Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

I love the REI sourced shroud.

What a day...I wanna hear these and the new giant Wilson.

That would be a cool shoot out.

This was new to me. From the descriptions in this article, all previous designs to control phase/response/timing etc. are woefully primitive by comparison. Given this technology and the inclusion of the amplification, the price seems reasonable. Some people worry that they would spend a lot of money on a product that drops drastically in price soon afterward, when they can't get a refund or adjustment credit. On that note, if this design were to catch on and "go viral" so to speak, there would have to be a few unhappy folks who bought the "other brand" for even more money than the 90.

Conceptually sounds similar to the Kii Three, which is smaller and much cheaper(about $15k all in).

Would be interesting to compare the two, or to the larger floor standers coming from Kii.

I imagine every "true" audiophile will "automatically" remove those Geodesic Dome Grill cloths.

The reviewer says they're "Handsome", I wonder if he's just being polite. B&O say's the 90s are beautiful in appearance.

In context, is this the most POWERFUL speaker system anyone has ever heard of? ( I once saw a speaker system with 3 sets of 200w Mono Amps and 1,000 Watts of Subwoofer = 2,200 Watts, I thought it was thunderous ( Krell Amps ), enough for a 7,200 cu.ft. listening room. These B&Os have four times the power ( each or the pair? )

The people that buy these will probably have 5.1, can these be configured for the Video Theater Room?

It's a nice Plus that they sound pretty darn good and saved their owner the extra $600,000 in cost of getting those new Wilsons ( not to mention all the additional electronics needed -- probably another 3 or 4 hundred thousand American ).

Looks like the Ultra-wealthy have as many difficult choices as we the unwashed masses.

Tony in Michigan

ps. do they offer an optional Cat protector?

Great write-up, and long overdue for a proper review of the Beolab 90. I'm looking forward to a full production unit being tested with all bells, and whistles up, and running.

While broad downward tilt 200-20k is a euphonious idea with almost any speaker, it is also highly dependent not just on room size and furnishings but also on horizontal radiation pattern. An extremely upper-mid- and treble-dispersive design like this one wants considerably less of it than other designs. Every Allison owner knows this (also perhaps Ohm, Shahinian, DA, BL5, and other owners), and this fact was pointed out by Julian Hirsch in the many reviews he wrote of dbx Soundfield designs, an earlier beamforming phased array (e.g. see www.hifi-classic.net/review/dbx-soundfield-100-135.html).

Second, it is completely fascinating that the BL90 SP programs may not be perfected yet for lower-midrange balances and 'unrippling', i.e. the crucial half-octave above and the octave-plus below middle C. That is where boundary augmentation effects begin being *fractional* but are not yet summing coherently, of course. It is a problematic, dynamic area for most designs, work-aroundable only with some serious savvy. It will be interesting to see if BL90 future rev is able to improve supple handling of the two 90-360Hz octaves. Unless it was anomalistic in the setting.

If you are willing to come out of retirement to afford a pair of these, give the Spatial Audio X1s (http://www.spatialaudio.us/x1-main) a review for comparison. A hunch - and a more elegant design philosophy and benign price tag - tells me the X1s could surprise you for a 7 times smaller investment, and keep you at home enjoying your well earned retirement.

I'd personally hook them up to a pair of Benchmark AHB2s and a DEQX HDP5, but that's just me; I'm sure Vinnie Rossi's LIOs can do the trick for you, if you want have to go all in with the lifestyle kitsch of esoteric boutique components.

I would very much like to see the Spatial Audio X1s reviewed and measured up against the megabuck flagships and emblems of the box-speaker paradigm.

The reference to the Kii Threes in the comments certainly belongs in a more elaborate discussion surrounding the Beolabs and the design concept - and assumptions - behind them. But so do the Grimm Audio LS1bes and a bunch of other speaker whose design have drawn and capitalized on the trajectory and explorations of Herr Linkwitz.

It would be great to see more in-depth tech talk such as your succint introduction to the assumptions behind the Beolabs design, and how B&O and other manufacturers similarly frame the problems to be tackled by engineering solutions in speaker design... and less hype buzzing around mega expensive luxury objects.

I totally agree with your reference to L'Arpeggiata & Christina Pluhar's recording with the fabulous alpha label, their amazing musicianship - and the recording quality - have provided a truckload of musical pleasure for years.

Happy New Year!

Hah! It wasn't until I reached the antepenultimate paragraph that I was certain you were addressing me.

The Spatial Audio X1s look interesting. I hope I can get an ear on them soon.

I could not find anywhere the speaker's sensitivity 1w/1m?
Same remark regarding not lifting the covers... especially when in the end $80,000 + buys you about $3,000 of Scan-Speak hardware per speaker... and that those are rated 89dB/w/m at best

Interesting. Controlled directivity has been an obsession of a certain section of the DIY community for a while now. As mentioned in some of the comments, Siegfried Linkwitz and his Orions and the the LX521 have aimed at providing this from bottom up through the use of dipole radiation.

I had Orions for many years. They were wonderful.

I also used DSP for crossovers and EQ. The sophisticated (at the time) possibilities helped, but you were still at the mercy of the room.

It's why headphones sound so much better in most ways than speakers.

The other issue with passive controlled directivity is that you are locked into a fairly narrow sweetspot.

As a couch flopper, this became annoying. I somewhat solved it by using coax drivers so I get the same sound almost everywhere, but the room is still the biggest influence.

Given the Beolab targets certain frequencies to cancel, I assume those frequencies are quite position-dependent. Certainly small movements of a mic can have major FR and phase differences. Was there a small sweetspot.

I'd also be very curious what B&O can do with a simpler system.

To a degree they are using acoustic cancellation (directed by DSP), but theoretically it is possible to manipulate phase and frequency entirely digitally. This is kind of what DEQX and Dirac promise, but don't quite deliver.

Finally, I have to tip my hat to B&O. They ar isgnore by most audiophiles, but crate some extremely clever products.

I bought my partner on of their tiny BeoPlay A1 speakers for Xmas and the sound quality is amazing for the size.

I heard this speaker in Copenhagen at the B&O shop and it was truely a big experience. They are the best box speaker I have ever heard, that was not a horn speaker.

Although they have some of the same qualities, as for example narrow dispertion, due to the DSP multi driver funktion. They also have great dynamics and are very transparent and accurate.

My guess is, that the big so called high end brands are sleeping restless, thinking of the monster, B&O has brought to the battlefield.

Some days ago I had such a fantastic experience at one of my friends home. His system was quite simple: Pink Faun 2.16X Server and a pair of Beolab90 speakers. Cable used by him at that time was relativelly unexpensive (in the meantime he upgraded power cables).

Over more than 25 years that I have been exposed to Hi-Fi and Hi-End systems I never heard such a magnificent system playing. I was not prepared for such a great experience... every new track from classic to rock played in an outstanding way. Believe me, I was jaw dropped at every new music.
In one word: SENSATIONAL !

Well done B&O engineers!