Here are some suggestions for those searching for the best possible sound from their BL5s!

1. Is the room large enough? The BL5s "energize" a lot of air, and if the room is too small, that energy will be conflicting, cancelling out soundwaves, creating room nodes (interactions between sound waves and walls) and muddying up the sound. The room should be large enough to allow placement of the speakers at a distance from walls, with enough distance from the speakers to you, to let the first reflection from the disc drivers bounce off the side walls and reach you. Yes, you read that right - with the BL5s you want the room reflections that many audiophiles spend a fortune eliminating with conventional speakers. The BL5s are designed to avoid reflections from ceiling and floor, but to give you the side reflections.
Dave Moulton does not like giving the BL5s toe-in, that is when the speakers are turned to aim slightly towards the listening position. In order to engage the walls, Moulton recommends having the speakers point parallel to the room's listening axis. You can adjust this if, say, your speakers are far apart, then some toe-in can be justified, as long as you can have a listening position that is proper relative to the distance between the speakers. (In the listening room in Struer, they've given them toe-in because of this.)

2. This means that symmetrical placement is also a bonus, as you want similar reflections from the side walls. Symmetrical placement is otherwise also a must if you want true stereo perspective. And if one speaker reflects off a wall, and the other has empty space to its side, then that's not ideal, either.

3. Similarly, you should also have a little distance from the back of your head to the rear wall, in order to avoid listening inside the rear wall reflections.

4. Check the signal chain. Are the speakers getting a digital s/pdif feed, or Powerlink/line-in only? When the speakers detect an s/pdif signal, this gets priority over any other signal.

5. Check the tone settings in your source. Are they neutral? Mine are, as I want the character of each recording to come through as undistorted as possible, but for all you know, someone may have changed these settings.

6. If you have menu options for bass control in your source, go through these. Check to see where the cross-over is set for the bass. Usually from 80Hz-100Hz. Check to see that the LFE signal - the signal that goes to the subwoofer - is being sent to your front speakers. Usually you tick "NO SUB WOOFER" or something similar, and then this signal is sent to the L/R speakers, in this case the BL5s.

If you have a surround setup, set the rear/side speakers to SMALL, and the front speakers to LARGE.

7. Check your source player. Is it decoding the source properly? Some have a lot of options - such as Dynamic Range Control, Dynamic Range Suppression. These should be inactive when you use BL5s, you don't need it, they can take anything you send them.

Also check that you are not converting the original signal to a fake surround signal, or a stereo signal with Digital Signal Processing. If you have a digital connection from your source to the speakers, you want an untouched signal to reach your speakers. They are plenty advanced enough in their own processing of it.
If you are sending an analog signal to the speakers, from a surround processor for instance, then the setting is even more crucial, and needs to be checked. ProLogic, Neo6, etc., are all false surrounds. If you have DTS, Dolby 5.1 or the high-def audio formats in the source, then make sure that the processor is handling these natively and not translating them into another version. It really pays to read the processor's manual thoroughly on this particular point. (The digital input on the BL5s is not equipped to handle all kinds of surround signals, and you may have to opt for the analog signal from the processor if you get drop-outs, etc.)

8. If you're using a non-B&O source, get a synchronisation cable. If your BL5s don't respond properly to a Synch-cable (early versions), then do a volume STORE that you can reset to, if you suspect the speakers have drifted. Each blink of the green light, as you adjust the volume up or down, adjusts the speakers 1dB. If the speaker on the right hasn't received a volume instruction (your child was in the way), then the speakers are at least 1dB off in respect to one another. That's noticeable -- more than that is very noticeable.
Therefore, take the speakers all the way down, keep pressing DOWN volume until the light doesn't respond any more.
Then wait a little - before going back up tick-by-tick, while listening to a source.
For a while, you won't hear anything, but then you'll begin hearing the source. Press each tick-by-tick, slowly, while registering that both speakers are responding to the press of the UP button.
When you reach the volume level you like, store this using Audio SETUP in LIST.
Add RESET to your remote LIST, if it doesn't already have this.
You now have a simple way of resetting your speakers' levels, and being certain they're similar. It really matters to the bass reproduction, and you can now adjust up and down from the Reset Level, knowing you can easily restore this.

9. Is your listening environment absorbing too much of the sound energy, or reflecting too much of it? Worth taking a look at where you listen. Won't go into detail, but the ideal room has a little "echo" (room tone), without being dead or clangy. (Most B&O product photography takes place in rooms that are the last place in the world for good audio ... concrete walls and marble floors!)

10. Is your listening position dictated by the interior decorator or by the ideal listening spot?
I can't tell you how many times I've come to the house of a friend or acquaintance, and discovered that the sound merged much better in front of or behind the listening position they had arbitrarily chosen, before placing everything around it.
Begin with speaker placement negotiations with the interior decorator (your better half!). You do not want to put BL5s right smack up against a wall, it's not ideal, and speakers of this quality should have ideal working conditions. The air being shifted by the sub will reflect straight from the back wall and muddle up the next pulses.
Don't place the speakers too far apart. BL5s can be placed quite far apart, but speakers create and spread sound energy, and you want to focus this energy towards the ideal listening position. Too far apart, and you get reduced focus and an unnaturally extended soundstage - Joni Mitchell will have a very wide mouth. 2,5-4m should be your working range for spacing the speakers.

11. Where's the bass?
If you feel the bass is soft where you're seated but you find better bass spots elsewhere in your room, then you should reconsider the speaker placement or listening position.
People placing subwoofers use this trick: they place the subwoofer in the listening position, and start a source with good bass, then they move around hunting at floor level for the best sounding subwoofer pulse. When they find it, they place the subwoofer there, and check whether they get the same bass response in the listening position. Usually they do.
Complaints about the bass on the BL5s may just as much be a function of listening in the wrong place. The fact that you've placed a chair or couch there doesn't make it right.
The propagation of bass waves is quite a science - for instance, some of those waves are more than 27m long, clearly too long for 99.999% of listening rooms. Which is why you're dealing with reflections that could be pulse-cancelling and have to pay attention to optimum placement.
When I was deciding my ideal placement and listening position, I happened to place my outstretched hand on the back of my sofa, and noticed that it was vibrating to a bass pulse my head or chest weren't feeling. I went to sit there, and got a wonderful bass response (the chest cavity responds to the bass). So I redid the placement until I got that feeling in the listening position.

12. No - you can't place BL5s "anywhere you want" and expect a perfect result. But you will get good sound - however, they are much better than good sound. I agree with Dave Moulton, there's no way that the BL3s can create better sound than the BL5s, but if your listening environment isn't ideal, or if you have made mistakes in setup, then you may end up in the strange situation that you prefer your BL3s to the BL5s - but that would not be the fault of the speakers. It could simply be that BL3s or BL9s are better suited to the dimensions and characteristics of the room.

13. Does your source have poor, muddled bass while lacking dynamic range? Which, sadly, is true of most music produced today, unless it's classical or acoustic jazz from quality performers. Many sound systems do not go below 40Hz, and most stop at 65Hz. Your BL5s can dive to sub 20Hz - and need to be properly fed. Be critical of the music you buy, check reviews and references - and don't believe that expensive remasters are necessarily better than the original CDs!

Get a good reference CD, and use that. It's useful to get one with a variety of tracks on it. You can burn your own - try to include mostly acoustic music, that has not been generated or processed electronically.
My favourite test-CD is Burmester's CD3, which has tracks selected to test a range of variables.

http://burmester.de/en/produkte/index.php?product=2,16,38

When you have everything set up right, get this recording by Pierre Boulez and the Wiener Philharmoniker of Mahler's 3rd Symphony.
Sit back - and marvel at the miracles a pair of BeoLab 5s are capable of. You won't believe your ears - where most music today is mixed with a pitiful dynamic range and compressed to death, this recording has unsurpassed dynamic range. And the BeoLab 5s handle every single note beautifully.

what ca I say .....

Bravo!

Indeed!  

It covers all the essential stuff without being too "rocket science" for most people. This deserves to be "put somewhere" so it doesn't get lost...

An excellent post! 

rayfenwick:

Indeed!  

It covers all the essential stuff without being too "rocket science" for most people. This deserves to be "put somewhere" so it doesn't get lost...

An excellent post! 

Agree with you Ray, Moderators can considerate this ....

All thread's with useful tips and tricks can be put on one place !

Easy to find and very useful for newbie ....

Soundproof,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this post.  I've been contemplating getting some BL5s for a couple years now (I know - I need to stop contemplating and simply bite the bullet), and I'm going to put this post in my web browser's "favorite" list.

A couple of quick questions for you:

-How much better does the digital co-axial input on the BL5s make them sound?  I ask because I'm obviously an Apple guy and there's no current B&O solution for easily getting Apple music to the digital co-axial input of the BL5s.  What do you think the odds are of B&O eventually putting a digital co-axial out on the BS3 or it's successor?

-One of the appealing things to me about the BL5s has been the oft-repeated mantra that they're more capable of distributing sound in small or oddly shaped rooms.  In my current house, we don't have an ideal listening set-up in which to place the BL5s.  I will eventually need to move to a better designed home (I have too many kids for this house) which will hopefully have a media room designed with B&O in mind.  However, for the time being, the room in which I'd placed the BL5s in my current house would have the BL5s placed in two of the corners against the walls.  The room is relatively small, and the bricks from a fireplace would jut out right in front of one of the speakers.  Furniture would also be relatively in front of the speakers owing to the smallness of the room and some seating needs.  Should I consider simply keeping my BL3s until I have a more ideal listening room or maybe get smaller speakers (like the BL9s)?

TIA,

Mark

Hello BeoNut1,

s/pdif over analog. Using analog doesn't have to be inferior - it depends upon the Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) being used. I asked the Head of Audio at B&O why the BeoSystem 3 didn't have s/pdif out, and he said that their Golden Ears hadn't been able to distinguish between an s/pdif signal and Powerlink Out from the Beosystem 3. Now there are also digital formats (resolutions, formats, etc.) that the processors in the BL5s can't handle - signals with higher than 24bit/96kHz resolution, for instance, and these are becoming more common now that high-def audio is here - which means that you'd want to use an external processor and feed the speakers an analog signal.

I believe a lot of the "The s/pdif digital is so much better" reports are due to the fact that this signal is usually much louder out of the speakers than the comparable analog signal. Thus it appears that you're getting a lot more punch and detail - but if you match the analog sound level to that produced with the digital connection, then you'll find that the differences disappear. (Again, if your digital-to-analog sound processor, whether B&O or not, is of good quality.)
If the digital signal is in a format the BL5s understand, then I prefer feeding them this, as it means there are a minimum of conversions of the signal, before it is turned into sound.

What speaker to choose?

The BL3s and BL9s are very good speakers. I own BL3s, and love the sound from them - they do struggle  a bit at very high volumes, but you would rarely want to be listening at those levels. For parties, you may find them wanting ... but you can add a BL2 or other sub.
The BL3s have impressed many very critical audiophiles, who use them to really dive into their recordings.
Putting a pair of BL5s inside a too small room is not recommended - these speakers can fill an auditorium, inside a too small room they're either whispering, or else filling the space with so much sound energy that you end up with aural mud. Likewise, if the room is oddly shaped, you lose the benefit of the acoustic lenses, which are the reason these speakers are truly great. You get good sound, but you don't get sublime sound ...

B&O marketing may be in favour of "place them wherever you want" - and you will get acceptable sound doing so. But if you want to get the feeling that your walls have just disappeared, and a symphony orchestra or your favourite singer just moved in, then you want to follow the tips above concerning symmetrical placement and distance to walls and corners.

Very interesting post Soundproof, thanks !

Maybe some input for the BL5 FAQs?

Ralf

Ooh i have that CD, and many other Deutche Grammaphon CD's, great recordings, GREAT tips, thank you soundproof (whatever your name might be)

Would you mind if i made this an article and/or FAQ on the main site Soundproof?

Lee

Excellent article! I found it very interesting to read, and I don't even have a pair of BL5s.

Very good reading.

If I were to choose, what should it be - BeoLab 5 or BeoLab 9?

My room is approx. 3,5 x 4,0 meter, with a double door (always opened) to the adjacent room. Sound reflexion in the room is minor, carpets on wooden floors, various bookshelves, chairs and a soft couch.

The choice should be made only on sound considerations. I might sometime in the future move to a bigger apartment.

Christian:

Very good reading.

If I were to choose, what should it be - BeoLab 5 or BeoLab 9?

My room is approx. 3,5 x 4,0 meter, with a double door (always opened) to the adjacent room. Sound reflexion in the room is minor, carpets on wooden floors, various bookshelves, chairs and a soft couch.

The choice should be made only on sound considerations. I might sometime in the future move to a bigger apartment.

That's smaller than my room! That is very small Christian hehe, even BL9's would be pushing it... The problem mentioned in soundproofs post is the amount of air the BL5's move and the possibility of the sounds cancelling out... or the door being open on one side will leave you with a very a-symetrical setup, spoiling the stereo perspective...

very good post indeed >

Simply outstanding

Thanks for taking the time to write it Soundproof. You post makes me want even more a pair of BL5's. My living room is up to the challenge, however I'm affraid my pocket is not (yet)

Excellent post, Soundproof, even if I don't own a pair of Beolab 5's.

@Lee: Not at all, and thanks for all the positive comments in the thread.

@Christian.

Hard to tell - if your open double doors are behind you, along the listening axis, then it could be quite ideal, as the additional volume will help dissipate the sound energy. If it's along one of the sides, it's not as ideal.

You have a "near" quadratic room, which is frowned upon by audiophiles, but which doesn't have to be a big problem. George Cardas has spent a lot of time thinking about speaker placement and listening positions, and has recommendations when it comes to such rooms.

Again - if the open doors are behind you, or if you can redo the layout in the room so that they are, you may get a very good solution, as the sound energy will go past you, and then "die" in the other room.

Here's a pdf that George Cardas has put together, concerning ideal placement of speakers. He's of the "avoid wall reflections" school - but remember that the whole trick with acoustic lenses is to engage the walls. It's a controversial theory among audiophiles, but I would never want to go back to non-reflecting listening after having experienced what the lenses can do. (And there are quite a few speaker manufacturers who are providing solutions according to similar principles, it's catching on.)
Cardas warns that his pdf will make your head explode - of course, his suggestions are valid for all listening room setups, not just those with BL5s: http://www.cardas.com/pdf/roomsetup.pdf

You'll discover that he is a stickler for symmetry. At this link, you'll also find Cardas' Speaker Placement Calculator, at the bottom of the page.
http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=26&pagestring=Room+Setup

Since rooms are different, with varying reflective characteristics, the results should be considered as a guide, and not as the only answer.

As to what speakers should go in what rooms - I guess the best guide I can give you is that BL5s are the grand piano equivalent of speakers, and then ask what kind of room such a piano is suitable for?

We're dealing with what's best, given what we have to work with. A grand wouldn't be able to breathe in a small room, and would deliver sound similar to that of an upright.
Dave has the Boulez/Mahler 3rd recording I mention above, and can confirm that in the opening, the orchestra is moving along quite moderately, when there are suddenly a series of powerful kettle-drum hits. The BL5s can make the leap from gently describing the orchestra to realistically delivering those hits without any effort at all - and if the room has air, the hits will have a lot of detail, down to your hearing the hand of the percussionist calming the vibrating drum skin after each hit. If there's not enough air, and the room isn't absorbing the energy, then those sudden thumps will be clumpy and without definition, if you're listening at a proper, orchestral volume. (Which doesn't mean ear blastingly loud, but realistic.)

The risk of placing BL5s in too small rooms is that you'll know not to turn them up, but then you have people visiting, who hear what they cost, and who "want to hear what they can do." So you turn them up, and the result is quite muddled, and you begin losing confidence in your speakers, thinking they're not any good.
They are, trust me - B&O is not paying me to write this! But they need volume and a room that resonates properly to be outstanding.

Soundproof you have make me cry.....

You're absolutly Right!!!!

But the beolab 9 also need plenty of space,so there is no speaker to fill the gap.

I hope B&O will make a loudspeaker right between the beolab3 and belab9

Koning - if the room does not absorb the bass properly, resulting in muddled sound, then you can always try using bass-traps. Strategically placed, they can do wonders.
A couch such as that mentioned by Christian can serve as a bass trap; or you can try to integrate proper bass traps, such as these:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--REAC424BK

Here, a bass-trap is actually inside the light stand!

I know you have struggled with bass reproduction for quite a long time, and wish you'd found a solution by now. I must confess that I've never experienced having too much bass, as you have, and suspect that your listening room must be amplifying the bass.

Christian:

If I were to choose, what should it be - BeoLab 5 or BeoLab 9?

Well in my case, Natalia has said "нет" to "the aliens" but "да" to "the penguins"

Very interesting article, Soundproof! If I had BL5s, I would check everything as you described it.

Only one thing: I find the recording of Mahlers 3rd by P. Boulez quite poor. It is indeed recorded and mixed very well, but musically, it is not worth very much. Check out these Mahler recordings, IMO, they give the best sound and music quality:

Hi Tom, I'll agree that the cycle is uneven, but the 3rd I find wonderful. Let's just disagree! Will check out your recommendation, though.

Soundproof, maybe you have facing now to many question after this outstanding text.

I would like to know what do you think about placing BL8000 ?

And of course compering to BL3 ?

rayfenwick:

Christian:

If I were to choose, what should it be - BeoLab 5 or BeoLab 9?

Well in my case, Natalia has said "нет" to "the aliens" but "да" to "the penguins"

 

 

 

I would be happy my wife saying "да драги" to the penguins

but for now she said ДА to "the pencil's"

rayfenwick:

Christian:

If I were to choose, what should it be - BeoLab 5 or BeoLab 9?

Well in my case, Natalia has said "нет" to "the aliens" but "да" to "the penguins"

I do not have to consult anyone on this, my strategy is: First get the speakers, then the wife....