Looking for measurements from Amir of a Beolab 5. I heard a Beolab 5 , first at a dealer and subsequently at an audiophile who had just moved from the vaunted Wilson Audio Watts, IIRC, and a conventional system (Preamplifier, monoblocks, cables, TT, CD Transport, DAC) to a simpler and much better B&O system: A Beosound receiver/cd player and a pair of Beolab 90... nothing else. I was floored. I reported my observations in an audiophile subjective forum of which I was a member. Of course, these were met with polite skepticism and the post/thread was mostly ignored.@pablolie : beautiful story, very well writen. You've got a talent.
My own story started with my fathers speakers, pied pipers, which were quite famous in the 80s and 90s in The Netherlands. We had a Thorens turntable, a beautiful machine, that produced quite a nice sound, although we quickly moved to cd playback when the more affordable players came available. I believe it was a yamaha and the amp a cyrus one. Nice sounding system, a bit homey and lush, probably not as accurate to today's standards.
My first system comprised of a marantz cd player, the cd 43 iirc, a nad amp and kef speakers. A nice sounding system that to my surprise caused a bit of envy among my friends (although I mostly paid for it myself).
When college arrived I decided to buy myself some good headphones. Mainly because I loved music so much and also because it was the cheapest way to get a good sound. I decided to buy the sennheiser hd650, a musical fidelity headphone amp and used my old marantz cd player.
Jumping to 2010 I had my first good job and decided to treat myself a good hifi system. I listened to hifi speakers, pro speakers but nothing really suited me as I wanted a blend between the two. Then I came across B&O, listened to their Beolab9 and knew within 15 minutes: this is what I'm searching for!
What I also truely liked about B&O is that they had a streamer/preamp that they thought good enough for any of their speakers, while just costing a few hundred euros.
Fast forward to 2022 and I've still got the Beolabs; I listen to them for at least an hour a day on average and still love them. I traded the b&o streamer/dac for a nad dac/pre with multiple inputs. I tried a raspberry pi and loved it. It took some time though, and 2nd hand genelec speakers to truely appreciate it. I also got a topping dx7pro dac pre and thought it cleaner and more dynamic than the nad. That's when I was converted to ASR.
I would like to see its serious ASR-like measurements of the 90 or at least those of its smaller siblings, the 50 and 20.
Here is an article about the Beeolab 50
and the (controlled) directivity down to below 50 Hz...
Beamwidth from the article:
Horizontal directivity of the BeoLab 50 in Narrow mode. Contour lines are in steps of 3 dB and are normalized to the on-axis response.
Beolab speakers are the real deal. Iconoclastic, true , although I find most of these beautiful, the Beolab 90, not so much; the sound that comes out of these is seriously underrated. They deserve recognition.
a bit OT, I know....
Peace.