[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….

[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.

 

 

 

[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?

[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]

I cannot specifically confirm anything,  what I have seen, may have seen or experienced etc…. – only muddy the water.

1. There may be a chance that a standalone LG OLED (The right model with the correct processor – C1-C4 and G1-G4 etc) may be receptive to the B&O/LG App?
2. There may be a chance at the BC-Core and the LG with CEC enabled may give some degree of control as well?

 

[NQVHNWI]

I guess simply because they were designed as a standalone single speaker. A lot of work has gone into into making them pairable rather than the BL8 which was designed from the get-go as a stereo pair speaker.

i have my preference when listening/comparing to the Balance and BL8 and although I had a definate bias in wanting the 8s, the Balance did not please me sound-wise. But that’s just an opinion. If you are happy with the Balance…good. Enjoy.

look, rather than get triggered over a comment, please read the point I’m trying to make…..you simply can’t say the BL8 is not as good as the A9 or Balance because it has less power, less drivers etc…it patently does not. But it is a generation or two ahead of both the A9 and Balance, and I would have thought the tech and the in-house development would be superior to both if there was an equality in hardware?

[NQVHNWI]

I think you can watch/read these type of reviews and come to a black and white /2D conclusion but in essence you are comparing different capabilities and price points. You may as well throw in the BL50 or 90s to push the little Blights down.

I have the opinion that they are very competent speakers in stereo pair (Balance can’t do that) and a more compact piece of equipment than a couple of A9s. At the end of the day, you can always buy something bigger, more powerful, more expensive, more drivers, more amps.

Go and listen to all 3 sets. I don’t think you will be disappointed when comparing against each other.

[NQVHNWI]

I have had a similar/related problem for over a month. Not bothered too much with it but I have found the LG remote. I think you have to (I hope this is it) a repair with the home button on the LG when in fire-stick settings/bluetooth. – At least that’s what I was planning on trying next. I dont think this is a B&O issue but an LG or Amazon issue.

[NQVHNWI]

I don’t think they have lost confidence – on the contrary…..I think they are starting to get more confident that the Theatres issues are reducing ‘ ( or rather the control app is now starting to perform off from the nadir of its being)

B&o I think realise that they cannot sell a bunch of evolutionary-dead-end mono speakers(that give Psuedo stereo sound ) and at the opposite end of the spectrum sell a soundbar that can accommodate 11-12 speakers but the price of entry is another +£15k add-on for 5.04. Rather, I think the strategy is to use DPL/BLS as a gateway drug and get people to constantly update their surrounds to progressively better kit.

[NQVHNWI]

Details are vague and there is stuff I cannot talk about but my understanding is the the original DPL seen on products like the BL90 and 50 is a high-speed/high quality proprietary communication system between Master to Slave on the big Beolabs. Both data, post-data and music is sent from the Master to the Slave. I believe it only exists as a CAT7/8 Transfer link.

This technology may have been superseded by the last +3-5 years of BeoApp development (Settings for both speakers can be accessed and I guess communicated to each via the app/wifi directly and possibly WISA?

 

The new DPL is/has to be Mozart based and I believe it is a (more or less) real-time Ethernet/Wifi/Lan solution. The DPL of the BL90/50 and the DPL of Mozart-based products are not compatible or interchangeable with each other.

From my experience, adding the Moz-DPL speakers to the Theatre instead of WISA I believe somewhat simplifies the whole setup. The Theatre takes over all the controls as a DPL Master and you can even hide Moz-DPL speakers from your product page so everything is Theatre-centric.

Looks so far to be quite a unifying solution and will be probably ensure WISA (cable-less powerlink ) and Powerlink will soon die-off in future products?

 

 

[NQVHNWI]

I think its call “first-world problems”.

Well where I live –  a “good” working class wage is about £12-15/day. A middle class professional wage would be less than £50/day that and a decent 3-bedroom house would be the price of a single BL90.

I think many of us here look at superyachts or million-dollar cars as excessive but when your whole household income is less than £30/day, I know that the builders that I employed to renovate my home recently see the BL90s in exactly the same light as this and cannot fathom it?

I am grateful and blessed.

[NQVHNWI]

Correct Sandy but that is one of the reasons we run 3rd P{arty DAC/Streamers – so we can get that proper experience. For all intents and purposes, BL90/50, a Halo and a good 3rd party DAC and/or Streamer and you are 98% there.

I imagine that sometime down the Tidal path….B&O will flick-over to Tidal Connect so they dont even have to bother designing a music player (with search function) for their own App – which is sorta a blessing in disguise as they will only endlessly mess it up.

[NQVHNWI]

My bag is with Qobuz not Tidal. I hope B&O also develop their connectivity with this too?

Deezer is the proverbial dinosaur in the streaming market with low-res streaming. Sort of not compatible with where B&O should be in my opinion in terms of Hi-Fi and glad to see them moving away from this. I would of hoped that Spotify develop their Hi-Res offering but this is 2-3 years overdue to what was originally promised. I also think that Tidal dropping MQA (digital rights management disguised as a high quality lossless format) was a catalyst of B&O moving to a hi-res provider.

I think generally the right direction. B&O just need to open-up a little further and not restrict their platform to one hi-res provider (like all the hi-end streaming hardware providers do)

[NQVHNWI]

L1no wrote:

Matter is a language ‘protocol,’ and Thread is a radio standard primarily used with Matter, often referred to as “Matter over Thread.” All ‘bridges’ are designed to connect different networks, usually from a local network or the internet to a specific radio standard, such as Zigbee. The bridge makes devices discoverable on your local network and exposes them over Matter. Although Matter works over Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and Thread (all IP-based). The first two do not require a bridge and advertise directly to your phone. Unless your bridge supports both Thread radio and Zigbee, your setup will not function as wished. Very clear.

im failing to see what your point you are trying to make other than to school me on Matter/Thread or whatever protocols. Whatever.

The OP asked about Mozart and Matter. Why? Does he just want another bit of hardware/software stuffed inside a Theatre that goes on a spec sheet that 99.9% care nothing about or does he want to do something with it?

I suspect he wants the add some form of Automation or tap-to-run instruction or use a third party app instead of the BeoApp? So what the protocol standard is…is irrelevant…….and my comments reflect the fact that current bridging hubs either do not “see” the BS Theatre Matter credentials or they are muted somehow.

Either way, the practicalities in the real world is that I cannot directly automate scenes with my “smart” devices with the Theatre and have most likely to use a BLI to do so.

[NQVHNWI]

Beg to differ. There may be technicalities on how it actually works but my understanding is that Matter and Zigbee are low energy devices emitting Wi-Fi micro-bands. However, from a communication perspective theses devices differ slightly.

older generation devices that that use zigbee tend to relatively “dumb” and are discoverable via software and controlled via an App (and also a hub). Matter being a newer protocol is somewhat smarter and can immediately find other Matter devices and work like the old PC plug in and Play devices of yesterday.

Regardless, back to the original post. I was NOT trying to give an experts opinion on Zigbee or Matter. If you read it again, you will read that I have a “Zigbee/Matter Hub”. This hub is predominately for off line control of my Zigbee Devices but it can pull in Matter devices…..so connecting Dumb zigbee devices to the new Matter protocol. In that way…..I would have expected to “see” any Matter Devices via this bridge and either control them or be able to write automations for Zigbee devices to interact with Matter devices.

Hope we are clear on that?

 

 

 

[NQVHNWI]

Damned if I know?

I have a huge network of Tuya/Zigbee devices in my home and one of the control hubs is a zigbee/Matter one and it cannot see any devices on the Matter protocol? I guess the Theatre/Mozert platform is “HDReady” or whatever but not activated.

i think it would be cool if it were? My curtains would close automatically, the lights dim just right and wife automatically mixes a “just right” G&T in the dark

[NQVHNWI]

I think there are lots of “loudspeaker Systems” that are as good – possibly even “better” than the 90’s?

I think at that level….the question is what are you measuring (objectively, subjectively, and financially):

1. A subjective preference to a particular sound or presentation
2. The room in where you hear the 90s compared to what something else is played in.
3. Loudspeaker System. The BL90s are a loudspeaker, Amplification, Loudspeaker cable, pre-Amp and Dirac room calibration of a fixed type. Other loudspeakers need this supporting package in one quality form or another to be compared. Its not loudspeaker to loudspeaker
4. The difference between Power Link from a Beovision and Digital direct or even XLR source is embarrassing for PL. Many don’t realise how bad it actually is?
5. The Difference between B&Os BC-Connect in USB mode and my Auralic (now obsolete) G2 Stack of DAC, Streamer, clock and Up-sampler (£1k vs £25k) outputting to XLR is significant in my opinion.

Ultimately, I think once you get over a threshold “Value” of a Hi-Fi package – it becomes more about personal sound/interaction preference, beer-bragging rites rather than a pure technical Sound Quality issue? You hear many internet forums and old paper store magazine reviews describe B&O as better Bang for the buck elsewhere…mantra….well I would say that somewhere near or above the BL50s package……that all stops and and as repeatedly stated above becomes preferential and financial.

10

 

[NQVHNWI]

Just the Halo’s

[NQVHNWI]

So something to check:-

If you are running 6.0.2, the page layouts have changed. That “Explore” button leads to your account (person icon in top RHS of the screen)

Select Settings >> Products >> Select Product >> Product Settings.

You can remove any “dead” products”, etc….

1. You may find you “missing” or offline product can be connected to the local network
2. You can delete missing or offline product (or the other Halo) and do a clean re-install?

[NQVHNWI]

I think there is an issue with the App,

Since my beta update this week, the Halo has been unresponsive and you can’t even delete it and re-install!

Another massive leap forward in B&O App development.

[Author]

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