BeoLab 90 confusion

I've been thinking a lot about the beolab 90 and I can't make up my mind or really understand it.

It's a speaker for almost a million Swedish kronor. It's super car money. It's a monster. It's filled with high quality electronics and a lot of R&D. It's probably really awesome.

But, it is many times more expensive than the beolab 5, which is a really expensive speaker already.

(Yes, there is extreme speakers in the world I know).

I can't really place the beolab 90. It's so expensive. In the demonstration video Geoff talks about it as a speaker for people with friends. It probably is a good way to describe the speakers features but - do you really need a super car expensive speaker to enjoy music with friends?

What's next? And this from a company that has shut down many stores world wide, has had a flagship store in the uk locked down so not even the owner gets inside. And a stock market scenario that my beovision would class as "DRAMA".

I am confused. What is this telling me/us? Should we start saving up for these speakers? Or are they haute couture for a fashion show of technology runways?

The speaker features 360 degree sound and can compensate for reflections and room properties. That's good. But it probably takes a lot of energy, and obviously requires a lot of speakers and money.

How will surround movies perform with these? Should one buy four? Or two? Or six?

How does it calibrate itself for a room? There is so much technology inside and it would be cool to know more about it.

So many questions I have about it but mainly the price and design sets it apart from the regular B&O that at least I am used to. Help me understand, and share your own opinions about the speaker.

And, do you think more speakers from B&O will share the 360 degree speaker design?

What's next?

Hi,

Of course I can't answer the "what's next" questions - but I'd like to address a couple of things that you mention.

The first is the statement that I said it is a speaker for people with friends. This is only part of the story. The Beolab 90 has a selectable directivity and a selectable room compensation. Therefore, if you are home alone, and actively listening to music, you can put it in "Narrow" mode, with an ARC (Active Room Compensation) for the sweet spot, and get a listening experience for one. Then, if friends come to visit, you can put it in "Wide" mode, and choose an ARC setting for a larger listening area to optimise the experience for a wider group. The two experiences are very different, but each is best suited to the situation. In other words, it's a one-chair-no-friends loudspeaker AND a social-listening-with-friends loudspeaker AND a party loudspeaker - all selectable (or automate-able by source) in real time.

The 360 degree sound is not really true (except in Omni mode). The drivers facing to the sides and rear are primarily there to control the directivity of the loudspeaker - in some frequency bands, the drivers are "absorbing" (actually cancelling) the sound in some directions to reduce the energy sent towards the walls. Yes, this takes more energy, however, at typical listening levels, you're probably talking in the range of approximately 200 W per loudspeaker. The 18,000 W peak is there if you need it, but that's only true for a peak (as stated in the Technical Sound Guide, you can get 18 kW for less than 1 ms).

I also can't answer your questions about surround. However, I can say that, in order for the directivity control to work, you have to be at least about 1.5 m from the loudspeaker. So, if you're thinking of using Beolab 90's as surround loudspeakers, unless you can put them more than 1.5 m from the listening position, I would suggest that you consider a different solution.

It calibrates itself to a room (or, an area within a room - it's up to you) using a microphone and running a calibration sequence. You (or your installer) decides where to place the microphone (you can make multiple measurements) to optimise not only for the room, but a specific location or locations within it.

To understand the technologies inside the loudspeaker better, and to get an idea of how it would be used in "real life", I would recommend that you read the Technical Sound Guide for the Beolab 90. It's available here.

If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I'm allowed to do so. :-)

Cheers

-geoff

 

 

Hi Geoff!

Thanks for your quick reply. I've read the technical sound guide and it was fun to read. I read it for two hours a few days ago. I didn't remember reading about a microphone but I figured that it was probably the solution used. Is it the same way the avant uses it microphone?

I am probably mixing up some stuff and I just wanted to reply to you quickly.

One question I was thinking about was if two Beolab 90 could be used as a full surround setup, in the sweet spot. I mean to simulate surround sound almost like a sound bar.

I'm not at home now and replying through the iPhone app so I can't see your respond at the same time but very nice to be able to ask and get the straight answers from the source! Thank you for keeping in touch with us enthusiasts!

Michael:

In the demonstration video Geoff talks about it as a speaker for people with friends. It probably is a good way to describe the speakers features but - do you really need a super car expensive speaker to enjoy music with friends?

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the post, I think it will trigger an interesting discussion and I will look forward to hearing everyone's opinions.

Just to pick up on the point above - one of the truly unique features of the BL90 is the variable beam width.

Geoff describes it better than I ever could but the problem that the BL90 has been designed to overcome here is that for listening on your own, in a chair in a fixed position, with no 'friends' in the room, you want a very narrow beam angle. This reduces reflections from the walls and allows you to place the position of each instrument very precisely as if you were sat in the room where the recording was made.

A number of "audiophile" manufacturers have produced speakers like this. The problem is that whilst they sound great in that one listening position, the narrow beam angle means they sound poor in any other position (or to your friends, unless you give up your seat to them!).

So when you have friends visiting, or are moving around, you want a wider beam angle. Most speakers are manufactured with a somewhat wider beam angle than the type mentioned above for this reason, and the ALT on the BL5 is particularly good at giving this "all around" sound, but this comes at a cost - you no longer have that ability to pinpoint all the instruments in the original recording whilst sat in your favourite listening position, so you lose the ability to close your eyes and imagine the performers are stood there in front of you.

The BL90 is unique in allowing either option, so you no longer need to choose to buy one type of speaker or the other (narrow vs wide beam angle), you can simply switch between these modes with the press of a button.

The cost of the BL90 is undoubtedly outside of the budget of many people and depending on the level of sales, I'd imagine it is entirely possible the product in isolation will not cover it's own R&D costs - but these technologies will without doubt filter down into other products in time so some of these costs can ultimately be offset against these subsequent products too. You can think of this in a similar way to Formula One, the costs for a manufacturer to compete are huge, but at the same time it pushes the technological boundaries by driving the R&D side of the business whilst simultaneously working as a marketing tool to drive sales of their other products. Actually, perhaps the Bugatti Veyron is an even better example if we're comparing to the motor industry.

Kind Regards,

Martin.

riverstyx:

Geoff describes it better than I ever could

Hmm, not only did Geoff prove me right, but he beat me to it by a decent margin. That'll teach me to stop for a cuppa half way through writing a post

riverstyx:

Hmm, not only did Geoff prove me right, but he beat me to it by a decent margin. That'll teach me to stop for a cuppa half way through writing a post

Actually, I thought that your explanation was great!

Cheers

-geoff

Michael:

One question I was thinking about was if two Beolab 90 could be used as a full surround setup, in the sweet spot. I mean to simulate surround sound almost like a sound bar.

Ah! Now I understand the "surround" part of the question. The short answer to this is "no". In this regard, the Beolab 90 currently behaves as a "normal" loudspeaker (with one small caveat...). In other words, each loudspeaker only reproduces the audio channel that goes into it: left front input, left front output.

The caveat is quite specific. Since the Active Room Compensation is multichannel in its design, then this means that the room compensation signal for each audio channel is output from both loudspeakers (albeit differently). So, the left loudspeaker is producing the left input AND the room compensation signals for the left and the right channels.

However, you cannot buy a single Beolab 90 and use it to produce a pseudo stereo effect.

Cheers

-geoff

 

 

 

My confusion , and I've tried to resist airing it as I couldn't afford a magnificent speaker like the Beolab 90, concerns its appearance. What happened to B&O understated and beautiful design. I speak as a mere Designer.

Simonbeo:

My confusion , and I've tried to resist airing it as I couldn't afford a magnificent speaker like the Beolab 90, concerns its appearance. What happened to B&O understated and beautiful design. I speak as a mere Designer.

We have a case here of the engineering dictating the form, and the final appearance is making the best of what can be done. The alternative is to have an attractive design and to ask the technical guys to get the best sound out that they can manage.

The same issues are seen in large scale construction. Usually civil engineers design bridges or power stations, and get an architect to play around with the details. The engineering dictates the form. Alternatively, an architect can design a fancy building and ask the engineers to make it stand up. Of course there are exceptions to this rule; the Millenium Bridge saw an architect taking the credit for a design until it failed to perform.... at which point the engineers were declared to be responsible.

Graham

Michael:

Should we start saving up for these speakers?

If you are the kind of guy, who needs to 'start saving up for these speakers', you probably aren't in the target group for these.

On the other hand: starting to save up isn't that bad at all - just in case something else would turn up within the next year or so....

.....whatever (speaker) that might be ;-)

MM

Millemissen:

If you are the kind of guy, who needs to 'start saving up for these speakers', you probably aren't in the target group for these.

On the other hand: starting to save up isn't that bad at all - just in case something else would turn up within the next year or so....

.....whatever (speaker) that might be ;-)

MM

There is a tv - and there is a BV.

This is exactly the point. As you say. If one has to save up, then the speakers aren't for them? So for whom is it? Football players that also enjoy perfect sound? For what person is it designed? It feels, for me, as a product that is designed perhaps more for corporate use but at the same time not. It's marketed towards home use. A pair of beolab 90 in a big lecture hall perhaps? Or for a restaurant?

There are people, who have homes as big as 'big lecture halls' - and don't care for what is on the pricetag.

These speakers really show, what B&O is capable of. And they point towards a change in the construction (and conceptuion) of future speakers/audioengines - that is, what is important to me.

I guess, that is what Tue means, when he talks about them as a 'gamechanger'.

Even if I had started saving long ago, I would never be able to buy the BL90 - but I don't really care.

I am pretty sure, that I will enjoy them anyway, when I have the chance to listen 'through' them.

MM

Michael:

This is exactly the point. As you say. If one has to save up, then the speakers aren't for them? So for whom is it? Football players that also enjoy perfect sound? For what person is it designed? It feels, for me, as a product that is designed perhaps more for corporate use but at the same time not. It's marketed towards home use. A pair of beolab 90 in a big lecture hall perhaps? Or for a restaurant?

There are plenty of people who could afford them. A very very small percentage of the total population but still plenty. The sort of people who buy exotic cars new just for example. Yes some of them might be footballers but they will appeal to some successful business people too. I don't see a corporate market or restaurant for these personally.

In order for Bang & Olufsen to maintain the perception of a luxury brand and experts on Sound and Vision, the Beolab 90 makes perfect sense. The price tag considering that capabilities of the speakers also makes sense. There are audiophile shops here in Stockholm where the cheapest speakers cost in the level of Beloab 90. So, of course the Beolab 90 will sell. However not like "hot cakes" but for sure so that they make perfect sense to Bang & Olufsen brand and image.

Thats my opinion

Michael:

 So many questions I have about it but mainly the price and design sets it apart from the regular B&O that at least I am used to. Help me understand, and share your own opinions about the speaker.

 

Interesting question! Without any inside information, I guess there are several reasons for building them, and that the answer lies not only in whom it's for, but also what it's for.

It's for those that want the ultimate
While most people can enjoy music through a regular stereo set or enjoy driving a regular car, there are those that want the ultimate in performance, craftmanship, attention to detail, design etc. The BeoLab 90 caters to them. Some will buy it because they really can hear the difference and appreciate the sound quality, some just because it's the best, some because they want to show off.

It's branding
The BeoLab 90 is a true hero product, something that builds excitment, adds an aura of coolness, expands brand awareness and opens up the brands to people that before haven't considered it.

It's an aspirational product
It's a product that people will want, will drool over and will talk about. It doesn't matter that most people (me included) won't be able to buy it; it will attract people who then might end up buying something else from the B&O range.

It's R&D materialized in a product
The BeoLab 90 is obviously the culmination of a massive undertaking in research and technology. The cost for doing that almost always mean that the "gen 1" product will be very expensive, but then over time the technology will trickle down to cheaper products. I'd bet that's already in the pipeline.

It's fun! And a morale booster for employees
I guess it's everyones dream to design and build the ultimate, so it must have been really fun for those involved. And it must be a morale booster for everyone at B&O. Given the challenges that B&O face, it must be really nice to feel that "your" company still is able to produce really kick-ass products.

Again, I don't have any inside information. It would be really interesting to learn the inside story of when this project/product was approved and what benefits management expect from it.

Regards,

Mattias

 

Duels:

There are plenty of people who could afford them. A very very small percentage of the total population but still plenty. The sort of people who buy exotic cars new just for example. Yes some of them might be footballers but they will appeal to some successful business people too. I don't see a corporate market or restaurant for these personally.

Very true, but it is a very big jump up from the previously most expensive speaker nonetheless. I admire it and it is an awesome speaker but I still don't like the design that much. It will grow on me I am sure. 

I understand this is like a race car in R&D terms and of course it is awesome for the company but as I said before in this thread, the company have been having some economical issues, and many stores has shut down. I am happy that B&O does invest in speakers like the BeoLab 90 but it still confuses me plenty :). I thought my Beolabs was expensive, which they are. But compared to the Beolab 90 they're really a bargain .

By the way I think they could be found in restaurants later. Who knows! With all that power in such small cabinettes. Why not? The money is certainly there.  

Geoff Martin:

Michael:

One question I was thinking about was if two Beolab 90 could be used as a full surround setup, in the sweet spot. I mean to simulate surround sound almost like a sound bar.

Ah! Now I understand the "surround" part of the question. The short answer to this is "no". In this regard, the Beolab 90 currently behaves as a "normal" loudspeaker (with one small caveat...). In other words, each loudspeaker only reproduces the audio channel that goes into it: left front input, left front output.

The caveat is quite specific. Since the Active Room Compensation is multichannel in its design, then this means that the room compensation signal for each audio channel is output from both loudspeakers (albeit differently). So, the left loudspeaker is producing the left input AND the room compensation signals for the left and the right channels.

However, you cannot buy a single Beolab 90 and use it to produce a pseudo stereo effect.

Cheers

-geoff

Thanks for explaining! That was something I wasn't thinking about, the noicecancelling system. I am a bit curious about it. Since for example, headphones have microphones that constantly listens and adapts to its surroundings but BeoLab 90 does not. How will that affect slight changes in the room? If someone would move a piece of furniture a little bit, or if more people are in the room? Or if the owners five dogs are sleeping on the floor? Open windows, moving walls. All kinds of strange things might change in a home very easily and frequently. 

On a side note, I realize that both speakers R + L interacts with each other and compensate for each other but what if four BeoLab 90 is used. Will they know?

By the way, the huge power potential in the speakers is crazy. I wonder how the test chamber (and the speakers) looked like and sounded like when they were tested on full volume :D. I would probably NOT connect an AirPort Express, or Sonos base directly to the speakers, haha. (And now I realize that perhaps the speaker could notice these high levels and automatically adjust it to a lower volume in the start to save ears, dogs, and thin walls from destruction).

Cheers!

/Michael 

 

 

 

@Mattias

Great post - thank you

The law of diminishing returns applies here just as in any other field. It costs a given amount to get to 90% of whatever ultimate performance you are trying to achieve, and most people are happy with that 90%. Maybe you have to pay double to get to 95%. Maybe another 10 times to get near 99%. Is the BL90 at 99%+ on what is desireable or achievable in sound systems? Would the BL5 or 9 be almost as good for my domestic situation...... and so close that I wouldn't notice the difference most of the time?

As it happens I get a remarkable performance out of my early S45s which cost less than £100. I hope the BL90 raises B&O's profile in audio circles, but there is no way I would personally save to buy such speakers. And as Peter has said in other threads, your hearing capability tends to diminish with age, so for many people by the time they might be able to afford these speakers they will be beyond being able to appreciate the output!

Graham

Come on, you hardly need to be an oligarch to buy these. These cost, what, 75,000 euros per pair? That's less than an entry level BMW X5 without any options in Finland, yet I see several of those each day.

Whether anybody can afford them is not an issue at all. The question is how many of those who can afford them will actually buy them.

Frankly I don't even believe B&O expects to make much money on these directly, they may be just an investment into brand awareness. Obviously later, more affordable speakers with the same technology could then sell in large numbers.

tournedos:

Come on, you hardly need to be an oligarch to buy these. These cost, what, 75,000 euros per pair? That's less than an entry level BMW X5 without any options in Finland, yet I see several of those each day.

Company car.

Company speaker????????

 

Graham

Of course a lot of people can buy them. I could buy them myself probably. But it is a lot of money for speakers, compared to the other BeoLab-range speakers. I think the gap is very big and the BL5 is a very, very good speaker, as most Beolabs are. But the space between is very big. It is like a BMW that would cost 750 000 euro. and the next most expensive would be 75 000 euro :). 

Imagine how this might affect prices for other B&O products in the future. The next BL5 might be much more expensive to fill this gap. Is this the new economical climate in luxury high quality home electronics? (Yes, of course there are more expensive speakers, but not for mass production really).  

Michael:

Thanks for explaining! That was something I wasn't thinking about, the noicecancelling system. I am a bit curious about it. Since for example, headphones have microphones that constantly listens and adapts to its surroundings but BeoLab 90 does not. How will that affect slight changes in the room? If someone would move a piece of furniture a little bit, or if more people are in the room? Or if the owners five dogs are sleeping on the floor? Open windows, moving walls. All kinds of strange things might change in a home very easily and frequently. 

On a side note, I realize that both speakers R + L interacts with each other and compensate for each other but what if four BeoLab 90 is used. Will they know?

Hi Michael,

Careful! It's "Room Compensation" not "Noise Cancelling". There are no noise cancelling capabilities in this loudspeaker. The ARC system compensates for the effects on the timbre of the loudspeaker caused by boundaries and room modes (for example).

Currently, the ARC algorithm works for each pair of loudspeakers.

Cheers

-geoff

vikinger:

And as Peter has said in other threads, your hearing capability tends to diminish with age, so for many people by the time they might be able to afford these speakers they will be beyond being able to appreciate the output!

Hmmm... only if your talking about the upper half (logarithmically speaking) of the tweeters. There's a whole-lotta interesting information in music recordings below 12 kHz...

Cheers

-g

Geoff Martin:

vikinger:

And as Peter has said in other threads, your hearing capability tends to diminish with age, so for many people by the time they might be able to afford these speakers they will be beyond being able to appreciate the output!

Hmmm... only if your talking about the upper half (logarithmically speaking) of the tweeters. There's a whole-lotta interesting information in music recordings below 12 kHz...

Cheers

-g

True. I guess Evelyn Glennie is living proof.

Graham

I'm staying here at the moment. It's living room is vast, and it's the smallest house out of 52. Half of the houses here have float planes so there is hardly a shortage of cash. One lake amongst 30,000.

Chris Townsend:

I'm staying here at the moment. It's living room is vast, and it's the smallest house out of 52. Half of the houses here have float planes so there is hardly a shortage of cash. One lake amongst 30,000.

Looks like my house. Well, at least the flag looks like the one at my house...

Cheers

-geoff

 

 

Expensive is a relative term, it all depends on what matters enough to you to spend your money on. Over here, a lot of people have the mistaken impression that people who are private pilots and own small aircraft are all "rich." I've known many of them, and the one thing that distinguishes them from other "normal" people is that they are so passionate about flying that it's worth the lion's share of their money to be able to fly. I've known audio guys who drive barely running cars but have a very expensive stereo. And a lot of the people who make the snap judgement about fliers being "rich" have just as much money tied up in a bass boat or such, a purchase I can't grok at all personally.

Whether the BL90 will be a net positive in cash flow for B&O or not remains to be seen, halo products often are money losers when taken in isolation.

vikinger:

True. I guess Evelyn Glennie is living proof.

Graham

Thank you very much for mentioning Evelyn Glennie.

Very inspiring!

It turned out that not knowing this extraordinary lady was a severe deficiency in my cultural education.

Everyone, who are concerned with sound/music ought to know, who she is.

If someone else needs to catch up too, here is something for a start:

http://youtu.be/IU3V6zNER4g

MM

Millemissen:

Thank you very much for mentioning Evelyn Glennie.

Very inspiring!

It turned out that not knowing this extraordinary lady was a severe deficiency in my cultural education.

Everyone, who are concerned with sound/music ought to know, who she is.

If someone else needs to catch up too, here is something for a start:

http://youtu.be/IU3V6zNER4g

MM

Fascinating stuff. I have to find out more later. Thank you for this

Chris Townsend:

I'm staying here at the moment. It's living room is vast, and it's the smallest house out of 52. Half of the houses here have float planes so there is hardly a shortage of cash. One lake amongst 30,000.

 

Hey Chris that house incorporates a Beolab 90 at the front!

 

 

 

Hi all,

there is one thing that confuses me a bit about BeoLab 90.

In the technical sound guide you can clearly see that every digital input signal is upsampled to 192 kHz.
The problem that I see is that most of the music is available in 44.1 kHz only (e.g. CD).
192 and 44.1 have different clock bases so when resampling 44.1 to 192 there will be loses.

Why is there no possibility for bit-perfect playback on such an expensive digital speaker? 
Well, from engineers point of view I can understand that decision but people will definitively ask about that. 

What about DXD? Will this ever be possible with BL90?

Why no balanced AES3 inputs (IEC 60958 Type I)?

 

BR,
BeoMotion. 

BeoMotion:

192 and 44.1 have different clock bases so when resampling 44.1 to 192 there will be loses.

If you study digital signal processing, you will find that the different clock base in itself will not introduce any losses. This transformation is purely mathematical and completely lossless when done the right way. In this case it is particularly easy, as the result will be chewed on further by the DSPs in the speaker, and there is no need to convert it back to analogue world (until of course in the final step).

I'm sure Geoff can do a better job explaining this

tournedos:

Come on, you hardly need to be an oligarch to buy these. These cost, what, 75,000 euros per pair? That's less than an entry level BMW X5 without any options in Finland, yet I see several of those each day.

Whether anybody can afford them is not an issue at all. The question is how many of those who can afford them will actually buy them.

Frankly I don't even believe B&O expects to make much money on these directly, they may be just an investment into brand awareness. Obviously later, more affordable speakers with the same technology could then sell in large numbers.

Completely agree with this post. While I could buy these, I never would because I am all about value for money. I'll let people who don't value their money take the 'silly hit' then I'll come along and buy products at what they are 'actually worth' - to me anyway. I always loved the BV9 and knew I would buy one, but never at a £16,999 starting price point, which is frankly, quite ridiculous. Several years later I was happy to pay what its actual worth. Of course there are just as many people happy to pay initial starting prices for products so good luck to them I say and thanks to them i get what I want too! Its a win win situation! :)  

tournedos:

If you study digital signal processing, you will find that the different clock base in itself will not introduce any losses. This transformation is purely mathematical and completely lossless when done the right way. In this case it is particularly easy, as the result will be chewed on further by the DSPs in the speaker, and there is no need to convert it back to analogue world (until of course in the final step).

I'm sure Geoff can do a better job explaining this

I'm afraid it isn't that easy...
I totally agree that differences will be inaudible if done the RIGHT way.  
But snakeoil people will always complain about this... 

So a "waterproof" explanation would help for sure.

Hi BeoMotion,

BeoMotion:

In the technical sound guide you can clearly see that every digital input signal is upsampled to 192 kHz.
The problem that I see is that most of the music is available in 44.1 kHz only (e.g. CD).
192 and 44.1 have different clock bases so when resampling 44.1 to 192 there will be loses.

Why is there no possibility for bit-perfect playback on such an expensive digital speaker? 
Well, from engineers point of view I can understand that decision but people will definitively ask about that. 

 

There are a lot of arguments for and against using a "native" sampling rate (where the DSP of the BL90 uses the sampling rate of the source) or a fixed sampling rate (where everything is re-sampled to a fixed SR inside the BL90). I'll write a blog post discussing all of these sometime in the future, however, I'll explain the short version here.

The biggest reason that we chose to use a fixed SR in the BeoLab 90 was that the filters used for the directivity (Beam Width) control are very long FIR filters. This means that each filter is a long list of "coefficients" (a geeky word for "numbers") that must be loaded into the processor. If we built the DSP software to run at different sampling rates, we would have to have a different FIR for each, which means that we would have to load them out of memory into the DSP every time the sampling rate changed. This would take seconds, so if you have a playlist of songs at changing sampling rates, then you'd miss the beginning of every song while the loudspeaker was loading new filters.

So, this means that we decided to go with a sampling rate converter (SRC). In order to make sure that this was NOT the weak link in the chain, we chose a very good sampling rate converter (Texas Instruments SRC4392) with a SNR of about 138 dB (f=997 Hz, -60 dBFS, 22 Hz – 40 kHz, unweighted measurement) - if you'd like more info on this chip, you can see its spec's in the datasheet at the TI website.

A second advantage to using an SRC is jitter reduction. There are different ways to reduce jitter in a digital audio signal path. The "old fashioned" way (which is still quite relevant) is to use a PLL - or possibly multiple PLL's to stabilise the clock of the incoming signal to make sure that the DAC's aren't infected by jitter caused by a bad source or noise on the cabling. The "new fashioned" way to do it is to use a sampling rate converter. If you're interested in this topic, I would highly recommend starting with this paper by Robert Adams.

 

There are other issues to discuss - but these are the "top three". I'll start thinking about how to organise the rest for a blog posting. However, I hope that it answers your question adequately.

 

 

BeoMotion:

What about DXD? Will this ever be possible with BL90?

Not in its current form. Again, this was a point of discussion - however, although the TI SRC4392 is an excellent SRC, it has a maximum input sampling rate of 216 kHz - so it can't go up to 384 kHz for DXD.

We debated the quality of the SRC against the possibility to support a 384 kHz input signal and chose the former. This is because most (possibly all) high-res audio players worth talking about can sample rate convert internally, and will do so automatically if connected to the BL90 via USB-Audio.

So, if you are planning on using BL90 with DXD, you should ensure that the SRC in your player (assuming that you're not connecting to the BL90 via an analogue connection) behaves.

 

 

BeoMotion:

Why no balanced AES3 inputs (IEC 60958 Type I)?

 

If you have a source with an AES/EBU output and you would like to connect it to the S/P-DIF input of any device, you just need to convert using a transformer such as can be found on this page. IF you are doing this, AND if you have a long cable run, AND you're using the correct impedance cabling, you are better to do the conversion to S/P-DIF as close to the source as possible. This way, you have a long coax cable instead of a long twisted pair cable.

 

 

I hope that this answers all of your questions. If not, please feel free to ask for further clarification.

Cheers

-geoff

 

Geoff Martin:

AES/EBU and S/P-DIF are identical in protocol

One small caveat here. There is one difference between AES/EBU and S/P-DIF. This is the "copy protect" flag which is in S/P-DIF and not in the AES/EBU spec.

Cheers

-geoff

Thanks a lot for your explanation, Geoff!

As already written, I can totally understand the decision of using a fixed internal SR. Would really be a mess if supporting all sample rates natively since there is that large amount of processing.

I can also understand leaving out that AES/EBU thing. Balanced analog and normal S/PDIF are far more common.

Just was curious to hear some of your arguments :-)

Maybe one more thing regarding the USB input.
Is it working via UAC2?
Will B&O provide windows drivers for that? (driver needed for high-res playback -> MAC OS and LINUX support that natively)
Is there one of those XMOS chips inside or a different one? Maybe even linux via USB-gadget? 

I presume the output of the USB receiver is fed into one of the inputs of the SRC?

 

Thanks a lot,
BeoMotion.