Dave Moulton:

Soundproof really has a good handle on the BL5's virtues ...

You're way too kind, Dave. That's some potential sig-line, though, I could end my posts with that:

"Soundproof really has a good handle on the BL5's virtues" - Dave Moulton

Still learning, and what I find encouraging is that more and more attention is being paid to richer content, richer music. Since some have expressed that the thread has gone off-track with the BeoLab 5 discussion, I'd like to try and show why it's relevant.

Yesterday, Metallica was forced to pull its latest single from distribution through iTunes. The music had been overcompressed, the latest victim in the Loudness Wars. In fact, the bitrate was such that there was no need to overcompress, but they had done it anyway, in order to sound "the loudest." http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=103625

The result was a crappy single, which broke up completely on a proper sound system. People are noticing that their music is being mixed for playback through mp3-players, on the tube, in crowded places, in cafés and bars. Places with lots of background noise, or with inferior playback systems. All the nuances are gone.

If you have Brian Wilson's SMILE in your CD-collection, then play Good Vibrations from that, and follow it with Lily Allen's Smile from her album ALLRIGHT.STILL -- you'll be shocked by the contrast in resolution, details, dynamics, sound-staging. But then Allen's album is also atrociously overcompressed, horrible, actually. Her music is better than the work performed on it.

If you buy a B&O speaker with acoustic lenses and go hunting for acoustic music, released by those artists who are still intent on creating musical nuance and dynamic listening experiences, then you're in for a treat -- and B&O should cater to this growing demand, through its new products.

The BeoSound 4 should have been released with a lossless ripping function, not just 192kbps, to SD-cards. The people who have been advising B&O that consumers won't care about high resolution playback are wrong - people do care, next to vinyl it's the fastest growing segment in music today, and the plummeting prices for storage (harddisks, flash-cards, etc.) makes storing your music in lossless the least expensive part of your setup.

Let's hope that BeoSound 5 makes storing, arranging and playing such files, over your sound system, a delight both in operation and enjoyment. I believe B&O has found out that there are no shortcuts in today's market, if you want to have credibility as the best in sound and vision, and this should inform future releases of products and how they are integrated with content.

BeoLab 5 is an outstanding performer in the range (with BeoLab 3 and BeoLab 9 joining ranks if excellently reproduced music is your goal.) These speakers deserve a delivery system that matches their excellence.

Wikipedia has a brilliant article on The Loudness Wars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_wars

Totally agree with you Soundproof. Lossless harddisk driven sound systems are the way to go in the future, and not to mention they are inherently better technologies than the normal disk driven ones. 

BTW. I just compared the difference in the sound quality between playing a disk directly from my Imac or playing it in AIFF through the hard disk and I must say the difference is as clear as light and day. Hard disk playback is way superior. If I can hear such big differences in sound quality through a Beolab 4, imagine what it can do to a quality quality system.  

beocool:

All the information about the Beolab 5's supplied by David Moulton and Soundproof has made me appreciate these fantastic speakers even more.

Me too. I even considered changing my saving for a BV4 to a pair of BL5.

soundproof:

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If you buy a B&O speaker with acoustic lenses and go hunting for acoustic music, released by those artists who are still intent on creating musical nuance and dynamic listening experiences, then you're in for a treat

I totally agree with soundproof here .....and happily there are still many many artists / labels / producers who are intersted enough to produce marvelous recordings - which ( although maybe I'm biased ) sound so great via Beolab speakers.

In fact, the idea behind having Martin Simpson ( google him if you don't know his playing...incredible ) play through the Beolab 5's in our shop was for these exact reasons.

On the day, it was interesting to note that Martin was using a pre-amp for his guitars built by a hi-fi engineer - we had a chat about the whole "signal path" thing when playing live / recording. 

The sound was incredible.

wonderfulelectric:

Sounds like the Beolab 5s are the most sought after high end loudspeakers in this forum.

No, really!

wonderfulelectric:

Sounds like the Beolab 5s are the most sought after high end loudspeakers in this forum. Maybe B&O should take notice and build an even more ambitious one, one that has no compromises. Why does B&O has such a narrow selection of loudspeakers. Look at the options offered by manufacturers way smaller than them, they have selection way wider than B&Os. B&O has always build loudspeakers with the price correlating to the size and bass extension. Maybe it's time to produce some super high end compacts. 

You should give the BeoLab 3s a thorough consideration, then. :-)

Actually, one of my pet peev's is the quality that CD's are being ripped and printed and the way some artists (or rather the recording/processing studios) are "dumbing down" the content.

I recall writing on this forum in 2003 after just purchasing my BL5's on how I had rediscovered my whole music collection again - 300 new CD's to listen to in marvellous never-heard-before detail and tone. Over the years, I have added more and more CD's to my collection. To whatever you may think, I've moved away from one artist CD's to the chill and lounge compilations for "easy listening".

It then dawned on me (a function of moving from house to house a lot with very long periods awqy from the 5's which were in transit etc..) how the BL5's just didn't sound as good as they did before with the new CD purchases. I recalibrated, checked the connects, softened up the living room etc... Nothing seemed to work.

Out of frustration I then checked against my two old-time favourite reference discs. The first is the B&O Active listening 3 CD (the one with the BL5's on the label), Track 1.  The second is Patience by George Michael (Track 2). Both of these tracks sounded perfect. Crystal clear, punchy and chocolate creamy smooth detail and show-off the BL5's beyond belief. Nothing wrong with the BL5's I thought.

I have now become totally convinced the recent recording's to disk is the whole problem with today's music. I recently bought and listened to David Bowies Platinum Collection (3CD's) the other day (as in 80's music rather than 21^st century music). The sound recording was detailed and dynamic. The music recording was excellent but the vocals were slightly off and clearly to me, solely a function of the studio inability at that time to "polish" vocals (probably an analogue track) as much as the music. However, it did appear to be a reasonable attempt to put the master recording on the disc as the artist had intended.

The lessen I think I have learned here is that there is nothing wrong with the CD format and that there is no real need to market higher resolution playback systems like SACD, HDAudio etc... so long as studios smarten up and record and print properly and stop catering to this compression obsession everybody seems to wax-lyrical over. Finally, like Metallica, artists also need to take a bit more pride in their work and insist their material is presented in the best possible way and then let the techno-freaks do what they want with it once the have bought the music.

10%

The thing with the Beolab 3s is that I feel that they are more for softcore listening than hardcore listening. I was thinking more of a 5000 pounds compact loudspeaker with like amplifications isolated from the drive units etc... Maybe they should build a larger version of the Beolab 3s since they do look kinda small to be taken seriously. However, B&O isn't really into building loudspeakers of the same design in different sizes are they. I was thinking of a sealed cabinet configuration with decent volume and decent sized drive units.Because of the Beolab3s passive radiator bass alignment, you do loss all the information below it's bass rolloff. Take a look at www.magico.net . USD30000 for a 2 way sealed standmount with a frequency response that is flat all the way down to 20hz without any DSPs in a small room as measured in some hifi mag. Now, that's an amazing achievement.

I thought back in the early 2000s B&O was planning to move into making professional loudspakers, what happened to that plan?

wonderfulelectric:

I thought back in the early 2000s B&O was planning to move into making professional loudspakers, what happened to that plan?

BeoLab 9.

Began life as an active monitor for studio work, and morphed into what you see now.

BeoLab 3 is considered to be the truest speaker in the acoustic lens range by audiophiles, by the way. (Basing that on feedback from a large number of sources, direct and indirect.) But they are not, as you write, capable of hardcore playback - they reach a point, if you turn up to "11", where the distortion becomes too great. Probably the radiators that can't keep up.

But for listening up to that point, matchless sound, and great for acoustic music.

(And let's not forget BeoLab 4000 in the midst of all the hoopla for the acoustic lens ones -- there's an underestimated performer if I ever heard one.)

Where did the source of the BL9 starting a life as a studio monitor come from? It is a floorstander and as floorstanders go it is not the most suited for professional applications.

The Beolab 4000s are good but not that good to be considered high end. The whole idea of high end audiophile speakers is that they will be true, how can the Beolab 3s be true if they are so genre dependent. The beolab3s can definitely not cope with the stress of a full blown orchestra and neither can the beolab 8000s. I don't think people mind buying big loudspakers nowadays anymore, I have seen ads of big high end loudspeakers  in women's vogue. It's the styling that matters and not the size.

As Dave says, it started out life as a nearfield monitor, and was horizontally aligned. A centre unit with the midbass driver + tweeter/ALT, and two units which sat either side which house bass drivers.

wonderfulelectric:

I wonder why does B&O like to skimp on drive units. Building quality ones don't take a lot more capital anyways in relation to their asking price. Beolab 3s can be so much better even with the current 4 inch drive units if they build a better motor for them like adding oversized 2 inch voice coil and high strength neodynium magnets if they really want to go for the compact speaker with large sound route.

Hmmm... see, i have a feeling they know what they're doing. 

It's amazing as it is that they got a driver THAT size into such a small cabinet and achieved an acceptable sound (a bloody great sound)

On what basis can you prove that statement, wonderful?

-edit- i now appreciate the BL3's on a whole new level after reading that. 

Haha... on the basis that the Beolab 3s  compress even playing moderate volumes as do the Beolab 8000s. Anyways I was just sent a customer satisfactory form and I've written under the comments that I really like your designs but please use better quality components, be it through the use of outsourcing or price rise. I seriously wonder how B&O get away with using the components they use now. But I just bought a bunch of their phones and a pair of loudspeakers didn't I.

Okay compare the value you get from the Beolab 4000s and these. http://www.definitivetechnologies.com/loudspeakers/mythos/mythos_supertowers.html . Just crazy. I am not saying B&O should become the industrial leader in terms of value but come on.... 

wonderfulelectric:

Haha... on the basis that the Beolab 3s  compress even playing moderate volumes as do the Beolab 8000s. Anyways I was just sent a customer satisfactory form and I've written under the comments that I really like your designs but please use better quality components, be it through the use of outsourcing or price rise. I seriously wonder how B&O get away with using the components they use now. But I just bought a bunch of their phones and a pair of loudspeakers didn't I.

Okay compare the value you get from the Beolab 4000s and these. http://www.definitivetechnologies.com/loudspeakers/mythos/mythos_supertowers.html . Just crazy. I am not saying B&O should become the industrial leader in terms of value but come on.... 

NO, what you are hearing is the limitation and constraints that the beautiful design causes. (this is the balance of form and function) Read what Dave Moulton said there. He kinda knows what he's talking about