Beolab 5 - Four Questionable Technologies

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...

Every manufacturer who uses the ICE power module buys it from B&O.
Many innovations have issued from B&O over the years. An investigation into the company will uncover a rich background of audio firsts.
Several years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the B&O mall store in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center to hear the Beolab 5. I thought it was very intriguing and lived up to their hype. I can't offer any more than that because it was too long ago and because the listening environment was positively abysmal. I do remember that the dispersion was extremely broad and seemed consistent and that you could hear the correction when the salesman reset the automatic room correction calibration.

I think that anyone who isn't especially anal about audio would think that they are exquisite. I also remember that using them with analog required some kind of forfeiture of features. You'll have to do your own research on that point however as I can't think of what the deal was in retrospect.

$8000 for a used pair seems like a very worthwhile experiment provided you can feel comfortable about your seller. I think you could probably run a MacBook straight into them with a USB adaptor.