Beolab 17 vs Beosound Balance
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Hi,
What are your opinions as a stereo pair?
I haven’t heard the Balance in stereo, but I think the 17s sound really balanced and nice, with quit a lot of bass and punch. The idea is to use them as L&R with a Theatre. I know the balance doesn’t have the software (yet), only concerned about the sound quality.
I also have the BL19.
Thoughts?
//c
I have never heard the BL17s, but have had the BL4000’s. Although Im not suggesting they sound the same, I find the form-factor is to me, somewhat dated.
The BS Balance was always crying-out for a Powerlink RJ45 connector and it astounds me B&O never did this (PL/Wisa Speaker and/or Beosound).
If it were possible to connect BS Balance via wire to my Theatre, i’d take the plunge immediately. To me, with the Theatre, its not about absolute sound quality of the fronts but about spacial atmosphere. I think the BSTH will be a great leveller when used with all manner of Beolabs. I think there will be very few Beolab combinations what will sound average or poor.
I think it is not inconceivable to see a rush to hoover-up used BL3’s from eBay (not many BL17s there) as people dash for added ambience to that system.
As mentioned in the main Theatre post, I can see huge opportunity for B&O to take the BL14 concept and re-develop it in to small, discrete ambience speakers to maximise the 7.1.4 potential. We dont need BL18, 28, 50, 90’s everywhere filling the room. A couple of statement pieces with the Theatre but the rest are very discrete (but powerful) add-ons.
I would not sweat on your choice on the Balance or 17’s. Either one would be excellent if they could be integrated. I guess well have to see what happens to the Balance?
I may be one of the few people who can answer this with significant experience. I owned a stereo pair of the Balance and sold them. Now I own a pair of 17s.
The Balance were great speakers, but I never loved the way they looked. That’s a personal preference thing, and shouldn’t affect anyone else’s decision. I had the natural oak/gold tone and I just never fell for them. Gold isn’t my thing, which was a significant factor. If the silver aluminum that’s available now were available back then I might still have Balances.
But the bigger reason I sold them was a lack of reliability. Stereo pairing, when Mozart first enabled it, was buggy. They consistently lost connection with each other and I was forced to factory reset them over and over again. They may have fixed this by now, but between the bugs and the design, it was an easy decision for me to move to the 17s when I was able to score a pair for a great price.
Some people find the 17s design to be bland by B&O standards, but I am not one of those people. I love the way the 17s look, and I love the way they sound even more. They are shockingly capable for their size, and really shouldn’t be compared to any other Beolab, as they’re quite unique in the range. No other Beolab bookshelf has a 6.5″ driver, and (more importantly) no other Beolab bookshelf was designed under Geoff Martin, who I think we all regard as a genius.
The Balance is known for having excellent bass, and it does. It produces a ton of bass from the 5.25″ woofers. But in my opinion the 17 produces better, more controlled bass. The Balance is probably the more bass heavy speaker overall, but I prefer the sound of the low end from the 17. Honestly, I prefer the sound of the 17 throughout the range. While the mid range is comparable between the two, the highs sound far more precise from the 17s. The Balance does win on scale and soundstage. They sound huge and wide, which makes sense given their omnidirectional design. But that comes at the cost of precision.
The best way I can describe the difference is that the 17s sound like incredible stereo speakers and the Balances sound like speakers from the future, which haven’t quite been perfected yet. I think the tech in the Balance will continue to evolve in future generations and create wonderful things for a long time. But in the here and now, I’ll take the 17s 10/10 times.
One last thought – if I were going to use them as front L/R with a Theatre, I might consider the Balance in that situation, as the Theatre will handle the center channel precision, placing vocals exactly where they should be, and allowing the Balances to provide a very wide soundstage. Perhaps that will be my future, and I’ll move the 17s to rear channels. But since the Theatre doesn’t yet support Mozart, that’s something to consider down the road.
Hope this helps.
Regarding the stereo pairing with Mozart based speakers: I also had numerous stability issues with my stereo paired Level, but after the last few firmware updates the Level pair is performing absolutely rock-solid! On some occasions i need to reboot one or both of them but that is really rare and I use them a lot!
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