ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
How come there's no showing off the " what it's made of " for the new Beolabs? I think it was a winning marketing formula. Plus I am really curious as to how much power is squeezed into the Beolab 18s. Why must I choose beauty over brawn if I can have both even if the price is elevated? B&O could have easily pulled a Mark&Daniel on the 4" drivers in the lab18 except maybe not with just a 1" voice coil but rather a vented 2"-4" alternative.
The general plan is listen and dont worry! The targeted audience won't worry whose woofer they use, or whether it's knitted from finest Angora or has vents, pressurised sodium cooling or gold flashed silver wiring with hermetically sealed in raspberry jam connections .
Ban boring signatures!
Mmmm... raspberry jam.
ɓʋɾɑɳɫɘɮ: Mmmm... raspberry jam.
.........mmmm ...raspberry donuts.....sticky!!!
Puncher: The general plan is listen and dont worry! The targeted audience won't worry whose woofer they use, or whether it's knitted from finest Angora or has vents, pressurised sodium cooling or gold flashed silver wiring with hermetically sealed in raspberry jam connections .
Hmm... I both agree and disagree with this post.
I agree that the targeted audience are not, on the whole, audiophiles - so the finer points of connections, components and unseen materials aren't quite as crucial as they could be.
However, if you can come up with a relatively inexpensive yet visually impressive result to 'wow' the man (or woman, of course) who pops off the grille to have a look - it's always better to have something which looks expensive, even though it may not be..
Case in point is paper drivers. I believe the 'The Martonmeister" when he says it makes no difference - but how expensive would it be to weave some out of something beautifully pretty? Make a little brushed aluminium cover for the tweeter, and a brushed aluminium surround for the actual driver? You could even make the frets gossamer thin to show that off?
Just thinking out loud - but I'm sure there's an advertising campaign in Copenhagen waiting to happen picturing a B&O product with the covers off, laying next to it saying ;
"Beauty doesn't have To be skin deep....
Bang & Olufsen"
Lee
9 LEE: However, if you can come up with a relatively inexpensive yet visually impressive result to 'wow' the man (or woman, of course) who pops off the grille to have a look - it's always better to have something which looks expensive, even though it may not be.. Case in point is paper drivers. I believe the 'The Martonmeister" when he says it makes no difference - but how expensive would it be to weave some out of something beautifully pretty? Make a little brushed aluminium cover for the tweeter, and a brushed aluminium surround for the actual driver? You could even make the frets gossamer thin to show that off? Just thinking out loud - but I'm sure there's an advertising campaign in Copenhagen waiting to happen picturing a B&O product with the covers off, laying next to it saying ; "Beauty doesn't have To be skin deep.... Bang & Olufsen" Lee
I'm all in favour of taking off the covers - good engineering is beautiful ...... in it's elegance and simplicity, it doesn't need any fluff or frills.
Dare to stand bare!
Well, the reason you use paper drivers has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with performance. Paper drivers are a mature, predictable technology,,they offer good control of mass, acoustic roll off, and are well damped internally. Most sexy looking woven fiber drivers and metal ones have issues with self noise, and peaky breakup modes. While these are often out of band, they can be really high in amplitude and can make crossover design problematic, as well as inducing time domain issues like ringing. IMO the best materials are paper, poly or various types of plastic for comes, and doped fabric for tweeters. I've had the greatest success with these, you can obviously get good results with other materials but it often is harder to do.
Also,man ICE power amp will never look as sexy as a huge Class A monster like a Krell or such internally..The Krell will have huge caps and power supply transformers, massive heat sinks, rows of output transistors. I will admit, it looks damned impressive, and it's a hugely inefficient and wasteful way to design an amp. Remember, ENIAC looked a whole lot more visually impressive than the guts of an iPad too...
the traditional B&O approach has been a philosophy that is kind of the opposite of the traditional hardware obsessed audiophile. Make it a gorgeous piece of design on the outside, make its performance good, then just install it, sit back, and revel in the music without obsessing over the equipment. Having been on both sides of this, in the past a high end guy, now a Beonerd, I have found for me the latter is much more liberating and enjoyable. Your mileage may vary of course.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Jeff: Well, the reason you use paper drivers has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with performance. Paper drivers are a mature, predictable technology,,they offer good control of mass, acoustic roll off, and are well damped internally. Most sexy looking woven fiber drivers and metal ones have issues with self noise, and peaky breakup modes. While these are often out of band, they can be really high in amplitude and can make crossover design problematic, as well as inducing time domain issues like ringing. IMO the best materials are paper, poly or various types of plastic for comes, and doped fabric for tweeters. I've had the greatest success with these, you can obviously get good results with other materials but it often is harder to do. Also,man ICE power amp will never look as sexy as a huge Class A monster like a Krell or such internally..The Krell will have huge caps and power supply transformers, massive heat sinks, rows of output transistors. I will admit, it looks damned impressive, and it's a hugely inefficient and wasteful way to design an amp. Remember, ENIAC looked a whole lot more visually impressive than the guts of an iPad too... the traditional B&O approach has been a philosophy that is kind of the opposite of the traditional hardware obsessed audiophile. Make it a gorgeous piece of design on the outside, make its performance good, then just install it, sit back, and revel in the music without obsessing over the equipment. Having been on both sides of this, in the past a high end guy, now a Beonerd, I have found for me the latter is much more liberating and enjoyable. Your mileage may vary of course.
Yeah paper and cloth domes are still used by the professionals for a reason. It's light with good damping and can be made stiff.
But I will like to see subwoofer grade motors on B&O's tiny drivers simply because it will increase reliability along with reducing the need for subwoofers.
I just think getting a subwoofer for stereo listening is a lot of trouble and stop with the shoving ALT on to every loudspeaker in the line already. It's just strange that the Beolab 17 doesn't have one and the Beolab18 does when they are both obviously inspired by the old range. Perhaps a more powerful incarnation of the Beolab18 without the lens just like how the Beolab12 range have one without? But this might risk diminishing the status of the lenses.
With that being said though I think the lenses look very well integrated into the Beolab12 range albeit I will like to see a big round disk version of it that will look good on the wall without the need of flanking a tv in the middle and will work great in stereo.
Joachim Gerhard from Audio Physic:
- What would you like to improve with low range drivers?
- We would get several advantages if we could increase the effective area of the driver without losing control over the radiation pattern. And also lowering the mass, make stronger magnet systems and harder, lighter cones.- Many "old" paper woofers still sound astonishingly good compared to modern drivers?- Oh, yes. We have not always went to the better. What many driver manufacturers have done the last years, is to increase the damping to make the frequency response more flat. But some old drivers, like the famous 6,5" paper woofer that Jan Paus at Seas made several years ago, (The Seas CA 17 RCY, ed. note) was optimized for low loss. So they made a compromise between frequency response and sensitivity. This driver was very good, and was used by Wilson Audio for many years. Later, in the 80's, manufacturers started to add more mass, they added more damping, and they made surrounds with high loss. That gave an extremely flat frequency response, but also a lot of energy storage. This compared, the old drivers were much quicker. They had some resonances, but you could get rid of that in the crossover. It was this run for flat response that gave a lot of modern drivers this dull, uninteresting sound. And you can also measure higher second and third harmonic distortion in some of them. If you compare the on-axis response between an old and new driver; you will see that the energy in the treble is far higher than in the new drivers. These so-called "modern" drivers often has a Qms of maybe 0.8 or 0.6. The old drivers had Qms values of maybe 5 to 7! We found that drivers with a very high mechanical Q sound more open, more clean and dynamic. And when you look at it, you find it is very simple, because they have less loss. The surround is easier to move, the spider is better constructed, they have better air flow, higher sensitivity. So a high mechanical Q is a very good indicator of energy storage behavior. This is one of our secrets. One of the many!
The bass and midrange driver of the BL5 are paper aren't they? And they sound pretty damn perfect.
Too long to list....