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According to the archived forum, I joined BeoWorld in December of 2008. It would have been not long after that I would discover the existence of the incredible BeoLab 5. From then on I would be obsessed with many speakers, many BeoLabs but above all the BeoLab 5 would remain my ultimate “end game” dream speaker.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to share that I have recently acquired my very first pair of 5s. It still doesn’t seem real even though they are sat in the room where I am typing this post.
Normally I am based in the US and for any other BeoCollectors there they will back me up when I say it is hard to find B&O stuff there of any kind let alone something like the 5. After my employer told me that I would be doing a one-year assignment in Wales I decided to seek out a pair of BeoLab 5’s of my own and finally make this happen. Luckily I was able to capture a pair from one of the many B&O FB pages and have them shipped from Germany to my office in Wales where I would later retrieve them once I relocated.
Since 2008 I have been dreaming of the day where I have my own BeoLab 5s and roughly 14 short years later I finally do. (Full disclosure, this post is a bit late as this took place last week but you get the idea…) Here they are, the moment I laid eyes on my very own pair of BeoLab 5s in the goods-in section at the office.
So excited to get them home, I didn’t even check to see if they would fit in the van I’d rented! Just had to shift them off the pallet in order to get them to fit!
Then what to do about driving them? Well I considered everything from a streamer like the Bluesound Node to a typical AVP/AVR etc etc. But of course I’d need a TV anyway. After weeks of searching online and trying to arrange something around the same time I decided to chase after a really good deal in London and really get my money’s worth on the van rental to go pick it up.
Boys and girls, enter the big one, the king of the early 2000s BVs – the BeoVision 7-55. Double lucky for me as it came with another personal favorite – the BeoLab 10!
After managing to recruit a colleague to help carry it into the flat, I was in business! Truly, I am living out some dreams here. The BeoLab 5s are still yet to be heard but once some Powerlink cables arrive, I will be enabling them immediately!
Oh and last but not least, Beo4 ’til I die!
Location: San FranciscoMy B&O Icons:
Absolutely brilliant!
The 5’s are gorgeous, and the 7-55 is a perfect fit. Your setup looks beautiful and I’m sure it will sound amazing. I’m excited to read your future posts when it’s all up and running.
Congratulations!
My B&O Icons:
VERY David Lewis. I share the BeoLab 5 dream with you. Hopefully one day my budget and BeoLab 5 prices will match too :-).
Enjoy them! (time to warn the neighbours – I believe the calibration can give quite a bit of rumble?)
Johan
Location: NetherlandsMy B&O Icons:
Congratulations 🙂
Your enthousiasm remind me 2006 christmas, when 2 BL5 arrived at home.
Enjoy your BL5s, they are fabulous speakers either for music and video.
Kind regards,
Yann.
Location: Brittany, FranceMy B&O Icons:
Thank you everyone! It really is a dream come true, never ever did I think this might really happen but here we are. I smile every time I come into the room. They photograph much smaller than in real life but
I grew up in the David Lewis era of B&O and you can definitely tell that is my preferred period of products! The guys at the B&O dealer where I got my BV7 called it an “old” tv!
The strangest thing is that the BV7 was never a favorite of mine but that is changing fast now that I can really appreciate it in person. It is so impressive and I like it more and more every day. The picture is still absolutely stunning!
Location: San FranciscoMy B&O Icons:Now that the Royal Mail strike is finally over, I can get on with this project and finally hook up these BeoLabs. My cables from Steve were hung up for 3 days in my local post office if you can believe it!
I was shaking (literally) from the anticipation and I was equal parts nervous and excited to finally kick off my very first BeoLab 5 calibration EVAR.
At any rate, it’s all up and running now and simply mind blowing. I am running them in a tiny apartment so they are effortlessly filling the space with some extreme SPL. Unbelievably effortless sound. One main issue I have is I believe the speakers are too far apart for optimal imaging.
I have deliberately kept myself from reading reviews of the 5s ahead of hooking mine up to keep the sound more of a mystery. Even though I have heard BeoLab 5s before, it’s been a few years since the last time I heard a pair. Impressions so far after a few hours of listening: Surprisingly bright, seems like the tweeter working hard and carrying a lot of the experience relative to the midrange. This was especially noticeable in recordings that are light in the treble section (example: Pinback’s vocalist seems to appear lower down on the speaker). However this could be magnified a bit due to the liveliness of my room. Early (and very informal) RT measurements routinely placed my room in the 400ms range. My seating position is quite close to the rear boundary of the listening area so the bottom octave is coming through loud and clear.
The only reason I left my apartment today was to go retrieve Powerlink cables. I have been sat in front of this system all day rediscovering my music collection and it has been incredible. The BeoLab 5 is an epic machine.
Location: San FranciscoMy B&O Icons:
Photo upload kept timing out for some reason. Here they are in all their final, installed and calibrated glory.
Location: San FranciscoMy B&O Icons:Looks amazing against the natural stone wall. Living Colour must sound great! Nice to see you play some decent rock ? :-). Happy listening Evan!
Location: NetherlandsMy B&O Icons:
Thanks, Tignum! Nothingness is one of my go-to test tracks. Apart from it being an awesome song, the distant thunderstorm effect at the beginning is particularly difficult to render for some speakers so I like to use it in my usual test material.
Ok deviating from main topic now but this is an interesting rabbit hole I’m heading down… I did a few more measurements at my listening position of the ‘RT60’ test (on REW this time instead of Audacity) and indeed my room is pretty live. Roughly 40% more live than prescribed in the REW manual. I made two tests, one at left position and one at right position to mimic the speaker locations (I used a sound source different to the speaker as I couldn’t pipe a stimulus to the system just yet). My mind is properly blown as REW is able to do this with a log-chirp and not a noise decay like the usual test method. Anyway, for the “left” test I averaged 416ms.
Location: San FranciscoMy B&O Icons:Exciting times everyone – I get to update this thread!
The order of the posts isn’t quite right in the new forum format but I am here to declare the final chapter in this long journey.
Long ago in 2021 when I learned my employer would assign me to our Welsh office for one year, I immediately knew this would be the perfect opportunity to acquire my dream setup – a pair of BeoLab 5s. As you can read in earlier posts, this mission of acquiring (and enjoying!) BeoLab 5s was executed swiftly however my assignment has long since ended. So what ended up happening?
Well I returned to America full time. Here are the details.
Back in August(?) of last year I packed away this precious gear as I exited Wales and prepared to relocate back to the US permanently. In the weeks leading up to my departure I needed to build pallets and packing material capable of transporting all of this immense gear back to my current home state of California. Sounds simple but at the time, my only car was a Caterham Seven so transporting lumber and pallets from around town was not an option. I had to be resourceful and modify pallets available at my office place. Luckily this was achieved in the end but they all required great additions in able to securely transport the BeoVision 7-55 and its floor stand. Luckily I still had the original packing for the BeoLab 5s so that wasn’t so hard, but man was this a ton of work. Several long evenings after work and a few weekends were needed to get absolutely everything done but I did it.
After getting over my anxiety of shipping my dream system across the ocean I managed to get a quote and initiate the whole process of getting the items collected and shipped across the pond.
So why am I telling you this now?? Well all of the gear showed up in four great wooden crates yesterday.
A colleague of mine had to come and save the day, there was no way I was getting all of this upstairs on my own!
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the final implementation of my 2008 dream system. Later today I will be testing everything (I had to get my hands on some step-up transformers, but more on that later!).
Location: San FranciscoMy B&O Icons:
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