Beolab 5 - Four Questionable Technologies

Hdomke,

There is a store locally - I will see if If they have them. Please understand that flanging can be pleasant sounding and it is done on many recordings. George Martin of the Beatles fame found that you could achieve this by messing around with tape recorders and adding a slight delay to one tape recorder to produce "thicker sounding vocals". So this effect is inevitably on many pop recordings. Also microphone height from a reflective wooden floor will have some influence too. So it is more than likely a pleasant coloration that gives more openness or spaciousness to the sound. That this issue will occur seems inevitable to me given that you can physically see the dome drivers sticking up out of the bottom frizbee in the photographs taken at what would approximate a listening position with respect to the speaker...it seems inevitable that some sound will go directly from the driver to the listener whilst the majority of the sound is intended to reflect off the lens above.

Shadrone, interesting speculation, but you need to listen to the speakers. In theory many, many speakers don't work (metal dome tweeters, full range drivers, ported bass alignments, etc.), but that never stopped manufacturers from making excellent sounding designs with the flawed technology.

I listened to the Beolab 5 today. It was in the local B&O store. They were setup in a special listening room (also set up for 7.1). A bit square in shape and with glass on two sides and with no acoustic treatment - so not an ideal set up - although ceilings were high (good) and as with all B&O decor and industrial design everything was modern but impeccable and tasteful.

The B&O rep was very knowledgeable and clearly understood the physics of the speaker although he said the drivers were made by B&O (however I am not sure of this as IMHO is looks very much like the Vifa 3" Dome Midrange D75MX-41-08 or at least it is indistinguishable from this 3" vifa dome).

I listened to mostly "Brothers in Arms", Dire Straits and a few demo disks as well as some DVD's.

Observations:
Excellent articulate bass (it definitely does not need a sub) and they can play fairly loud cleanly. As I had feared, there is some "flanging" in the upper mid range and treble giving an airy or atmospheric quality to the sound with the imaging not nearly as precise as it is on my home system. Vocalists were still centered but not perfectly tangible so that you could say the singer was there in the room standing between the speakers. As has been reported by others, the sound field is very even in a horizontal plane around the room - you could move around and it sounded much the same, however, there is a significant difference between the seated and the standing presentation (I was sitting 10 feet back with the speakers 8 feet apart near the corners of the small room). You need to be seated at the correct height to enjoy these speakers. I also perceived something missing in the lower mid range. It seems the lower mid is covered by a forward facing 6" driver and somehow (to my ears) there was a dip somewhere between 400 and 1 Khz ; perhaps this 6" driver was not as dispersive as the dome mid or I detected a crossover issue. Overall the sound was similar to Ribbons except that you had serious high quality bass, placement was much easier ( no problem 2 feet from a wall) and that the sweetspot was way larger than you find for ribbons.

Nevertheless for some $23,000, this is an expensive speaker and as far as I am concerned the ATC SCM 100ASL is a much better speaker. Personally I would also prefer similar priced Wilsons over this speaker but I am not keen on "atmospheric"or "airy" sound - I much prefer precision. So that is just my taste.

Shadorne, excellent post! Do you now understand why I referred to it earlier as a high end lifestyle product? It's certainly not cheap, but for the money you get a lot of product (speakers, amps, EQ and digital conversion) in what some consider an attractive package.

Shardone,
Thanks much for your VERY thoughtful observations! If I can summarize to make sure I understand, you are saying that for the Beolab 5 speakers:
1. The Bass was very good.
2. There was some "flanging" in the higher frequencies.
3. There was a lack of precise imaging.
4. There was a very wide area for optimal listening horizontally, but not vertically.
5. You perceived something missing in the lower mid range

I'm a relative newcomer to high-end HiFi and I don't know all the terminology, but I think I understand most of what you said. However, I didn't know what "flanging" is, but I looked it up in Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. He said "In the early days of multitrack recording experimenters were constantly developing new, different and distinctive sounds. Phasing and flanging were popular words among these experimenters." In his glossary he defines flanging as ""The term applied to the use of comb filters to obtain special sound effects."

Is that what you mean by flanging?

I too went to hear the speaker yesterday. Unlike your listening space, mine (at the B&O store in Kanas City) was in a heavily acoustically treated dedicated listening room. My only observation was that it may have been too "dead" since it was optimized for demonstrating home theater equipment.

I listened for a couple hours and was deeply impressed with the natural and unstrained sound coming from the speakers. I tried listening in many positions in the room, high and low as well as way off to the side and it remained excellent to my novice ears.

With me was an experienced audiophile friend. He has a pair of Wilson Sophia speakers at home. He was not impressed. He described the sound as "analytical" "dry" and "lacking certain timbral nuances." He too shared your opinion about the lack of precise imaging. However I tried as hard as I could to hear it with my eyes closed and could not perceive it. And I tried this with two other speaker systems.

I wonder about the "dip somewhere between 400 and 1 Khz" that you heard. Could that have been a function of the room? The reviews I have read have not commented on that and testing does not reveal that.