koning:

From my observations there is nothing particularly special about this audio cicuit which uses off the shelf components to provide the required solution.

Oh

In other words......it's just a fancy display with a premium price!

Why on earth don't they use audiofile components!!!!!

And i was told that the sound chip was a custom built one??

 

I really would like to know what brand of other components are used further on in the beosound 5 (caps, resistors, tolerance of them...)

The AD 1852 is a widely spread used converter, from excellent quality, I see no reason why B&O should invest in fabrication themselves a converter.

Sound quality not only depends on the quality of the used DA, but also on the layout of the board, power supply and other components used as well.

koning:

From my observations there is nothing particularly special about this audio cicuit which uses off the shelf components to provide the required solution.

Oh

In other words......it's just a fancy display with a premium price!

Why on earth don't they use audiofile components!!!!!

And i was told that the sound chip was a custom built one??

 

Don't get too carried away here - the AD1852 is a very respectable DAC which will give very good performance. The fact that it is an off the shelf part shouldn't be off-putting as long as it is a well designed, good performance part - which it seems to be.

Most CD players and separate DAC's on the market are configured using industry standard parts -it shouldn't be a show stopper!

koning:

Do you think Chris that the other components are audiophile?? I think NOT!

Only Keith has the visual capabilities to now

koning:

Do you think Chris that the other components are audiophile?? I think NOT!

B&O was never known for its use of audiophile components - just regular stuff that is good enough to do the job well enough. There are plenty of other companies around that will take care of all imaginable needs for hi-fi mystisicm, at a much larger price. The D/A in this case is certainly good enough and I can trust B&O not to ruin the sound after it, either. The rest is digital, and please let's not get started about what "audiophile" choices there are to do in that domain (regarding hardware).

Take the Beolab 5 for example. I would bet no components inside it are of some mythical audiophile grade; yet the end result undoubtedly is!

regular stuff

Come on men,this beauty cost E4825 euro's.

BeoBoyLit:

Keith Saunders:

From my observations there is nothing particularly special about this audio cicuit which uses off the shelf components to provide the required solution.

Totally agree here.

and then...

Alex:

The BeoSound 5 is high-end! It's not a direct replacement for the BeoMedia; the BeoMaster 5 is, which is part of the BeoSound 5 package. The BeoSound 5 package is much more than just another a mediacenter - it's a BeoSound.

Alex:

I would like to know why it can't be considered high-end audio. B&O have designed the sound chips themselves, as well as the volume controls and output stages - they've taken it all very seriously. With Lossless, it could potentially sound better than a lot of CD players.

Alex:

RE the sound performance - B&O have taken the sonic performance very seriously - think of a product to compliment the BeoLab 5 (hence the '5' moniker). The audio circuitry was designed by B&O - it's not an 'off-the-shelf' sound chip.

Alex:

Either way, the sound chips in the BeoSound 5 are of B&O's own design (not off-the-shelf hardware) and will perform excellently. B&O have taken the sonic performance of the BeoSound 5 very seriously...

Dear Alex, you've repeated this sentence before, exactly 14 times Were your assertions then simply 14 times unfounded?

'cause I thought for a while you were part of the technical project team who developed this BM5 device in Struer.

Disappointed.

No, my comments were completely founded, I should have just expressed them more clearly.

When I say 'chip', I mean circuitry. The BeoMedia actually performed very well sonically, and it used what you could refer to as an 'off-the-shelf' sound card, which wasn't modified at all. B&O have gone quite a step up with the BeoMaster 5 - the processing chips may be produced by other companies, but this goes of any 'audiophile-grade-company' - it's not economically viable (producing these chips is incredibly expensive unless you can do it on a large scale). I can't say I know very much at all about the reputation of the chips used here, although I do know that STMicroelectronics chips are used by quite a few number of high-end audio brands in their pre-amps, and also that those used by B&O seem to exhibit good performance on paper.

koning:

regular stuff

Come on men,this beauty cost E4825 euro's.

OK, let's try this in another way. Which components would you like to see upgraded, and why?

The price isn't the answer here. I haven't seen a cheap B&O product since I bought a bottle opener on eBay  All discussions that try to handle B&O price vs. absolute product quality have been a dead end for years...

My dealer gave the bottle opener for free (afer I bought a beosound 9000)

koning:

Is it correct that the soundcard inside the Beomaster 5 is a special custom built one.

Depends what you define as the 'sound card'. If you mean the chip which converts the 1s and 0s into an analogue waveform, then no. If you mean the circuitry design itself which produces the sound, and not the individual chips which have gone into it, then yes. A sound card in general refers to a huge number of components put together which sit in the back of your computer.

From Keith's fuller explanation below - the B&O designed card takes the SPDIF signal from the PC motherboard which then passes through the MAS3530 DSP chip (which as well as handling PCM audio data can also handle several flavours of Dolby decoding etc). It then arrives at the DAC (the already mentioned AD1852), the analogue output of which then appears (via a switching network) at the Masterlink/Powerlink/Line out connections on the rear of the BM5.

It is custom in that the board has been designed especially for the BM5. (No standard "off the shelf" soundcard will have Masterlink/Powerlink outputs).

I'm sure Keith can give us his impressions of the ancilliary components and passives around the DSP & DAC devices but I would be amazed if they were anything other than properly selected, industry standard parts, whose specifications are suitable for use with the DAC chip used.

I wouldn't expect any exotic capacitors or hand whittled resistors etc.

In that case I think the beosound 5 is very overpriced

So taking rgbyhkr's recommended price list....doing away with the Apple remote etc.. (lets face it...if you wanna do Apple you may as well go full-hog with Apple and do your whole fully loaded system for a few hundred quid) and other "also work" add-ons which need a PhD in applied electronics. And then we pitch in around the myriad of choices and endless combinations that other hi-fi manufactureres seem to bamboozle the buying public with the basic systems on the market are:- 

Sooloos            $7,500 to $13,000 and up

Olive                 $ 1,800

Qsonix 110       $  5,500

Kaledascope     $10,500 to 20,000 and up

Escient             $ 4,000 to 6,000 plus touchscreen of min ~$1200

Request            $ 6,500 to 13,000 plus touchscreen of min ~$1200

Beomaster 5     $ 2,900 plus $2,700 for the Beosound 5 screen.

So what part of the Beomaster/Beosound 5 is overpriced compared to the other systems?

Do any of these other systems subscribe to pure "audiophile sound" with matching audiophile components?

Or is it the case now (like ICE-Power D-Class amps) that there are alternatives to mega-buck mono blocs, standalone Dac's, hi-end CD transports with $100 Wal-Mart guts that can be simply produced from standard products that are well specificed, well selected, well paired and subject to peer review by a listening panel and on all accounts sounds excellent? Or is this going to end-up as a cable debate?

10%

koning:

In that case I think the beosound 5 is very overpriced

From a circuit construction point of view I don't think it differs from many other B&O products, past or present. If you're happy with the sonic performance of your existing B&O kit then this will not disappoint. You could equally apply the "overpriced" arguement to many product in the range - you make your choice and pay the money.