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
There is a good 20+ minute video on the design of them by the skinny guy with spikey blonde hair who is concept lead...sorry I don't know his name.
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Present: BL90, Core, BL6000, CD7000, Beogram 7000, Essence Remote.
Past: BL1, BL2, BL8000, BS9000, BL5, BC2, BS5, BV5, BV4-50, Beosystem 3, BL3, DVD1, Beoremote 4, Moment.
seethroughyou: There is a good 20+ minute video on the design of them by the skinny guy with spikey blonde hair who is concept lead...sorry I don't know his name.
https://dk.linkedin.com/pub/kresten-bj%C3%B8rn-krab-bjerre/5/1b2/7a3
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
Yes, that's the chap! Nice hair, I've worked my way from a mop (at university) to a grade 3/4 but a long way go to get to his level of trendiness.
I like how he alludes to how he spends a bit of time 'negotiating' between different teams in Struer...
http://blog.bang-olufsen.com/meet-the-makers-hear-the-inside-stories-behind-the-beolab-18-part-2/
Barry Santini:I cant help but think that the BL90 could have just as easily been "designed" with a conical-like cover to look like a bigger headless/ALT-less BL20
Watch this video. Excellent insight to the design process. What you describe was one of the design ideas. I personally think this selected design is more interesting.
Livingroom: BL3, BL11, BV11-46 Kitchen: Beosound 1 GVA, Beocom 2 Bathroom: M3 Homeoffice: M3, Beocom 2 Library: Beosound Emerge, Beocom 6000 Bedroom: M5, Essence remote Travel: Beoplay E8 2.0, Beoplay EQ, Beoplay Earset
Hi Geoff,
I have a customer interested in buying a pair of 90s - he already has two pairs of Lab 5s, so a serious candidate.
Question he has put to me - the speakers are capable of delivering 8200 watts, but ohms law would suggest that to deliver that kind of output a 30 amp supply would be required. If I remember right, the Lab 5s have a plug top fuse rated at 10amps for their 2500 output?
I was advised in Budapest that the speakers would in most cases be run in 'energy saving' mode to avoid the need for a dedicated mains supply capable of 30 amps plus, but it reality, anyone investing £55k won't want to run them in a restricted mode?
Best,
Nick
seethroughyou:On a different note, the BL90 have room EQ and need to hear the acoustics of the room and it's furnishings so where are its microphones?
You have to use the (supplied) external microphone connected to the master speaker.
See chapter 1.1.3 of the BL90 Technical Sound Guide.
Aussie Michael:Great video link Hiort
SHEFFIELD: Question he has put to me - the speakers are capable of delivering 8200 watts, but ohms law would suggest that to deliver that kind of output a 30 amp supply would be required. If I remember right, the Lab 5s have a plug top fuse rated at 10amps for their 2500 output? I was advised in Budapest that the speakers would in most cases be run in 'energy saving' mode to avoid the need for a dedicated mains supply capable of 30 amps plus, but it reality, anyone investing £55k won't want to run them in a restricted mode?
Hi Nick,
I'll leave it to Geoff to clarify any details specific to the BL90 (and hopefully to correct me wherever necessary) but will make some comments / observations from an electrical point of view...
Firstly, fused plugs are not commonplace worldwide - the BS1363 UK plug socket arrangement is incredibly well designed from a safety perspective (those who have accidental stood on an upturned UK plug might disagree I suppose!) and the fusing is there largely as a result of the use of 'ring final' circuits in the UK and the fact these tend to be protected by a 32 Amp circuit breaker at the consumer unit as opposed to the more common (internationally) radial circuit arrangement which tends to be fused at 16 Amps or less. The history behind the use of ring circuits in the UK is largely the result of copper shortages, but my aim here is not to give a history lesson but just to make the point that plug top fuse related issues are likely to be largely a UK concern.
Now the fuse itself - A 13A BS1362 'plug top' fuse is required to carry 1.6 times it's rated current (ie 19.8 Amps) indefinitely without rupturing, and is required to rupture within 30 minutes at 1.9 times its rated current (ie 24.7 Amps). Going further it's required to rupture within 1 to 400 seconds at 30 Amps, 0.1 to 20 seconds at 50 Amps, and 0.01 to 0.2 seconds at 100 Amps. The fuse it really there to protect against short circuit scenarios and long term overload situations, and in many cases the 32A circuit breaker in the fuse board is actually likely to trip before the 13A plug top fuse ruptures. The point here is that short transient demands of several times the 13 Amp rating can be accommodated without any issues.
You are correct that 8200 Watts, at 230 Volts, is around 36 Amps - yes I know the mains is *really* 240V in the UK, but we're all harmonised with Europe now so we're officially 230V for calculation purposes In fact given no amplifier is 100% efficient, the input current would actually be higher that this, but...
I suspect none of the drivers would survive the maximum output of their relevant amplifier for any length of time, certainly the voice coils in the tweeters would melt pretty quickly if subjected to a continuous 300 Watts as that is a lot of heat to try and dissipate. 8200 Watts is roughly equivalent to three or four electric heaters or a fairly decent electric shower. Add it's stereo partner and you'll probably not need to turn your central heating on during winter and you can forget needing to go to a sauna - just stay at home and listen to load music (perhaps whilst wearing ear defenders!).
I guess the obvious question at this stage then is why such large amplifiers? Whilst this is an area Geoff will be much more knowledgable and better qualified to explain that I am, specifying amplifiers that on paper would seem overkill compared to the maximum continuous ratings of the drivers does in fact make a lot of sense - unlike the mains power, music is not (generally) a nice pure sinewave and instead consists of many transient peaks and troughs and the amplifiers need to be rated sufficiently to not clip (cut off the tops of the waveform) during these transient peaks as this leads to distortion and large amounts of energy flowing through the voice coils with no movement of the cones.
There's a common misconception with conventional amplifier plus passive speaker setups that it makes sense to specify speakers that have a higher rating than the amplifier on the basis that it is then impossible to damage the speakers by turning the volume up too high. In reality, this is often a more risky approach than the other way around because as soon as the amplifier starts to clip, a large proportion of the energy ends up heading to the tweeter (at least with the one amplifier, multiple drivers + crossover arrangement).
The bottom line then is that whilst the total rating of all the amplifiers is 8200 Watts, that figure is unlikely to ever be reached except for very short transient spikes and even then the power required to handle these is actually much more likely to come from the capacitors within the power supply than directly from the mains.
Hope this helps,
Martin.
Hello Martin, heat generation that you describe are this even valid for ICE Power amplifier.
it is not that ICE Power has a loss of 20 percent as heat? and 80 percent clean power to your speakers. In that case they should have only 20 percent heat as a conventional amplifier having a high level of 80 percent of heat.
Best regards
Jan
www.beoshop.se
BegBeo: Hello Martin, the true development of heat that you also describe to the ICE Power amplifier. Was it not the case that ICE Power has a loss of 20 percent heat and 80 percent clean power to the speakers.
Hello Martin, the true development of heat that you also describe to the ICE Power amplifier. Was it not the case that ICE Power has a loss of 20 percent heat and 80 percent clean power to the speakers.
I don't know the efficiency figures for the ICE Power Amps, but I can believe a figure of 80% could well be realistic. Unfortunately though, that doesn't mean only 20% of the theoretical 8200 Watts ends up as heat, it just means the other 80% gets converted to heat elsewhere in the system - be that in the interconnecting cables, within the voice coils of the speakers, or heat generated by friction of movement - both in the speaker cones and between air molecules that are moved around by the speakers whilst creating the desired sound pressure waves.
Since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another, it's safe to assume pretty much 100% of the input energy to the speakers will ultimately end up as heat.
Out of interest I just googled for cone speaker efficiency and the indications are that cone drivers usually have efficiencies in the 1 to 2% range so (with the caveat of not believing everything we read on the internet) 98+% of the energy not lost by inefficiencies in the PSU and amplifiers and thus sent to the drivers will end up as heat within the voice coils, with the remaining 1-2% being converted into sound energy (and later ending up as heat outside of the speaker).
Kind Regards,
Cone efficiency of speakers is not affected by the amps and power supplies, it's a measure of the radiative efficiency of the driver operating into the air, i.e. how well it couples and translates the electro-mechanical energy to actual acoustic energy, so this is an inefficiency on top of the amps and such. The only way to get higher efficiencies with transducers is to go with horn loading, which matches the acoustic impedance at the throat of the horn and the driver to maximize efficiency, and even then it's nowhere near the efficiency of, say, a power amp.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Jeff: Cone efficiency of speakers is not affected by the amps and power supplies, it's a measure of the radiative efficiency of the driver operating into the air, i.e. how well it couples and translates the electro-mechanical energy to actual acoustic energy, so this is an inefficiency on top of the amps and such. The only way to get higher efficiencies with transducers is to go with horn loading, which matches the acoustic impedance at the throat of the horn and the driver to maximize efficiency, and even then it's nowhere near the efficiency of, say, a power amp.
Hi Jeff,
I wasn't trying to suggest the efficiency of the drivers depended on the amps or PSU.
My caveat was about the accuracy of the driver efficiency percentage and I was elaborating on the "it just means the other 80% gets converted to heat elsewhere in the system" statement in my previous post where it was queried as to whether it was valid to state that 100% of the mains input power would be converted to heat given the use of high efficiency amplifiers.
The "98+% of the energy not lost by inefficiencies in the PSU and amplifiers" comment was referencing this same 80% of input power (ie what had not already been lost to heat within the PSU and amps) as that is what will actually reach the drivers to be converted to sound waves or to heat.
eg:
* Previous caveat about the efficiency figures remains - the driver efficiency will vary from driver to driver (and by frequency) and I don't know how representative the 1 to 2% figure is.
Hiort:Thanks. Many interesting videos if you look for Beolab 90 on YouTube.
Regarding the actual power usage of the ICEPower amps.
The beauty of the amps is that they actually consume only what they need. Compared to a "normal" amp that basically uses full power from the moment it's turned on, whatever the actual output to the speakers are. (Why they are warm)
The Beolab 5's have 2500W of amplification, but the amps are on "idle" all the time. Even as you are playing them loud. (Reason why you can play them loud) As "Idle" amps means low distortion. Why most speakers don't come close to the sound pressure able from the BL5's is mostly down to distortion.
I've checked the actual Wattage usage on my Beolab 5's with one of those gizmos you plug in to the wall and then the BL5's mains cable into it, and the highest I saw was around 80W per speaker, it did bump to 110W or so occasionally. This was at higher than normal listening volumes.
I don't think the Beolab 90's will draw much more than a few hundred Watts of power at normal use.
It's self explanatory that the Amps in the Beolab 90's will never reach a 8200 Watts power use, as you'd need a 37 amp fuse at 220 Volts! Not normal for any house. You would need three phase wiring with higher voltage or a VERY thick and warm cable. :D :D :D
Too long to list....
The seemingly outrageous total power rating of the Beolab 90 has nothing to do with continuous ratings or fuse requirements etc.
It is to ensure that each driver has sufficient power on tap to respond to the highest foreseeable transient power requirement, i.e. the individual amplifiers are sized to respond to and reproduce the maximum instantaneous power requirement without distortion.
Ban boring signatures!
Puncher: The seemingly outrageous total power rating of the Beolab 90 has nothing to do with continuous ratings or fuse requirements etc. It is to ensure that each driver has sufficient power on tap to respond to the highest foreseeable transient power requirement, i.e. the individual amplifiers are sized to respond to and reproduce the maximum instantaneous power requirement without distortion.
Thanks Puncher, you've put that very succinctly. This was exactly the point I was trying to make, albeit whilst providing additional explanation and logic to explain and justify this (undoubtedly too much detail in hindsight!) as Sheffield's potential customer seemed to be questioning the ratings at a more technical level on the basis of P = I x V
Interesting Q and A from one of Geoff Martin's articles on his blogsite:
http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2015/10/06/beolab-90-behind-the-scenes/#comments
Question:
'Do you belive this is the best sounding speaker in the world and can you describe their sound characteristics, and how do you feel their sound comparing to conventional passive High-End speakers like Wilson Audio , MBL Reference 101 , Focal Utopia Grande ?'
Answer:
'It’s unfair of me to comment on the loudspeakers of our direct competitors and how they compare to B&O loudspeakers – so I almost never do.
I will say, however, that as part of the development process of the BeoLab 90’s, we auditioned a wide range of high-end loudspeakers. Each of them had some good aspect – for one it was imaging, for another it was midrange, for another it was temporal precision, for yet another it was a weird ability to sound like itself regardless of the room it was in, and so on… Our goal with BeoLab 90 was to take the attributes we liked from each loudspeaker we listened to, and assemble those into one product. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, we succeeded.'
@Bayerische - only class A amps draw the large current from the wall at all times, class A/B and class B amps don't unless they are operating at full output power. In class A the transistors are biased on full at all times regardless of whether they're amplifying anything, whereas in class B the transistors are only switched on when the top or bottom half of the wave form passes thru, the transistors are arranged in a push-pull arrangement. I once had an interesting single ended MOSFET kit amp designed by Nelson Pass, which was about the worst example of solid state amp efficiency I've ever seen. 7.5 watts per channel and needed heat sinks big enough for a 250 watt amp.
@Martin, quite right, I reread your sentence again and see you were not conflating the two,but pointing out that after you lose whatever power to losses in the amplification chain, you lost most of it again in the speaker to air interface. When you take the time to map it out, it's kind of depressing isn't it?
Thanks for the useful advice regarding the power consumption and amplifier efficiency. I have forgot most of what I learnt has a young apprentice engineer in the late 70s 😀☺️
My customer now wants a best price, so moving in the right direction!!
SHEFFIELD:Thanks for the useful advice regarding the power consumption and amplifier efficiency. I have forgot most of what I learnt has a young apprentice engineer in the late 70s 😀☺️My customer now wants a best price, so moving in the right direction!!
You have to take power ratings with a grain of salt. For example, the power supply in the BeoLab 90 can deliver 18,000 W, but only for less than 1 millisecond. The 8200 W rating is also a little misleading, since, as you calculated, it implies that you're drawing over 30 amps - but this is not continuous. As you can see in the Technical Sound Guide, when listening at "typical" sound pressure levels, you'll be running somewhere around 200 W or so (similar enough to what someone else in this thread has measured with a BeoLab 5, give or take a factor of 2...)
There are many factors to take into consideration with respect to whether it's necessary to have independent circuits for the two BeoLAb 90's in a pair - I'll be writing a blog posting about this once I get my head wrapped around all of these (I have to have a chat with a couple of the guys that designed the power supply to get some information from them before I can write this...)
You also have to consider the actual restrictions applied when you're in "Energy Saving" mode. To be honest, I don't know the details of this yet, since I'm still tuning them in an even-more-energy-restricted mode (which is partly because I still have prototype hardware in the listening room, but mostly because I like being able to hear my kids when I get home from work). Once the details of the difference in audio performance and power consumption between "Energy Saving" (actually called "Power Enhance" in the app if I remember correctly) and "normal" mode are known, then I'll write an extra appendix for the Technical Sound Guide.
Cheers
- geoff
Thanks Geoff,
Having heard Lab 90s in Budapest - I was clearly impressed, but have you been able to compare 'back to back' with Lab5s?
My customer has two pairs to Lab 5s - a pair with Avant 55 and a pair with Avant 85, and I feel sure will purchase the 90s if considerably better than the 5s...
Cheers,
SHEFFIELD: Having heard Lab 90s in Budapest - I was clearly impressed, but have you been able to compare 'back to back' with Lab5s?
No. I almost never bring in a second loudspeaker model into the listening room while doing the sound design. We'll do some comparisons when we're very nearly finished the tuning, but probably not before.
The interesting thing will be to hear how the BeoLab 90 in "Wide" mode compares to the BeoLab 5, since their horizontal directives are similar. With the BeoLab 90 in "Narrow" mode, they are most certainly very different loudspeakers.
-geoff
Geoff Martin:The interesting thing will be to hear how the BeoLab 90 in "Wide" mode compares to the BeoLab 5, since their horizontal directives are similar. With the BeoLab 90 in "Narrow" mode, they are most certainly very different loudspeakers.
Yes, this will be interesting. On a slightly related note - I've been looking at a lot of the press coverage online following on from the launch and press releases. Given much of it is in non-audio related publications I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the inaccuracies in the reporting and the emphasis placed on various largely irrelevant parts of the product spec, but so much of the coverage seems to be focusing on 360 degree sound (ie party mode) which to my mind is kind of missing the point somewhat with the BL90s - when I saw the polar response graph for narrow mode in the video of your presentation I had one thought - 'wow'.
Of course, for those 'other types' (the ones with friends), the fact that they can sacrifice some of this in order to improve their visitors listening experience must be applauded as it gives them an opportunity to show how considerate and thoughtful they can be - but this only works if the friends know what is being sacrificed whilst they are present
Geoff,
With all the recent press attention, the questions from us, and the looming launch, I'm guessing you probably feel like you're currently eating, sleeping and breathing BL90 at the moment, but I also get the impression from your continued enthusiasm that the Katharine Whitehorn quote of "Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for it" is probably spot on in your case
BeoGreg:I had a look on the youtube videos of the Lab 90's. 1) After finding them very ugly I now find them so special that I actually like (love !) them. They are really massive yet elegant you can feal the power out of them. 2) Do they work ? Not a sound coming from a BL 90 on the net or I missed something ?
BeoNut since '75
beolion:Hi Elephant Probably a thought many has. But I think we can wait a number of years for the son(s) of the 90's, unfortunately. Therefore I would still not hesitate to buy a used or demo pair of the BL5's (if I had the money). That's still in my mind for replacement of my 9's. The power of the 5's must still outperform the 20's (I guess).
elephant: Maybe we are not the Lion and the Elephant, but rather two hyenas/ vultures waiting for some BL20s to fall at our feet BeoNut since '75
Hyenas and penguins - is that a good combination 🙀
Millemissen:Hyenas and penguins - is that a good combination 🙀 MM There is a tv - and there is a BV.
elephant: Be afraid kitty-cat, be very afraid 🐘
Be afraid kitty-cat, be very afraid 🐘
MEOW 🔊
Given the BL90s (or at least their aluminium chassis) were described as 'monster sharks' earlier in this thread. What happens if you put a BL90 and a BL9 or 20 'penguins' in the same room?
riverstyx:Given the BL90s (or at least their aluminium chassis) were described as 'monster sharks' earlier in this thread. What happens if you put a BL90 and a BL9 or 20 'penguins' in the same room? Martin.
I kinda hope Kanye West will feature them in a music video. He seems to be a big B&O fan. How the Beolab 5 were featured in the full length Runaway film was pretty epic:
https://youtu.be/Jg5wkZ-dJXA?t=325
6min 30sec in to be exact if you haven't seen it. He is playing them straight off an 808.