Beolab 5 - Four Questionable Technologies

When you go with a system like B&O you are pretty much locked into the brand. You can't change amps, cables or tubes. Many in this hobby enjoy the challenge of upgrading and tweaking their system to their taste. You pay a lot for the B&O look and style. They may perform very well, but there is a lot of other gear out there too. Other speakers with wide radiation patterns you might check out are Ohm, MBL and Gallo. Meridian is another company that builds everything into the speakers. I sold Meridian for years and it performed very well. However, for the same or less money you could build a system that would kill it. The Meridian buyers were usually more interested in the technology and equated that to better sound. Just because it is digital, does not make it better. Digital is an outstanding way to preserve data, but what ultimately comes out of your speakers is analog.

B&O is not an audiophile directed product. It's a high end lifestyle product. It's aimed at a person who wants high quality sound, great looks and ease of operation and setup. I suspect that the typical B&O buyer enjoys music just as much as any audiophile, but unlike the audiophile they keep the same components for years without any changes.

With regards to #4 i believe the digital ICE amps are found in other speaker products for example the Von Scweikert VR9 and VR11

AI

Hi Hdomke,

My post above focused on what I believe is an under-appreciated aspect of loudspeaker design, namely what sort of reverberant field the speaker sets up, and its effect on timbre. I also place a high priority on a wide listening area.

Two things go into getting good sound over a wide area. First (and imho most important) is that the tonal balance hold up well for listeners who aren't in the central "sweet spot", and second it would be nice to still get some semblance of a soundstage from off to the side.

With a speaker like the Beolab 5, the tonal balance will be good throughout the room because the spectral balance of the first-arrival sound changes little if any as you move around the listening area. The imaging will be best up and down the centerline, but will still be better than average from off-center.

The ear localizes sound by two mechanisms: arrival time and intensity. For an off-center listener in a typical setup (conventional speakers with little or no toe-in), the near speaker of course wins arrival time, and it also wins intensity because as you move off to the side you're moving more on-axis of the near speaker so you're getting more high frequency energy from that speaker. With the Beolab 5, I think that there would be relatively little difference in intensity between the near and far speakers, so the image would still shift but probably not as much as with most speakers.

A technique I use with more directional speakers (90 degree instead of 180 degree pattern) is to toe them in severely such that their axes actually cross in front of the listening position. With this geometry, as you move off to one side the near speaker wins arrival time but the far speaker wins intensity, because you're now more on-axis of its tweeter. As a result, you still get a decent soundstage from well off to the side. I first heard about this technique from the writings of E. J. Jordan, and learned how to implement it using a waveguide speaker from Earl Geddes.

As far as speakers that imho do a exceptionally good job with the reverberant field and therefore tend to sound natural and be non-fatiguing (assuming they don't have other problems), I don't want to wax overly commercial here - some of these are speakers that I have chosen to peddle:

Omni or semi-omnidirectional: MBL, Wolcott, Ohm, Duevel, Shahinian, Morrison, and Mirage.

Wide, uniform monopole pattern: Beolab 5, the imho classic (and sadly discontinued) Snell Type A, Amphion, SP Technology, KEF Uni-Q, smaller Tannoys, DCM Time Window, Pioneer TAD home speakers, some Gradients, two-way Gallos, and to a certain extent many three- or four-ways that have a small diameter cone or dome midrange. Floyd Toole of Harmon Kardon (makers of Revel and many others) advocates this sort of radiation pattern.

Bi-directional with good reverberant field response: Magnepan, fullrange SoundLab, Apogee, Omega Acoustics.

Fairly narrow monopole pattern with good reverberant field response: Classic Audio Reproductions, PiSpeakers, Altec model 14 and model 19 (both discontinued), high-end JBL hornspeakers, big concentric Tannoys, GedLee (or Audio Intelligence - presently not distributed in the US), some Gradients, Emerald Physics (dipole at lower frequencies).

In addition, I build speakers that would fall into one or two of these categories. And no doubt I've left out many worthy contenders.

In general, the wider-pattern speakers out of these tend to be more demanding as far as room size and set-up goes. They also tend to sound more rich and enveloping, like you're sitting near the middle of a concert hall - whereas the narrower-pattern ones have a presentation more like you're up near the front of a jazz club.

By the way, thanks for the links you provided. Peter Aczel mentions the power response of the Beolab 5, and "power response" means "summed omnidirectional response" - so this includes the reverberant field. It's different wording (and a slightly different focus) in talking about the same thing.

Duke

Steuspeed,

You can't change amps, cables or tubes. Many in this hobby enjoy the challenge of upgrading and tweaking their system to their taste.

I suspect once I get a really great system that I will be happy to just keep it for a couple decades. I don't see myself tweaking it or swapping gear. I would imagine that in a couple decades there will be something significantly better which I will consider.

However, in twenty years, if I am alive I will be 75, and I'm not sure how good my hearing will be then...