Paul McGowans’s opinion of B&O speakers

[Robert]

I think BL90 is high end.. any thougts?

 

/R

[NQVHNWI]

I think PS Audio have struggled to bring their Aspen Loudspeaker series to market. 3 major redesigns of their current flagship i believe? One was what they thought would sound good but sounded bad. One that sounded OK but difficult to make and the current FR30/10 range.

the FR30 is in the same territory as the Kii3 Loudspeaker. GBP20-30k. It competes with the 28s but is simply outclassed by the 50s and 90s. Paul knows this and compares his gear to the A9 and below.

[NQVHNWI]

Addendum.

I have one of their power Regenerators. It does its job, its basic electrical engineering in a solid box. Its broken down twice now.

Make of that what you will?

[Tignum]

That broken TL tube would annoy me big time!

[Peter]

BL90 is high end but is a huge amount of money – I doubt that is what he thinking about! He will be thinking of the A9 I guess which is great but not really what most would describe as a Hi-Fi speaker though they sound a lot better than many. As the PS Aspen cost $3500, I doubt he would consider £125,000 speakers!

[NQVHNWI]

Peter,

You missed a zero on that.

The FR30 are nearer $35000/£30000. Add in some appropriate Amplification, power conditioning, pre-Amp, dare Ii say a Dirac black box for Room Correction and they are price-wise competing directly with the BL50s.

I know its subjective (it is for me), but I listened to a demo of a pair of Focal Evo Utopia (Valhalla Heaven) Scalas with a Gryphon Diablo 333 integrated amp and a dCS Rosini Apex Streamer a few weeks ago in a stores new listening room (killed dead by acoustic treatments) – about £95-100ks worth. Was not even close to the 50s with a BC-Core to my ears and the 90s would have lest that setup completely crushed.

Where B&O and High-End Audiophile Brand/Setups (HEABs) are different from each other is that B&O has a very laid-back relaxing sound. The current fashion for HEABs is to have a very “twangy/electrified/tense sound” – as if this equates to real-life sound etc…Its all Norah Jones…come Away With Me at 10000Volts. Fatiguing.

 

 

 

[Peter]

Quite correct! I was lucky enough to have what I think were Beolab 90s demonstrated to me (I think that is what they were) by Geoff Martin – this was prior to their announcement and they were behind a curtain – I am afraid that Lee and I were both pretty cloth eared and did not identify that these were such high end devices – Geoff hid his disappointment in our ears very well! I have just obtained some BL5s which are great but again probably completely wasted on me!

[Glitch]

Tignum wrote:

That broken TL tube would annoy me big time!

I know what you mean. I had to rewind though one section of the video several times because I was so distracted by the light that I didn’t hear what he was saying. 😉

 

I don’t know how anyone could make a meaningful general statement about B&O speakers. The products span such a large performance range that any statement has to be simultaneously true to some extent as well as false to some extent.

Glitch

[NQVHNWI]

I think historically you have all the old dye-in-the wool comments on bang for buck, can get better for the price etc…

The problem is (from my perspective), is B&O was never really a high-end audiophile brand but because of its pricing, it was compared to brands/models of lesser technical capability and materials but with “better” sound”. B&O products – and their pricing was in the laid-back relaxing sound and their materials of construction (and not directly because of their design/form).

With the on-set of the BL5, 9, 20, loudspeakers (so-called widebody loudspeakers) and then the 90s, 50s, 28s (not my fav) and 8s, the non-B&O audiophile still defend their position based on the previous generations models and the more recent “BeoPlay” branding and its derivatives. The fact is the 5s, 90s, 50 and 8s compete both sonically and value-wise against anything in their peer grouping. I am sure the non-B&O enthusiast audiophile does not like that at all, that they know it but wont admit it etc….

[Author]

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