General Forum

Re: BL9 Impressions):

DirtyDiana — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:14:40 GMT

Well,having spent over a week with these amazing speakers-and player Iam totally stunned by the detail,clarity,realism and total enjoyment this system gives you for hour after hour which my previous system did not quite do.

The BL9/BS9000 beats my old system which was nearly 3 times the price (used) -I was not expecting it to since this was supposed to be a practical change rather than a perfromance one.

Enough eulogizing for now!

All the best

Re: BL9 Impressions):

Teletom — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:49:11 GMT

The distance between the speakers (center-lines) is appr. 2,4 meters; mainly because we have a video cabinet between them.

best regards

Johan

Re: BL9 Impressions):

DirtyDiana — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:46:18 GMT

Teletom they are 50cm away from the back wall currently and seem just fine on bass.

How far apart are yours I have them at just over 6feet?

Re: BL9 Impressions):

Teletom — Tue, 04 May 2010 06:45:51 GMT

Quote ".... I wanted them away from the back walls ..... "

Very good to read your positive impressions about your new BL9's. I have a pair myself and spend quite some time in finding the best possible placing to get a more balanced (higher) midrange character. Initially I was not too happy with the performance in that respect. However stepwise I increased the distance between footprint and back wall from 25 to appr. 60 cm and also followed some suggestions mentioned in a very recent "Beolab9 placement" post on the skandinavian forum. And I must say the improvements in sound quality are just exellent. I am quite happy with the overall performance now.

Could you give some indication how far your BL9's are placed from the back wall?

Re: BL9 Impressions):

kawo — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:52:18 GMT

Great to hear that your a happy with your new setup....I camo from a B&W 802D setup and switched for the same reasons as you described. Iwas tiered to switch and adjust tousends of settings to "hear" music.

As far as I recall the beworld meeting at Struer we had a discussion with one of the guys there visiting the listining room. All the speaker are setup with a slight "toe in". Reason was quite simple, they started by accident at some time and just did not chanche the way to compare the speakers these days...

From my point of view the BL9 is with regards to the pricing one of the best speakers in the market....unfortunately not to many hifi experts know that.

Have fun with yours!

Re: BL9 Impressions):

beocool — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:46:12 GMT

Good to read this. Once you have the B&O bug there's no way back!

Re: BL9 Impressions):

elephant — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:09:44 GMT

great review - thank you for the perspective

the only bit which did not make sense to me was the phrase "toe in" - at first I thought you had accidentally damaged the the speaker cover !

BL9 Impressions):

DirtyDiana — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:43:28 GMT

Hello all,

I recently sold off my Audiophile gear consisting of Mark Levinson,Pass pre/power,Revel F52,Kimber cables to get into B&O simplicity and practicality and still have great performance aswell.

I got a bit bored of swapping expensive cables around and I never really ended up with an ideal sound-there was always a weekness somewhere in the high or low reproduction.So moving away from the conventional route I became interested in ALT and liked the idea of not having such a presice sweetspot, less clutter and extra ££$ in the bank...

I had almost done a deal on used BL5 but it fell through at the last minuite so a beauty pair of BL9 came up and I snapped them up asap along with a BS9000.I was always in two minds about the BL5 since the listening room is 8mX4m and I wanted them away from the back walls and 7ft apart which always favoured the BL9's footprint so it was no dissapointment to end up with the Penguins.

After marvelling at the sheer build quality of the speakers and the beauty of the player we connected everything up and positioned the speakers with a slight toe in (which I later discovered to be a mistake).

I began playing some farmiliar CDs and the first thing that struck me was that the sound stage seemed to be lower down than before but then it occurred to me that it was just an illusion of not having a huge 5ft tall speaker and 5 shelf rack in front of me which was always a focal point when listening.The next thing was the difference in midrange character and at first thought it was dissapointing until realising that it is just not blasted at you like a conventional speaker with a slight toe in would do which is a matter of taste.I then listened to some Classical and this is where the suprise was-a track that seemed fairly flat and undynamic before was absolutely stunning in the way violins were delivered with such dynamic power and accuracy,it left me pretty shocked at discovering such a difference in dynamics and moving onto some Pavarotti again I never heard the music presented in such a realistic enjoyable way before its like the B&O engineers concentrated on this aspect above all else-It is just total listening enjoyment!

Then after a few hours of playing and tweeking the speakers to a neutral position things just got better,the way music is presented is just so much more believable and satisfying than before-the detail the lenses deliver is quite amazing and there is even more detail and the bass is just wonderful being much tighter and faster with less extension which was a character of the cabling in the other system.I have fallen into the trap of increasing volume to compensate for the difference in midrange delivery but it is simply different,more realistic and less forward than before.

I really was expecting to take a step back in sheer musical enjoyment but it appears not,Iam totally chuffed to bits with it considering the outlay.Well done B&O!

Thanks for listening,hope it made some sense!