of bass is covered by the BL 19 I think.

any advice ?

[geoffmartin]

@syrianos82:

This will work well for three reasons.

The first is your comment about the Beolab 28s behaving well as surround loudspeakers.

The second is that it’s smart to have the bigger woofers of the 28s helping to control room modes on the opposite wall from the Theatre.

The third is that the “narrow” beam width of the Beolab 8s is narrower than that of the 28s. This means that, for 2-channel stereo listening without the other loudspeakers, they behave very well if you have one chair and no friends.

Cheers
-geoff

[beojeff]

I’m interested in hearing how the Beolab 8 speakers perform as height speakers in a Dolby Atmos setup.

[syrianos82]

Thank you so much for the reply / confirmation.

Just came back from the dealer and ordered a pair of BL8’s when finding your message 😀

 

I was a little against moving the BL28 back to the front. Reading your advice solves my doubts and can’t wait to play around with the new setup.

 

Altogether I’ll take the BL17’s out of the new setup and work with just a mix of BS TH / BL8 / BL 28 / BL19

I notice some more comfort to the sound when offloading the BL28 from the lowest frequencies, correct me if I’m imagining things.

Kind Regards

[geoffmartin]

It’s not so much “offloading” as it is controlling the room’s resonances because the woofers are distributed around the room.

A room mode (in one dimension) is like a guitar string. If you want the guitar string to ring as much as possible, you should pluck it in only one place with one fingernail. Similarly, if you “pluck” a room mode with one loudspeaker in one place, then it will ring as much as it can.

In the case of the guitar, this is good. In the case of a room, this is bad.

So, to “deaden” the guitar, you pluck it with all 10 fingers. Instead of ringing at one note, it will go “thump”. If you play bass out of 1o woofers around a room, the room mode can’t ring for the same reason – it can’t “fight” all those woofers telling it what to do.

In other words, in order to control a room’s resonant modes, it’s better to have a lot of woofers, all working together than it is to have one big woofer.

In a perfect situation, you have an infinite number of woofers in the room – but this leaves very little room to sit down…

[syrianos82]

I can imagine someone must have designed a ‘woofer chair’ at some point like the iron throne, thanks for the visualization of space complexity though.

 

have a great Halloween 😉

 

[Razlaw]

Thanks for the comments about the the 8s, 28s and Theatre.   I have a pair of 8s ordered to be used as rears with my Theatre and 28.  Will be replacing the 9s I am currently using as rears.   I want the added height of the 8s and to match the 28s visually.  Never thought of moving the 28s to the rear.   Do plan to keep them in the front as I like the way they look and am guessing I will prefer them for music as opposed to the 8s.

[geoffmartin]

Back in the old-days, I tested a Beovision 11 as the only thing in the front, with a pair of Beolab 9s as the surround speakers.

This had some advantages (assuming that you’re not interested in listening to 2-channel stereo properly), including

• “hiding” the big speakers on either side of the sofa instead of the front of the room
• two big woofers (better than one subwoofer)
• the woofers were farther apart than they would have been had they been “properly configured” as a stereo pair.

Of course, this also means that the centre channel was non-existent (it’s a 4.2 system instead of a 5.1, to be honest) but the Beovision 11’s two internal speakers playing a downmixed L+C+R worked just fine!

 

If you’re a fan of weird setups, here’s another one if you have a pair of external front loudspeakers and an Eclipse or Harmony (but no surround loudspeakers):

• Set the external loudspeakers to Left- and Right-Front
• Set the centre output on the television to Centre Front
• Set the Left and Right internal outputs of the television to Left- and Right-Surround

If you hate this idea, then don’t do it. 🙂

 

[Millemissen]

I did that at some point with my (then) Avant 1st gen….just for fun.

But switched back to using my surrounds again.

People should not be shy of trying out things – no harm done, you can always return to what you had before.

P.S.
The BST as the ‘motor’ has made experimenting much easier.

For instance I have ‘the triangle’ as one of my listening positions…..mostly for demonstrating for friends how well that works.

MM

[syrianos82]

Absolutely true about BST making tryouts easier.

the one thing I dislike as a designer is the fact NoTo put the mic port behind the curtain/wooden cover. The plastic pins break easily as I experienced with a BL17. That fixing hasn’t changed for newer speakers.

the shadow joint between the two sheets of aluminium would have hidden that mic port perfectly at the bottom.
I find myself being afraid of unmounting the front too often when beta testing and when repositioning or experimenting with alternative speaker layouts in the room.

another idea is we would be able to make a backup of the listening positions and room measurements. Now when updating it sometimes loses the calibration. Loading a backup file would at least take the hassle out of reinstalling and calibrating a setup with many speakers.
?

will have to redo the process next week when the BL8’s arrive…

want to test some different layouts

[syrianos82]

Question about this suggestion:

Set the external loudspeakers to Left- and Right-Front
Set the centre output on the television to Centre Front
Set the Left and Right internal outputs of the television to Left- and Right-Surround

when calibrating the theatre with multiple speakers some speaker roles (and I believe woofers) are left out. Does the theatre still use these woofers for other channels or not?

The side firing are left out most.

I could imagine the sides supporting a surround or even back speaker roll and keep the BL28 behind the sofa as surrounds for most effect/usage.

With the added BL8’s should the L and R woofer group of 3 be left as L/R  channels with added 8’s further out in line with BST or all configured as centre?

BST gives a master control and balanced calibration but the assignment ment of channels is a bit unclear when having built in and external speakers competing the same position they are built for

regards

 

[Sandyb]

syrianos82 wrote:

Question about this suggestion: Set the external loudspeakers to Left- and Right-Front Set the centre output on the television to Centre Front Set the Left and Right internal outputs of the television to Left- and Right-Surround when calibrating the theatre with multiple speakers some speaker roles (and I believe woofers) are left out. Does the theatre still use these woofers for other channels or not? The side firing are left out most. I could imagine the sides supporting a surround or even back speaker roll and keep the BL28 behind the sofa as surrounds for most effect/usage. With the added BL8’s should the L and R woofer group of 3 be left as L/R channels with added 8’s further out in line with BST or all configured as centre? BST gives a master control and balanced calibration but the assignment ment of channels is a bit unclear when having built in and external speakers competing the same position they are built for regards

For any of the individual speaker / drivers in the Theatre NOT given an assigned role, then yes they will be inactive.

With BL8s added as front L/R, then if you run the mic calibration then yes the Theatre SW will not assign any of its own drivers as front L/R as well.  You can of course manually re-assign individual Theatre drivers as additional front L/R’s, though I dont really see the point.

Might be worth reading the BST Technical Sound Guide – its helpful understanding what is going on. But big picture, when you run the mic calibration, if the Theatre senses specific external speakers / assigns them a role (for example front l/r), then it won’t double up that role with any of the sound bars own internal drivers.

As for your suggestion at the start of your post, not sure I understand it properly – as it seems to be talking about the televisions own speaker / outputs, i.e not using the Theatre.  So maybe worth clarifying /rephrasing your suggestion / question.

[syrianos82]

Thanks for the reply, I think I understand that the BST will not automatically assign double speaker roles to two different drivers. But this can be done manually if desired

Would the BST calculate the timing of the back speaker role assigned to the side firing speakers instead of putting physical satellites (BL8 or BL28 or BL17) in the back?

To clarify: You calibrate a position and the mic measures the room. Then after you assign the back channel (not surround) to the side firing to have it reflect from side walls. Will this result in a timed output to reach the position and experience a virtual back sound?

 

As for the suggestion it’s quite simple: relocating the mic port to the base of the BST to have free access not to break the delicate knobs on the back of the cover that you push into the rubber fittings in the soundbar itself.

 

[swestland]

syrianos82 wrote:

Thanks for the reply, I think I understand that the BST will not automatically assign double speaker roles to two different drivers. But this can be done manually if desired Would the BST calculate the timing of the back speaker role assigned to the side firing speakers instead of putting physical satellites (BL8 or BL28 or BL17) in the back? To clarify: You calibrate a position and the mic measures the room. Then after you assign the back channel (not surround) to the side firing to have it reflect from side walls. Will this result in a timed output to reach the position and experience a virtual back sound? As for the suggestion it’s quite simple: relocating the mic port to the base of the BST to have free access not to break the delicate knobs on the back of the cover that you push into the rubber fittings in the soundbar itself.

I’m not entirely sure what you want to achieve but first you assign the speaker roles the way you want them to be. Then you will do the room compensation sweep.

The initial room sense is only there for the BST to give a default speaker role according to its ‘recognition model’. The way the room comp works is that the BST remembers the room reflection, or better; room mode, for each individual speaker, not the role. So the role is secondary and the room compensation filter will be applied at speaker level. Within the positions you can change the speaker role to whatever you want and the room comp will make the necessary adjustments.
So if you assign back speaker role to the side firing outputs, it will make a timed output for you.

If you change any location or add any actual speakers, or make changes to your interior then you will need to redo the room compensation.

[syrianos82]

Thank you again, made me understand the room sense a bit better now.

The initial measurement that is ‘pushed’ to make a listening position might be confusing because the flow of the process is somewhat different. It would make (more) sense to have the BST play a beep and the user defines the speaker position on the app(since BST can’t really tell if sound is coming from above or more Left Front rather than Lift Side for instance). Then next step you would do the sweep for the actual speaker role rather then redoing it.

I will recalibrate to make sure, and to have the test of calibrating with the new beta.

When al speakers are positioned and angled properly it should only require 2 calibration positions, a sweet spot(perfect middle) and an off center lounge corner to watch TV.

Does it make a difference if you calibrate with narrow or wide beam width? I would expect the sound being reflected different with or without the sideways mounted drivers being used, or does the BL28 not use the side mounted drivers during calibration (either direct or through BST)?

This feels like a rabbit hole, keep digging deeper the more you know ;D

[swestland]

syrianos82 wrote:

Thank you again, made me understand the room sense a bit better now.

The initial measurement that is ‘pushed’ to make a listening position might be confusing because the flow of the process is somewhat different. It would make (more) sense to have the BST play a beep and the user defines the speaker position on the app(since BST can’t really tell if sound is coming from above or more Left Front rather than Lift Side for instance). Then next step you would do the sweep for the actual speaker role rather then redoing it.

I will recalibrate to make sure, and to have the test of calibrating with the new beta.

When al speakers are positioned and angled properly it should only require 2 calibration positions, a sweet spot(perfect middle) and an off center lounge corner to watch TV.

Does it make a difference if you calibrate with narrow or wide beam width? I would expect the sound being reflected different with or without the sideways mounted drivers being used, or does the BL28 not use the side mounted drivers during calibration (either direct or through BST)?

This feels like a rabbit hole, keep digging deeper the more you know ;D

For the beam width control, I don’t know about that, I hope others can Chime in.

For the sweet spot and social spots it’s recommended to set different speaker roles. For the social spot, turn off the virtual speakers as these won’t work very well when not sitting in the sweet spot. Good luck with playing around :), the technical sound guide is a very good reference guide learn more about how to set it up.

[Sandyb]

Indeed, I would just read the Technical Sound Guide, it helps give a better understanding.

With respect to wide / narrow mode – the TSG does mention that for 50/90s, put the speaker in the preferred preset (part of which is wide / narrow) before doing the mic based setup with the Theatre.

“you should ensure that the Beolab 50s or Beolab 90s are in the appropriate Preset before running the automatic setup measurement on the Theatre.”

Whether that applies to the BL28s, I dont know.

[Millemissen]

MM

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