B&O rewrites the loudspeaker rule book

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/sound/loudspeakers/beolab-90

The white paper runs to 65 pages and makes captivating reading.

Enjoy

John..

 

Programmable directivity. A bit of a holy grail.

 

Along with the Ark of the Covenant and other such things...

Personally, the idea of introducing DSP into a loudspeaker has no attraction whatsoever - Occam's Razor rules!

 

Love it!
I can imagine the looks wont be for everyone and being B&O, will draw criticism from 'purist' audiophiles who will probably never actually bother listening to these speakers.
Having gone down the omni directional speaker route myself, really good to see the latest amplification and room equalisation technologies being incorporated into omni directional speakers.

 

The beolab-90 is a bit irrelevant to the hifi market unless you have £54,000 to spend

 

If you have a Linn DS you get "Space" for free, a big saving over £54,000.

 

Flagship loudspeakers from B&O have, for some time, been remarkably advanced and fine sounding devices.

They are typically written off by hifi snobs out of nothing but ignorance. I look forward to hearing these at some point. I'm sure they will be impressive.

 

Impressive, but why didn't they use the 13" Scan-speak sub-woofer instead of the wimpy 10" version?

 

+1
I could never afford them, but can always hope this may trickle down to lower priced products.
Its funny that the same audiophiles who sneer at well designed expensive 'lifestyle' speakers without listening to them are the first ones I meet queuing up to listen to £100K worth of Naim amplification

 

I agree with Merlin/Banjoman, would love to listen to them. Way out of my price range, but nice to see/hear regardless.

 

Quite! Well said.

 

One of the designers has been blogging about its development for some time.

http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/bo-tech/

 

Thanks Werner, that is a well written, insightful blog.

I especially enjoyed 'What is Loudness?', it gives a lot of perspective.

 

Well said Merlin - as always - and I agree. Admittedly owning Beolab speakers does make me a little biased - albeit I came to them after a few decades of chasing the pot of gold at the end of the audiophile rainbow, and have never been happier from an audio POV with B&O, to say nothing of day to day living with the system and overall ownership satisfaction.

Cheers

John

 

James, I think you'll find there's 3 x 10 Scanspeak bass drivers and 1 x 13" Scan speak bass driver in each unit.

Cheers

John

 

It's worth mentioning that Dr. Geoff Martin, has a Bachelor of Music degree in Organ performance, a Tonmeister degree, and a PhD in Acoustics.

An exceptionally down to earth, amiable, but highly intelligent man - I've followed his blog from the very beginning.

He's the consummate professional and has a vast amount of knowledge re audio and acoustics that any audio enthusiast interested in objective assessment of audio design would benefit from reading.

Cheers

John

 

Thanks for the link, what a great blog...

 

Wonderful stuff
This part explains image depth, which is a topic that has been discussed quite a bit here lately
http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2014/09/20/bo-tech-near-far/

 

Hmm. I thought all he would have needed was the 'Tune Dem'

 

I sold B&O for several years. It is good equipment. The TVs were the best for years. Lots of features people dismissed as gimmicks I see included in more contemporary designs. My girlfriend's studio (design rather than audio) system is B&O. Because they sell good numbers of reasonably expensive kit they can afford to invest some real money in making the systems sound good. They aren't the last word in sound but they are easily the best of the "lifestyle" brands and aren't too bad in absolute terms.

Don't forget their engineering tradition. I had a Beolit for years and it had a proper circuit diagram included in its case for servicing. They invented Dolby HX, developed ICE amplifiers etc.

Their Dalek speakers have always been well reviewed and their traditional Beovox speakers from yesteryear still sound good for age. I will look forward to hearing these. The links are much appreciated and interesting to read. The picture and videos show how professional the company is as I am sure there are quite a few other companies without these facilities.......