Hi
This was prompted by an audition I have had at a friend of a speaker I am sure most audiophiles have heard of but likely have not cared to listen to. I know I wouldn’t have if I weren’t pushed in to it but .. I am getting some what ahead of myself…
I have come to consider our deeply stated prejudices. Not of the really shameful ones, rather of more subtle mindsets, which will have use rejecting outright things we haven’t heard… It goes both ways both on the subjectivists or the objectivists side .. No one is spared.
For example we go around saying that the brand is of no importance to us.. Yet.. If we come cross a Lamm compared to a brand say a Denon we will likely think the Lamm superior it wouldn’t matter that this particular Denon could be an all out assault on the High End by a brand which knows a few things about High End Audio.. Same would have happened if it were a SONY .. You get my drift …
Well , my experience was a speaker that I am sure most here would dismiss in a hurry, I included, yet this a real effort at the SOTA and in the realm of High End Audio not an expensive speaker …
The speaker is active, something most audiophiles would reject too but , some of us are warming ourselves to the fact. Several of us are actually using active speakers in our set-ups without thinking about it a lot .. Those with powered subwoofers please raise your hands!
Some SOTA speakers are active in the bottom and this with superior results if you ask me .. Genesis 1, 2 anf 2 Jr, Von Schwheikert VR-9 & 11, Evolution Acoustics MM2,3 and 7 … there are more …
The speaker in question from a brand not reputed for good sound … Interestingly enough, Audiophiles had to give up to the excellence of the JL Audio subwoofers. JL Audio made their name in Car Audio … I will have to come back on this as many of these car-audio-buffs could show many of us a thing or two about bass reproduction … Oh yes! people some of these cars have bass that will shock many home audiophiles in the quality of their response .. not all of course. Some, the same way some so-called audiophiles systems are frankly bad and do a disservice to music reproduction … back to the speaker in question
It is active, has several kilowatts of amplifications, is good looking and the finish is well above most high end audio products. The people who designed it don’t believe in cables at all. Some of the connectors are not gold-plated and in many cases the cable they use is nothing that any audiophile I included would put in their system.
The owner paired his speaker with a tube preamplifier Antique Sound Lab preamp, The top of the line Supra to connect his preamp to the speakers and some room treatment. Result? A very good system. One that would shock more than one, and indeed shocked me.
The speaker? The Bang and Olufsen Beolab 5. It will wipe the floor with many audiophile speakers. It has its own amplifier and DAC. It simply require a source as it can control its own volume by its lone self. It is digital. It converts anything fed to it to 24/96 .. I don’t know if the feed to the amp is digital but it converts the input to digital from what I have read .. and it sounds good . Very good. Much better than we audiophile would even care to admit.
I have heard the speakers at B&O stores and for the most part I always found it dry, …and with highs to cut steel… Well in a controlled environment, one with some acoustic treatment, what I heard was a serious attempt at a High End speaker. The bass in particular is stupendous. The midrange honest, highs ok to good. Soundstaging in particular is first-class. The sheer SPL capability is astonishing this thing plays loud and with no sense of strain everywhere. Your ears will quit before it does and it is no one-trick pony it can play soft, great sense of dynamics. Bass will shame many a subwoofer and not necessarily cheap ones. It goes low, very, very low and with a sense of ease that few high end speakers , aside from those with powered subs possess. I can’t say much about the room correction it seems to work well.
All and all, a good speaker, one that I would not mind for a secondary system or better for a Home Theater. It is not the equal of the better High End speaker systems but it would rout quite a few and some of them more expensive… And think of it this way, it is a complete system all it requires are sources .. Feed it SPDI/F from a good server (I am still using Gary’s) and one has High End performance .. Think about it this way. The pair is $25K You add a decent music server at say 1K..End of the story… I can see how with a Kaleidescape or similar ergonomic music server would be at the service (pun intended) of music enjoyment wit h this speaker.. Minimal tweaking maximum joy to paraphrase Sade Adu …
This lead me to think how prejudiced, we, audiophiles truly are. We don’t like certain brands and this cloud our perceptions. We respect some brands nd look down upon others .. A Denon can’t be that good , even less a Sony or a Yamaha … On the contrary for the aficionados some brands can’t do no wrong .. Even if they ask us to wait 500 hours before we get used to its sound ... sorry... until it sounds really good! We will gladly accept their quirks and unreliability in the name of the name and of the sound we think we hear .. More on this later .. The thread is not really about the Beolab 5, it is about our prejudices …
This was prompted by an audition I have had at a friend of a speaker I am sure most audiophiles have heard of but likely have not cared to listen to. I know I wouldn’t have if I weren’t pushed in to it but .. I am getting some what ahead of myself…
I have come to consider our deeply stated prejudices. Not of the really shameful ones, rather of more subtle mindsets, which will have use rejecting outright things we haven’t heard… It goes both ways both on the subjectivists or the objectivists side .. No one is spared.
For example we go around saying that the brand is of no importance to us.. Yet.. If we come cross a Lamm compared to a brand say a Denon we will likely think the Lamm superior it wouldn’t matter that this particular Denon could be an all out assault on the High End by a brand which knows a few things about High End Audio.. Same would have happened if it were a SONY .. You get my drift …
Well , my experience was a speaker that I am sure most here would dismiss in a hurry, I included, yet this a real effort at the SOTA and in the realm of High End Audio not an expensive speaker …
The speaker is active, something most audiophiles would reject too but , some of us are warming ourselves to the fact. Several of us are actually using active speakers in our set-ups without thinking about it a lot .. Those with powered subwoofers please raise your hands!
Some SOTA speakers are active in the bottom and this with superior results if you ask me .. Genesis 1, 2 anf 2 Jr, Von Schwheikert VR-9 & 11, Evolution Acoustics MM2,3 and 7 … there are more … The speaker in question from a brand not reputed for good sound … Interestingly enough, Audiophiles had to give up to the excellence of the JL Audio subwoofers. JL Audio made their name in Car Audio … I will have to come back on this as many of these car-audio-buffs could show many of us a thing or two about bass reproduction … Oh yes! people some of these cars have bass that will shock many home audiophiles in the quality of their response .. not all of course. Some, the same way some so-called audiophiles systems are frankly bad and do a disservice to music reproduction … back to the speaker in question
It is active, has several kilowatts of amplifications, is good looking and the finish is well above most high end audio products. The people who designed it don’t believe in cables at all. Some of the connectors are not gold-plated and in many cases the cable they use is nothing that any audiophile I included would put in their system.
The owner paired his speaker with a tube preamplifier Antique Sound Lab preamp, The top of the line Supra to connect his preamp to the speakers and some room treatment. Result? A very good system. One that would shock more than one, and indeed shocked me.
The speaker? The Bang and Olufsen Beolab 5. It will wipe the floor with many audiophile speakers. It has its own amplifier and DAC. It simply require a source as it can control its own volume by its lone self. It is digital. It converts anything fed to it to 24/96 .. I don’t know if the feed to the amp is digital but it converts the input to digital from what I have read .. and it sounds good . Very good. Much better than we audiophile would even care to admit.
I have heard the speakers at B&O stores and for the most part I always found it dry, …and with highs to cut steel… Well in a controlled environment, one with some acoustic treatment, what I heard was a serious attempt at a High End speaker. The bass in particular is stupendous. The midrange honest, highs ok to good. Soundstaging in particular is first-class. The sheer SPL capability is astonishing this thing plays loud and with no sense of strain everywhere. Your ears will quit before it does and it is no one-trick pony it can play soft, great sense of dynamics. Bass will shame many a subwoofer and not necessarily cheap ones. It goes low, very, very low and with a sense of ease that few high end speakers , aside from those with powered subs possess. I can’t say much about the room correction it seems to work well.
All and all, a good speaker, one that I would not mind for a secondary system or better for a Home Theater. It is not the equal of the better High End speaker systems but it would rout quite a few and some of them more expensive… And think of it this way, it is a complete system all it requires are sources .. Feed it SPDI/F from a good server (I am still using Gary’s) and one has High End performance .. Think about it this way. The pair is $25K You add a decent music server at say 1K..End of the story… I can see how with a Kaleidescape or similar ergonomic music server would be at the service (pun intended) of music enjoyment wit h this speaker.. Minimal tweaking maximum joy to paraphrase Sade Adu …
This lead me to think how prejudiced, we, audiophiles truly are. We don’t like certain brands and this cloud our perceptions. We respect some brands nd look down upon others .. A Denon can’t be that good , even less a Sony or a Yamaha … On the contrary for the aficionados some brands can’t do no wrong .. Even if they ask us to wait 500 hours before we get used to its sound ... sorry... until it sounds really good! We will gladly accept their quirks and unreliability in the name of the name and of the sound we think we hear .. More on this later .. The thread is not really about the Beolab 5, it is about our prejudices …
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