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
Purely Scan-Speak drivers, it is not often that B&O tell in their spec's what drivers they use (if ever).
Does anyone know the quality of these drivers in general?
ari: Everything we need to know - http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/sound/loudspeakers/beolab-90
Everything we need to know - http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/sound/loudspeakers/beolab-90
I clicked on the "technical white paper" link and expected the usual 1-page PDF with dimensions. Instead it's an actual technical sound guide spanning some 65 pages. I'm impressed.
--mika
Correction, they are a massive 137kg each. The 65kg was just the cabinet! I've just received the press pack.
I don't know if this link will work:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9mcdin9iuv86u6h/beolab%2090%20technical%20backgrounder%20%28003%29.doc?dl=0
Dave.
Under inputs in the specifications website at B&O it says "Wireless Power Link (24 bit / 48 kHz)" in addition to WISA. Is this new?
8200 watts each. That's pretty crazy
Tech specs from the media release:
BeoLab 90
BeoLab 90 - a game-changer in the sound business and the new flagship loudspeaker from Bang & Olufsen that gives the customer an unprecedented level of control of the acoustic behaviour and performance.
Designed by Frackenpohl and Poulheim, the 135kg powerhouse leaves a significant footprint on your music experience. Its pentagonal shape combined with the rhombus shape of its black fabric covers, which like sails hover above the driver units give BeoLab 90 a unique and impressive appearance.
Technically, BeoLab 90 offers a number of unique approaches to great sound experiences in your home
• Uncompromising innovation with a radically accurate sound staging
• Exceptional flexibility in room adaptation and placement
Materials: Aluminium, fabric and oak wood
Dimensions (W x H x D): 23.5 x 125.3 x 74.7 cm
Weight: 137 kg each
Acoustic components
Speaker drivers:
TWEETER: 7 x Scan-Speak Illuminator 30 mm
MIDRANGE: 7 x Scan-Speak Illuminator 86 mm
WOOFER: 3 x Scan-Speak Discovery 212 mm
FRONT WOOFER: 1 x Scan-Speak Revelator 260 mm
Amplifiers (custom-designed for BeoLab 90):
FOR TWEETERS: 7 x Bang & Olufsen ICEpower AM300-X
FOR MIDRANGE DRIVERS: 7 x Bang & Olufsen ICEpower AM300-X
FOR WOOFERS: 3 x HELIOX AM1000-1
FOR FRONT WOOFER: 1 x HELIOX AM1000-1
Digital signal processor:
DSP TYPE: 2 x Analogue Devices ADSP-21489 - 450 MHz
SAMPLING RATE: 192 kHz fixed
Unique acoustic features
With BeoLab 90, Bang & Olufsen introduces a number of unique technologies that work together to offer customers exceptional flexibility and unparalleled sound performance. They are:
• Active Room Compensation
• Beam Width Control
• Beam Direction Control
Active Room Compensation
With BeoLab 5 Bang & Olufsen introduced its first room compensation called
Automatic Bass Calibration, which by means of a microphone measured the effects of the room’s acoustical behaviour and created a filter in the low frequencies to compensate for the room’s effect.
With BeoLab 90, the Active Room Compensation takes this to a new level as it works up in the midrange area as well. Using an external microphone, you can measure the effects of your room’s acoustical behaviour in different positions in the room and select different compensation filters for different locations. Therefore, instead of compensating for the entire space of the room, you can make specific room compensation preset for a specific listening area. You are thereby guaranteed a much better sound experience in that specific area.
BeoLab 90 also offers another development in acoustical room compensation:
Multichannel processing. This means that the individual BeoLab 90 loudspeaker not only compensate for the artefacts introduced by itself, it also helps to correct for the artefacts introduced by the other BeoLab 90 and both speakers in combination – so they help each other to control the room’s acoustical influence.
Beam Width Control
The acoustic design is optimised to ensure that the direct sound from the front of the loudspeaker can be focused in as narrow a beam as possible, while maintaining the ability to widen the beam when desired.
The driver units are grouped, three at the front, while the side and rear drivers are further away from one another. The digital signal processing can now make use of these different speaker placements so you can personalise your listening experience when you choose between the different beam widths; narrow, wide and omni.
The narrow (approx. ±45-degree) beam width is optimised for a “sweet spot” listening experience when you are seated directly in front of the two loudspeakers. If you share the listening experience with family or friend, you can optimise the beam for a wider (±90-degree) or the omni (360-degree) width to spread the sound experience to cover the entire room.
The overall acoustic concept behind BeoLab 90 is to create a speaker that provides less reflected sound in the listening position and thereby less influence from the listening room, achieving a sound experience that is second to none.
Beam Direction Control
Although BeoLab 90 has a front and a rear, it also offers you the option of moving the direction of the sound beam in five different directions.
At the top of the speaker, you will find an aluminium top plate that harkens back to shapes seen before in the Acoustic Lens designs applied in our other high-end loudspeakers. The aluminium plate is turned in a whirlpool rotation visually signalling the 360-degree design. The hairline thin LED emits light below circular plate and indicates the direction of the sound beam. The benefit of this is that it visually supports the sound beam direction, so you can see to which listening position the sound beam points.
User interface
Dedicated app control
To facilitate operation in relation to BeoLab 90 and all the options it offers, we have developed a dedicated application for convenient use of BeoLab 90 in situations where you wish to set it up, change the listening position, or the beam width. In addition, the app gives you the option of creating and selecting different listening presets, optimised for different listening situations and positions.
A measurement microphone is used when you calibrate the speaker in the room. It is included with the speaker so calibration can be carried out as often as the customer should wish in case he or she moves the speaker location or redesigns the interior and thereby may have changed the room’s acoustic characteristics.
Cabinet
Tweeter, midrange and bass drivers are placed in multiple directions to provide the flexibility of having optimal sound performance in a 360-degree radiation pattern.
The tweeters and midrange drivers are placed in a top tower, which is cast in a 10 mm thick plastic to achieve sufficient stability. The top cabinet is designed in a complex geometric shape calculated and refined by our acoustical engineers to provide the best possible acoustic performance and to accommodate the different sound directions BeoLab 90 offers.
The main cabinet itself weighs 65 kg and is a solidly-cast aluminium cabinet manufactured by one of the largest aluminium foundries in Europe with more than
60 years’ experience in gravity die-casting. It is the biggest and most complex single cast aluminium cabinet ever used at Bang & Olufsen, so specialist knowledge in die-casting was relevant.
Two finned radiators that take care of the heat dissipation from the electronics are an integral part of the aluminium cabinet on the rear of the speakers and are as the rest of the speaker completely concealed by fabric sails.
Sound tuning
You have the possibility to carry out a number of adjustments according to your own liking e.g. sound tuning for e.g. a specific genre of music, or your own preference. BeoLab 90 offers an extensive array of adjustments divided into a basic adjustment section and a more advanced adjustment, which includes creating and sharing preset sound tunings.
An important part of the sound tuning applied in our acoustic department includes resonance detection. It is a Bang & Olufsen technology, designed to detect and compensate for resonances interfering with the sound performance. It is a well-known fact that resonances from, equipment, loudspeaker drivers in enclosures etc. are corrupting the music reproduction, and if we could avoid them, we would get a much better sound performance. However, the problem is to identify the resonances among other phenomena such as diffraction and reflections. This is why it has been an important step for us to be able to detect and counteract against resonances from the physical speakers.
Other elements in the new Bang & Olufsen Digital Sound Engine applied in BeoLab 90 include Adaptive Bass Linearisation, thermal compression compensation, and thermal protection.
The Adaptive Bass Linearisation (ABL) technology was originally developed in order to produce an extended low-frequency range from smaller loudspeakers by constantly monitoring the level of the output signal and limiting its output in a limited frequency band in order to prevent distortion at higher listening levels. This is also used in BeoLab 90, albeit at a much lower frequency range than we normally use. Even BeoLab 90 is a “small” loudspeaker for signals below 20 Hz – consequently a custom-tuned variant of our ABL algorithm is employed extending into infrasound to protect the woofers and low-frequency amplifiers from reaching beyond their limits and thus impacting overall sound quality.
Production and protective measures
Temperature control and cloning to the reference speaker
Temperature affects the sound performance of a loudspeaker, the higher the temperatures the lower the efficiency of the units and if too high, you risk destroying the units. In BeoLab 90 we apply sophisticated technology and procedures in loudspeaker manufacturing to ensure that you achieve the best possible solution to this.
One requirement in our production is that all loudspeaker units are left in the production area for 24 hours to acclimatize. This means they have had time to adjust to the room with regard to temperature. This is relevant because we want to be in complete control of our loudspeaker’s characteristics when we start assembly. We are cloning loudspeakers, which means that when we produce, all drivers are measured individually according to the reference drivers to make sure that they have the same frequency response. These are compensated for the influence of temperature and static air pressure as this will give variations in the measured sound pressure and affect the stereo image. All changes in air pressure on the day of production are measured and compensated for. In this way we are sure we always produce the exact same quality loudspeaker and in case you need to service the speaker, we can clone the driver according to the reference speaker and get the exact same result even though the air pressure or temperature has changed.
Thermal protection safeguards your loudspeakers
Besides being in control of the room temperature on the production line, we also monitor the individual units’ temperature when they are playing in your home. This we call thermal protection. Each BeoLab 90 contains 45 temperature sensors, which report the current temperatures of various components within the loudspeaker back to its DSP “brain”. This information is then used with the output power of the amplifiers to calculate the temperatures of even more locations, such as the loudspeaker driver voice coils.
These data are used in real-time to compare the current temperatures of the loudspeaker components to their “thermal limits” – the temperatures at which they will melt and/or cease to operate. If any single component nears its thermal limits, the loudspeaker makes automatic decisions regarding how best to prevent failure. The actual processing that is applied is dependent on the specific component(s). For example, if a tweeter voice coil is nearing its limits, the level of that tweeter is reduced until it cools enough that its level can be brought back to nominal. Of course, this is something, which occurs only in extreme cases, but if it does, the protection circuitry will make sure your circuitry and loudspeaker drivers are not damaged due to heat. (It should be noted, however, that this is not a guarantee that the loudspeaker is protected against all abuse.)
Thermal compression compensation
With the digital BeoLab 90 we furthermore have the possibility of maintaining optimum performance even though the temperature of the loudspeaker drivers will fluctuate.
Changes in a loudspeaker driver’s temperature affects its output and sensitivity and therefore will result in a varying frequency response if nothing is done. It also affects the stereo perspective, if one speaker is getting warmer than the other. In BeoLab 90 we have a digital signal processor that can handle these extensive calculations and thereby ensure that we get the best performance regardless of the temperature fluctuations. The estimations made by the digital signal processor gives us the opportunity to correct the change in frequency response by offsetting the output, thus compensating for the change.
The result is that we have a loudspeaker whose sound remains unaffected by temperature fluctuations that would otherwise degrade the performance.
Connectivity
BeoLab 90s are interconnected via Digital Power Link in a master-slave configuration with sound sources being fed into the system via the master speaker’s comprehensive connection panel. The connection to the music system, TV, PC or AVR is handled via Analogue Power Link, RCA or XLR or the digital S/PDIF, TOSLINK or USB-Audio connection.
Wireless option
As a supplement to the wired connection, BeoLab 90 also incorporates wireless technology using multichannel digital audio streaming (based on the WiSA technology) with a very robust performance. However, to get all the features included in BeoLab 90, we recommend you use the wired inputs.
Inputs:
Analogue (Master loudspeaker)
Power Link
RCA
XLR (fully balanced)
Digital:
USB Audio (24 bit/192 kHz)
S/P-DIF (24 bit/192 kHz)
TOSLINK (24 bit/96 kHz)
Digital: (Master and slave loudspeaker)
Digital Power Link (24 bit/192 kHz)
Wireless:
Wireless Power Link (24 bit/48 kHz)
WiSA (24 bit/96 kHz)
For more information please contact:
Corporate Communication
Bang & Olufsen a/s
Phone: +45 96 84 51 00
Bang & Olufsen was founded in Struer, Denmark, in 1925 by Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, two innovative, young engineers devoted to high quality audio reproduction. Since then, the brand has become an icon of performance and design excellence through its long-standing craftsmanship tradition and the strongest possible commitment to high-tech research and development.
Still at the forefront of domestic technology, Bang & Olufsen has extended its comprehensive experience with integrated audio and video solutions for the home to other areas such as the hospitality and automotive industries in recent years. Consequently, its current product range epitomizes seamless media experiences in the home as well as in the car and on the move.
For more information on Bang & Olufsen, please visit www.bang-olufsen.com.
Images are available free of charge from the Bang & Olufsen media centre:
http://mediacenter.bang-olufsen.dk.
If you are a first-time visitor, please follow the instructions and register as a new user.
Price and availability confirmed:
BeoLab 90 can be experienced in selected Bang & Olufsen stores as of November 17th, 2015 – the 90th anniversary of Bang & Olufsen.
The recommended price of BeoLab 90 is £26,995 per unit with first deliveries expected end of year.
In addition, to celebrate Bang & Olufsen’s 90th anniversary we have produced a new book, The Art of Impossible – The Bang & Olufsen Design Story. This publication gives an exclusive behind-the-scenes insight into the concept, design and manufacturing of many of our iconic products, incl. BeoLab 90 our most innovative speaker to date. The Art of Impossible will be available for purchase as of November 17th, 2015 – our 90th birthday.
Dave Farr:In addition, to celebrate Bang & Olufsen’s 90th anniversary we have produced a new book, The Art of Impossible – The Bang & Olufsen Design Story. This publication gives an exclusive behind-the-scenes insight into the concept, design and manufacturing of many of our iconic products, incl. BeoLab 90 our most innovative speaker to date. The Art of Impossible will be available for purchase as of November 17th, 2015 – our 90th birthday.
I guess I'll need to settle with the book
Congrats to Geoff and the acoustic department team - bravo.
And of course to all others involved at B&O involved in creating this masterpiece....
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
The 65 page Technical Sound Guide looks like a PhD Thesis! Full of interesting stuff.
http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/customer-service/product-support/loudspeakers/beolab-90
Highly interesting, indeed.
I am sure we will see more of this in future products.
Wireless PowerLink and Digital PowerLink can't just be something for the BL90.
See what the future brings.
And now this.....
http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2015/10/06/beolab-90-behind-the-scenes/
Millemissen:Highly interesting, indeed. I am sure we will see more of this in future products. Wireless PowerLink and Digital PowerLink can't just be something for the BL90. See what the future brings. MM There is a tv - and there is a BV.
tournedos: ari: Everything we need to know - http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/sound/loudspeakers/beolab-90 I clicked on the "technical white paper" link and expected the usual 1-page PDF with dimensions. Instead it's an actual technical sound guide spanning some 65 pages. I'm impressed.
After having read the sound guide of the BL90, I must say it is truly impressive what they put into that speaker.
Truly amazing. Well done B&O.
So very interesting. I love Geoffs posts.
Millemissen: And now this..... http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2015/10/06/beolab-90-behind-the-scenes/ MM
Fantastic post about the development and the effort put in developing this speaker.
Thanks for the link.
BeoBoy68:For the first time, Technical Sound User Guide written by Geoff Martin
you mean the second time... and how do you know that I wrote this one? ;-)
To everyone else here on the thread: It's really nice to read all the excitement from everyone here on BeoWorld. We're still doing the press event here in Struer, but I've been sharing your comments (only the good ones, of course) with the team (which is a LOT of people...).
Cheers
-geoff
Geoff Martin: you mean the second time... and how do you know that I wrote this one? ;-) To everyone else here on the thread: It's really nice to read all the excitement from everyone here on BeoWorld. We're still doing the press event here in Struer, but I've been sharing your comments (only the good ones, of course) with the team (which is a LOT of people...). Cheers -geoff
You and the team must be extremely proud right now :) Exciting times ahead for all of us. Can't wait to hear them. Thank you for your (and the entire teams) passion for making this a reality.
This is so damn exciting!
One simply cant begin to imagine how much time, energy and testing they poured into this speaker.
Hip hip hurrah!
There's going to some empty bottles of champagne and sore heads knocking around tomorrow.
You deserve it!
P.S. Which extra-galactic space ship did you pinch these speakers from?!
.
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.
I should withdraw my early tent picture. I was completely misled by Roger saying that it was like having a guitarist standing in front of you...... from which I assumed they were over 1.5m high. They do look very nice!
Graham
Geoff Martin,
Can you please tell us why B&O decided to use Heliox amps for the bass drivers instead of ICE-power amps?
Tell the dev. team that what you guys made is a stunning product!!
Geoff Martin: BeoBoy68:For the first time, Technical Sound User Guide written by Geoff Martin you mean the second time... and how do you know that I wrote this one? ;-) To everyone else here on the thread: It's really nice to read all the excitement from everyone here on BeoWorld. We're still doing the press event here in Struer, but I've been sharing your comments (only the good ones, of course) with the team (which is a LOT of people...). Cheers -geoff
Brilliant work, Geoff. And very exciting to see the final result of this long development process. I enjoyed owning BL5s, and will enjoy owning BL90s!
To those lucky few who have owned B&O's previous top end speaker, the Beolab 5, congratulations, to those even fewer who will have a chance to own these... can I come over? I'll bring food! :-)
Does someone know the price of the BL90?
My mind just got blown by reading the BL90's tech data.
137kg, Just the cabinet weigh more then my BL5 speakers.And 8200 watt/ speaker.
Well done B&O!
Beo in white is my thing
Currently own: BeoVision Avant 55", BeoLab 5, BeoLab 18, BeoRemoteOne, BeoPlay V1-32", BeoRemote4, BeoSound 3200, BeoGram 6500 (MMC-1), BeoLit 15, BeoPlay A1, LC2, BeoVision MX7000 and BeoLab 3
Thanks Dave!
I have read some other comments now and it seams to be the estimated price.
Well, time to start saving.
This speaker is a fantastic achievement for B&o, to show what they can do hats of to them.I cannot wait to hear them, unfortunately they would not blend in to my domestic enviromrent as they look avey large and imposing.
i have always said if B&o made a music system to beat my linn system I would change in a heartbeat, but unfortunately the speakers look just too big.I am all for sound quality but it has to blend in with the home including my music room or the wife would not be happy.
i have space optimisation + which has tailored the speakers and my room much like B&o is doing with these speakers with exakt technology is hard to beat in my eyes, but I remain open minded until I see and hear them in the flesh.
Bravo Geoff and the team for bringing something to the table,to compete with some of the best systems out there.
Butch1 you cant compare exakt with this active room compensation. This should be able to reduce echoes for example. Exakt is good but this is a new level.
They look stunning in the flesh - believe me, and they sound okay too 😀
I looked around on the Internet and what I could see, the hifi nerds where amazed by the guide and presented data. Well done B&O!
SHEFFIELD:They look stunning in the flesh - believe me, and they sound okay too 😀
Daniel:I looked around on the Internet and what I could see, the hifi nerds where amazed by the guide and presented data. Well done B&O!
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.