Price of BeoLab 5s?

Hi, I'm relatively new to the world of Bang & Olufsen, 

 

Are BeoLab 5s worth the money? 

Click on the Lifestyle ad above.

Go to Speakers/ beolab 5.

Although the listed pair have been sold, their original/ current list price is quoted as £16200.

Graham

Although the Beolab 5s seem stupidly expensive, in audiophile terms they are superb value. Digital amplification and superb speakers - similar from other companies will cost much more. I would actually say that these are the one real B&O bargain!!  Unfortunately I have a tax bill to pay so not for me!!

Peter:

Although the Beolab 5s seem stupidly expensive, in audiophile terms they are superb value. Digital amplification and superb speakers - similar from other companies will cost much more. I would actually say that these are the one real B&O bargain!!  Unfortunately I have a tax bill to pay so not for me!!

You have a tax bill, I have a house I'm restoring (aka Money Pit), so I hear you brother. If funds allowed I'd have a pair yesterday. To give the original poster a frame of reference, I've heard a number of bleedingly expensive audiophile speakers that were much pricier than the BL5 and required you to buy amps, cables, etc. how's $100,000 US sound for a pair of speakers that didn't sound as good, we're larger than a large refrigerator, and needed multiple amps on top of that price compare? 

I once heard a Thiel and Marc Levinson setup that was bleedingly expensive. To compare apples to apples, we will only compare from the digital CD transport out, that is the price of the DAC, amp, and speaker. Over $105,000 not counting exotic cables, sounded to my ears and my friends who listened with me like total crap, harsh, fatiguing, no real deep bass, not a complaint you will ever have with a BL5. 

If you don't need the deep bass, the BL9 is a very, very sweet sounding speaker that only, to my ears, falls short of the 5 in the deepest bass. and is less than half the price. 

I had a pair for 2 years and sold them to a mate

I bought them originally on the back of a recommendation by someone who rated them for their flat frequency response, no doubt the listening rooms at Streur have a lot to with getting these speakers to sound the best they possibly csn

but I do not think any speakers (no matter how expensive) produce a flat frequency response in typical rooms (home lounge listening environments)

Early reflections muddy the sound (which is why studios only use near-field monitors) and reflections (all of them) produce comb filters in the room that will prevent a flat response in most cases.

I've never seen any exceptions in 30 years of listening to lots of hi-fi systems in homes around the world, every room will also have at least one major mode, where there will be excessive SPL centered around a frequency you can calculate from the room dimensions.

One has to take pretty extreme measures to achieve a flat response in a normal lounge room, and then it may not be acceptable (depending to a large extent on the kind of recordings you like).

There is a huge difference between measuring a loudspeaker under anechoic or semi-anechoic conditions

And even in studios measuring very-near-field can yield results that appear to indicate a flat response, but not as flat as some would have you believe

but it all falls apart when you put a speaker with wide dispersion into a typical room, that the inaccuracies don't drive us humans nuts is a tribute to the human brains adaptability

I am not saying it is impossible to get a flat response from a loudspeaker in the home (where a pair of Beolab 5's would really stand out in my humble opinion) but it is not simply a matter of placing the speakers in "the proper location" in the room, its a bit more complicated than that folks

whatever speakers you buy, once the speaker reaches a basic performance level, the room becomes the biggest problem - 99 times out of a 100

ouverture:

I had a pair for 2 years and sold them to a mate

 

 

I bought them originally on the back of a recommendation by someone who rated them for their flat frequency response, no doubt the listening rooms at Streur have a lot to with getting these speakers to sound the best they possibly csn

 

 

but I do not think any speakers (no matter how expensive) produce a flat frequency response in typical rooms (home lounge listening environments)

 

 

Early reflections muddy the sound (which is why studios only use near-field monitors) and reflections (all of them) produce comb filters in the room that will prevent a flat response in most cases.

 

 

I've never seen any exceptions in 30 years of listening to lots of hi-fi systems in homes around the world, every room will also have at least one major mode, where there will be excessive SPL centered around a frequency you can calculate from the room dimensions.

 

 

One has to take pretty extreme measures to achieve a flat response in a normal lounge room, and then it may not be acceptable (depending to a large extent on the kind of recordings you like).

 

 

There is a huge difference between measuring a loudspeaker under anechoic or semi-anechoic conditions

 

 

And even in studios measuring very-near-field can yield results that appear to indicate a flat response, but not as flat as some would have you believe

 

 

but it all falls apart when you put a speaker with wide dispersion into a typical room, that the inaccuracies don't drive us humans nuts is a tribute to the human brains adaptability

 

 

I am not saying it is impossible to get a flat response from a loudspeaker in the home (where a pair of Beolab 5's would really stand out in my humble opinion) but it is not simply a matter of placing the speakers in "the proper location" in the room, its a bit more complicated than that folks

 

 

whatever speakers you buy, once the speaker reaches a basic performance level, the room becomes the biggest problem - 99 times out of a 100

There was an entire *TWO* episode series of a podcast I watch/listen to called Home Theater Geeks devoted to room calibration much the same way as one would calibrate a television. It is a SERIOUS science and you can spend as much money on your listening room's acoustic arrangement as on the speakers themselves if not more.

What struck me about my time with the BeoLab 5s was that it's really all relevant. Sure, when compared with top of the range audiophile gear, the BeoLab 5s could be conceived as a "bargain". But on the same token, it isn't too difficult to achieve *90 percent* of their goodness for a third or less of the cost if you know what you're doing and could put together a good set of components. This is even considering that I sold my pair for only around 11k US Dollars and was able to put something together that was nearly if not equally as sonically pleasing to MY ears for around 1-2k or so. However, keep in mind that these types of setups won't be as typically "B&O pretty" as one would expect from a B and O type system but then, the BeoLab 5s were some of the first B&O high end speakers that took engineering as a precedence and design second. The BeoLab 1s demonstrated (for many, though many also love them) that when the design was allowed to take precedence, the overall sound response would suffer. I got rid of most of my B&O gear recently and devoted myself back to separates and amplifiers and such because I actually enjoy it. I kept one B&O system around for its iconic beauty and historical significance, but otherwise I've gone back to separates for my own sonic enjoyment. My ultimate speaker system would be a B&W 802 with amps that I'm not even certain of, yet.

So I suppose the short answer to your question is that to me they did not seem to be worth the price, even at the deeply discounted amount I had in them to begin with. I find my Penta 3s to be another speaker that is surprisingly good and only cost me hundreds, versus thousands of dollars.

bigterry:

Hi, I'm relatively new to the world of Bang & Olufsen, 

Are BeoLab 5s worth the money? 

They are....if you have the space. I had a pair of BL5s for a year, but sold them. Out of the box, pre-calibrated, they were simply awesome. A little too awesome - the power was incredible. Sadly though, I live in an old 1700's home, with sash windows, wooden floors, and after calibrating, the BL5s lost all their bass. Were like different speakers in my home, post-calibration.

Personally, I was much happier with the BL9s. They don't need to be calibrated, can be pushed hard, but are better in a smaller home. BL5s are superb if you have a large space, solid flooring and no close neighbours!

ouverture:

Early reflections muddy the sound (which is why studios only use near-field monitors) and reflections (all of them) produce comb filters in the room that will prevent a flat response in most cases.

Early reflections (from the side) are encouraged and recommended by the inventors of ALT technology, as helping to make the imaging more realistic.

Puncher:

ouverture:

Early reflections muddy the sound (which is why studios only use near-field monitors) and reflections (all of them) produce comb filters in the room that will prevent a flat response in most cases.

Early reflections (from the side) are encouraged and recommended by the inventors of ALT technology, as helping to make the imaging more realistic.

There's a big difference between a recording studio and a home. In a studio, you strive for repeatability and lack of room influences, as the engineer is supposed to be listening to the recording, not the room. Most studios I've been in either used horn speakers to control directivity, and/or were heavily acoustically damped, going for the anechoic approach as much as practical. What you want is if an engineer wanders in, that pair of Yamaha NS10s sitting there, or Genelecs, or whatever, sounds almost identical to the pair in the last studio he was in. Headphones would get rid of that problem but don't allow you to judge imaging well. Or let multiple people listen together.

In the home it's different, since you aren't anechoic and you want the extra sense of "space" reflections and such can add, power response becomes a lot more critical than on axis freq response, and wide, uniform dispersion helps that a lot, with an emphasis on uniform. In an average listening room your perception of the speakers sound is dominated by factors other than the direct freq response. Most people wouldn't like listening to speakers in a dead room, they tend to sound lifeless, hence the traditional live end/dead end setup to allow but control reflections 

It's correct that it can cost, both in price and looks, to make an "ideal" listening room, but it's obviously much, much more important to spend money swapping expensive cables than work on the room.

ARTICLE on effect of ALT on room placement from one of the inventors for those that haven't read it. Note mention of high frequency content and early reflections of achieving realistic imaging.

A picture of The Plant Studio, mentioned in the article above. Interesting to see the ALT lens pointing down to the listening position -

 

Puncher:

A picture of The Plant Studio, mentioned in the article above. Interesting to see the ALT lens pointing down to the listening position -

 

BL17's with ALT lenses. Whatever next!

Graham

vikinger:

Puncher:

A picture of The Plant Studio, mentioned in the article above. Interesting to see the ALT lens pointing down to the listening position -

 

BL17's with ALT lenses. Whatever next!

Graham

 

You know this will happen one day, it did to the BL8000s!