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.
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.