I am having my new BL5's delivered in a couple of weeks time and was intending to use my existing BL9's as rear speakers.

My wife has suggested that for practical reasons it may be worth having wall mounted speakers at the rear, so BL3's were discussed.

They are both ALT speakers, but I appreciate that the BL3's are about half the power, but being wall mounted they will be more in direct line of sight to my ears (not covered by sofa etc).

What do the team think the difference will be? I mainly use the rear speakers for tv/movie viewing, music is less often.

It's a one way ticket, don't want to make the wrong decision......I guess the right answer is to ask the dealer to demo them at home for me??

Mike

I have 5's as fronts and 3's as rears - which are just perfect.

Although i wouldn't say 9's as rears were overkill, they are certainly more than one would really need - but impressive all the same!

Sounds like you're going to have a cracker of a set-up!!  What screen do you have?

Lee

 

TV is BV7-55 with BL10

Acoustic lens-tastic !!

I too have the 7-55, but for aesthetic reasons i have mine on a low floor stand with a 7.6.  It just works in the room.

From a purists point of view, you have the perfect set-up!  

Spoil yourself - have the 9's as rears and wallow in ostentatiousness.

Lee

 

I don't mind anyone knowing that I disagree with LEE but don't tell anyone I agree with your missus - it'll spoil my rep!

If your 9's are going to be blazing into the rear of the sofa then listen to your better half and audition the wallmounted 3's. Remember that the acoustic lens narrows the vertical dispersion whilst broadening the horizontal - it is their raison d'etre, line of site is important. Playing any acoustic lens floor standing speaker behind a sofa will be like paying for Dave Gilmour to play his guitar at the bottom of your swimming pool - you can seen where the money went but you haven't really gotten the best from your outlay!

Remember that Dolby 5.1 etc. do not send full bandwidth signals to rear speakers - it is something like (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) 70Hz to 8KHz - Lab 3's are more than capable. It can be argued that 5's & 9's as rears are overspecified.

ummm....Beolab 5s

Then you can set music to Speaker 4 and video to speaker 5!

Pure indulgence

How about wall mounting a pair of the new Beolab 12s?

I've got 3s and a bv9 tv.

It's all you could ask for.

Although.... I've had the 9a back here too. They are amazing speakers.

I had a setup with BL5 front and BL4000 as rears, and clearly (!) the missing ALT was a problem - so I upgraded  to BL3's as rears and the sound became more uniform. As the new sound formats arrived (DTS HD Master Audio + True Dolby Digital) I had a demo of a BeoLiving setup that resulted in replacing the BL3's with BL9's.

And for DTS HD Master Audio the difference was amazing. The sound stage and, above all, the low freq reproduction were superb. My living room is 77 m2 with high ceilings.

With the new high def sound formats, taking advantage of the BL5's means that the BL3's can not follow IMHO.

Roger

Roger:

With the new high def sound formats, taking advantage of the BL5's means that the BL3's can not follow IMHO.

 

Not if they're playing into the rear of a sofa!

Very interesting. At the moment I`m using a pair of BL9 front speaker with a pair of BL4000 MKII rear speaker (placed on a floor stand on both sides of the sofa). Because I`m sitting/lying closer one of the BL4000 than the other, the right one is only operating with approx. 30% and the left one with 50% (setup DSS of the BV8-40).

For sure someone will not notice any difference regarding the rear speakers while listening to the telly in Dolby 5.1 mode. Because I prefer listening to music in speaker 4 mode, I tried a pair of BL3 for one day. But because of the 30%/50% ratio of my rear speakers, I was not able to notice a big difference. I thought the BL4000 add a volume to the BL9 but sounded not as crisp as the BL3. But I was not sure which pair of rear speaker was better.

But you know "better is the enemy of good" sometimes I`m looking for a pair of BL3 and ask myself to sell the BL4000 on ebay. Stylewise not, but soundwise, that is the question.