[Stan]

I have a 1st Gen BS2 and a pair of Balances (non-GVA).  They both sound quite nice.  When I tested like-for-like, my BS2 vs single Balance (in my office, centered directly behind me, about 4 feet away), I slightly preferred the BS2.  However, when I added a 2nd Balance, the Balances were much better – hard to beat a stereo image.  I never tested a stereo pair of BS2s because my model of the BS2 doesn’t support that, and I didn’t want to buy 2 additional more current models.

While I’ve never heard a stereo pair of BS2s, I’ve always questioned how the BS2’s side firing midrange speakers might interfere with one another in a stereo pair configuration.  Not exactly fair criticism since I’ve never actually heard them, but I have to believe the BS2s were never designed with stereo pairing in mind whereas it’s possible the Balances were.

I’ve since moved the BS2 to a bedroom, and it creates very nice room filling sound.

My advice is if you have no plans to eventually stereo pair them, buy the one you like the looks of best – their sound and functional differences are minimal, and you will most likely enjoy either one.  If you think you might stereo pair them one day and don’t hate the look of the Balance (many on here seem to, at least when it was first released), I’d go for the Balance.

I don’t see a huge difference between Mozart and the older BS2.  Yes, Mozart has room compensation, but I always felt the BS2’s corner/wall/free switch worked fairly well. They also recently added support for Beosonic (B&O’s take on an equalizer).  On the other hand, my BS2 will play multiple WMA lossless tracks from my NAS whereas the Balance will only play one and then stop.  It does play multiple MP3s and Flacs, just a problem with WMAs which, unfortunately, is most of my collection.  Therefore, when I want to listen to an “album”, I’ll play it on the BS2 (or one of my other older Beosounds) and join my Balances to it.

I guess one could argue that the Balance wins on longevity because Mozart is newer and will most likely see new features that the BS2 will not.  However, it’s hard for me to make purchase decisions based on futures.  Best to have what works the best for you today and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

One other gotcha is that the GVA Balance cannot distribute line-in audio via NL.

They’re both good.  No wrong choices.

[Stan]

You can still daisy-chain a BL2.  There is just no dedicated sub out.

[Stan]

The BLC NL/ML doesn’t have any in-built sources.  It can play (with attached speakers) or pass-through NL and ML sources and anything connected to its “line-in”.

Therefore, to get streaming to your ML you either need a NL device or a streamer hooked to the BLC’s line-in.  I’d recommend getting a 2nd hand BeoPlay M3 and put it in a bathroom or some other room that currently doesn’t have music and can live without hi-fidelity.  If you have no need for another speaker anywhere in your house, just stick it in a cabinet.

In this way, your M3 can be the source for B&O Radio and Deezer.  You can control it with the B&O app and play it on any of your ML equipment.  If you don’t want to listen to your m3, set the default sound level to 0 or mute it.  You can also setup the BLC so that unused Beo4 buttons can be mapped to the M3.  For example, “CD” (since it doesn’t look like you have a CD player) can be mapped to B&O radio on the m3 and sending CD to your BS3500 will automatically start everything required to listen to it.  You can skip to the next/prev station/Deezer song using the Beo4 arrow keys (similar to the BeoLink PC).

I do this (mute NL device and listen through BLC to BS9000 + BL1) quite frequently.  It’s better than driving it strictly with your phone (for example as would be the case with Bluetooth) because you can use your phone for other things (like talking on it) and it doesn’t impact the music.

You cannot distribute Spotify because of licensing restrictions. Not sure about any other streaming services, but Deezer definitely works.

[Stan]

I’ve seen Geoff Martin (B&O sound meister) mention that the BL2 doesn’t play nice with BL9/20 or any BL with strong low bass capabilities (BL28, BL50/90).  If I understand correctly, it has something to do with the slight delay from the BL2’s passive drivers cancelling out the similar bass frequencies from the other BeoLabs.  So.. if you run out of other ideas, turn off the BL2 and see if it helps… easy enough I would think.

[Stan]

I believe the Stage can do this – limited control of limited set-top boxes via CEC when paired with a subset of LG TVs (Cs, Gs and Zs) – so why not the BCC.  The interesting part is that the Stage requires an ethernet cable connection between the Stage and TV whereas I’m not seeing this as required for the BCC.

[Stan]

Is this bug specific to BL50/90s or is there an app upgrade that I need to avoid (as a non-BL50/90 owner)?  Regardless, loss of volume control in the app is really, really bad (to state the obvious).

[Stan]

@MM

I understand the difference between home cinema and stereo, and I agree that they’re not really comparable.  I have an Eclipse after all.  My point in asking why so many TVs have 2 speakers was to point out that maybe listening to stereo TV was NOT the “weirded possible way”.  Also, if it’s solely about cost, why not just have 1 speaker and eliminate that weird stereo TV watching experience?  It would be cheaper still.

This will be a music first system so TV audio is secondary (or perhaps even tertiary, with looks/usability being secondary). Having said all this, my wife is not excited about the return of the “all those speaker cables” (i.e. one thin PL running from source to daisy chained speakers) so the Stage is back in the running… or I need to do better cable management.

I agree that given B&O’s history of outstanding home cinema audio it’s a bit odd for B&O to be pushing this stereo TV concept, but then you have to sell what you have.  Marketers will do their marketing.  Or maybe this is a case of “the customer is always right” (used as that phrase was originally intended, not the more recent “Karen” interpretation).  That is, perhaps there was enough feedback saying this is desirable so they built it, even though it runs counter to ~30 years of B&O’s home cinema audio history.

 

[Stan]

@severed_hand

The Marantz can’t multi-room with my Beosound in the adjoining bathroom.  It also doesn’t work just like all the other beosounds with which my wife has finally become comfortable.

I listened to TV through stereo speakers for many years.  I don’t understand the pushback.  I’m not doing critical listening.  It’s mostly background noise, but with better bass, treble and midrange than the weak built in speakers.   If stereo is so odd, why do most tvs have 2 speakers?

[Stan]

Wow, tough crowd here…

This is almost EXACTLY what I wishing for yesterday morning as I was trying to find the right audio solution for our newly remodeled bedroom.  I have a non-B&O TV and wish to improve the TV sound and listen to streaming services and a turntable.  Music is more important than TV audio (we don’t really watch movies in the bedroom, just regular TV and sometimes I get banished there to watch sports).  Integration with existing B&O equipment is a big plus along with cost (relative with B&O) since I’ve already dropped too much on the remodel.

My internal conversation:  “Why don’t TVs have variable analog audio output anymore?  I can’t be the only one thinking this… Oh look, they have cheap boxes that can capture the audio from an HDMI signal and output it as analog.  I can send that into a Core/Essense and there we go.  Ugh, another box, and I wonder how good that will sound, and what about synching audio with video?… and I will probably need 2 remotes – one for the TV, one for the volume.  Yuck!”

For these reasons, I had my finger hovering over the “buy” button on a Stage but held off because it really is overkill for my situation (the smoked oak that the wife likes is almost $3K now, the Stage is more about video audio than 2 channel stereo), and I’d really like to put those BL8000s or BL4s I have gathering dust to use (and get better stereo separation).  Let’s just get the TV (a LG C3 in case I need to integrate with Stage) and see where to go from there after using it a bit.

Late last night, I’m bored and decide to pop into BeoWorld and see if there’s anything interesting going on…  A new Core!?!  Oh my, they really hate it!  Let me take a look.  Glory, glory, it’s just what I’m looking for!!!

For those complaining about the price – it’s only $50 more than a Core, and it has pretty much everything the Core has plus HDMI (arc), Tidal, Mozart and a better way to drive BL50/90s (I assume that’s what the USB output is all about).  Only one PL output?  Buy a splitter (and help keep Sounds Heavenly in business).  Personally, I don’t see the loss of TuneIn as a negative.  If they added surround processing / center channel / wisa, they’d probably charge at least $3-4K.  Looks?  Really?!?  It’s going to be hidden in a cabinet and at least this one doesn’t look like an Ali Express special.

I still haven’t hit the buy button on this, but I most likely will.  I’m not looking forward to being an early adopter – I usually hang back and let others debug, but given Mozart and HDMI(arc) are not new to B&O technologies, I think I’ll be fine.

I can’t predict the market, but, to me, this is a winner.

[Stan]

One small correction to what I said above about GVA and line-in:  All Balances have line-in.  However, only the non-GVA version can distribute the line-in audio via NL.  An odd quirk that I misremembered.

[Stan]

^^^ What he said.

[Stan]

Line-in is available in non-Google Voice Activation (GVA) models.  I have my turntable connected to my Balances and it works great – auto-senses the input and audio can be network linked to other B&O devices.

I should add that there is a delay between dropping the needle and hearing sound from the speakers so don’t bother connecting a TV to the Balance because the sound will not synch.

[Stan]

One more thought… you might want to also consider the BL8s.

[Stan]

I have a stereo pair of Balances, and they work great.  They have “hiccupped” perhaps 5 times in the 2 years that I have owned them.  The symptoms are that one or both do not work, and neither are reachable from the app.   Re-booting one or both sometimes fixes it, although I have had to drop and re-add to the app maybe twice.

I take this to be the world of software we live in today.  I do have them hardwired to each other and my router, and, oddly enough, they might be more stable running wirelessly.  I say this because at least once (maybe twice), I had to disconnect them from the ethernet to get them to recovery from their failed state.

From a sound quality perspective, they are fabulous.  I think they sound almost as good as (and sometimes better than) my BL1s with much better bass.

The beam width control does not work when they are stereo paired.  Stereo pairing puts them into the “front” mode and you cannot change them to left/right/omni.  The left / right / omni does work pretty well with an individual / non-stereo paired unit.

Prior to the balances, I did have a pair of A1s, but they were much too fiddley. Sounded very nice when they worked, but having to set them up every time, and their frequent drop-outs made them not a good long term solution.

Also want to add that they are quite expensive (maybe obvious), and, at times, I think they are overkill for my office.  If the Emerge or A5 were available when I was looking to upgrade, I might have chosen those… but then I have not heard either of those speakers so I have no idea how they compare.  The Balances can get quite loud before they start getting “screechy” from the ABL turning down the bass to save the drivers.  I still often look forward to listening to my Balances which says a lot, I think.

Overall, I am very happy with them.

Stan

[Stan]

On my BS9000, both A.MEM and A.AUX turn on the AUX input.  Perhaps the BS5 is the same.

[Stan]

My Eclipse got a new panel under warranty.  I watched the repairman do the swap.  I would not attempt unless you have specific instructions.  It wasn’t just taking off the old panel and putting on the new one.  It was taking off the old panel, swapping a bunch of parts from old to new, and then puting the new panel on.  I mean none of it looked too difficult – no special tools, just a screwdriver / maybe a torx wrench and removing / adding the panel is 2 person job lifting and centering, However, knowing which parts need to be swapped in which order would probably be hard to figure out and easy to miss something.

[Stan]

I assume the ads are embedded in the radio stream by the radio station.  For one station, I mostly get ads about the audicy app which is the preferred app for the station.  For the local classical music station, there’s always an ad for a bank that is major sponsor.  It’s also doesn’t happen with all stations.

Interesting about the Tune-in app.  I almost always get ads when I use GVA which usually uses Tune-in.  For example, I’ll get an ad sometimes before I play Radio Paradise on Tune-in, but never B&O Radio.  I would say it definitely varies by station and possibly location.

Stan

[Stan]

That looks very nice.  Good job!  You’re inspiring me to do something more than digging out my phone all the time.

Stan

[Stan]

Pressing the Join button on the Balance plays the last source I played on the Balance.  I must have enabled the new interface?  I haven’t paid too much for attention to these interfaces since usually I use the app or my Essense remote since I find the the “physical” buttons on the units to be too finicky.

[Stan]

Figured it out…

It is the “Product Controlled by Apps” setting.  I had it set to “ML Audiomaster” (ML source plays automatically) when it should be “BeoLink Converter NL/ML speakers” (ML source does not play automatically).  Since I don’t have speakers connect to my BLC, I thought I needed to select the “ML Audiomaster”, but this is not true.

[Author]

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