Stan
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I agree that the current Balance colors are uninspired. I have black. They work fine in my office. More disappear vs a “statement”. I wished for a dark wood + charcoal, but it hasn’t happened.
I have a stereo pair of Balances. I like them very much and would buy them again (at the sale price I paid, not sure about today’s prices). With some music, they sound better (to me) than my BL1s + BS9000. Granted, I use them in my office so I don’t drive them too hard. They are also the first speakers I’ve owned where I can fairly consistently tell the difference between Spotify and Deezer HiFi sound quality.
From what people have said on this site over the years, I think the A9s would probably sound better, but I’ve never really listened to an A9 too closely since they don’t really fit into the places where I want speakers. They take up a lot of space.
I also agree with MM. Wait for the BL8s…
Completely agree that the VHNWI’s will not stand for the current software quality. Heck, my wife (not a VHNWI) gives me crap every time the system hiccups – “when are you going to buy something that just works?”. B&O support? Ha!
Now, my “defense” is that nothing works now days. Every company has crappy software (even Apple has been disappointing lately), but part of me knows I’m stuck with B&O because I have too much invested, and it will be far too expensive for my non-VHNWI household to replace everything with Sonos (for example). If I was VHNWI, I’d probably pitch it, tell my all my friends and buy something else (and if my theory of everybody is bad is true), repeat.
In defense of B&O… As bad as we think their software is… I’m talking about NL beosounds, not the Theater and BL50/90… their competitors seem to be mostly worse. Reading reviews about Kipsch and other competing wireless speakers sound like these are worse. I think B&O has been at this longer so they are a bit more mature, but let’s see if they can keep their head start.
I wasn’t expecting that! Then again, the B&O site says you need a Beoamp 125.4 which doesn’t seem to exist so who kows what is going on here.
I also noticed that if you download the manual, it is branded as “B&O | Origin Acoustics”
Agree that this looks like a nice speaker.
With all the talk of VHNWH, they are actually somewhat reasonably priced (on the B&O scale, of course). Similarly priced to a pair of Balances. Yes, the Balances have more drivers per speaker and more powerful amps (100W vs 50W for midrange), but they have similar spl levels so chances are they will sound similar… maybe.
Assuming they sound similarly, I may have gone for them instead of the Balances that I bought as I like their style better. Then again, maybe not, since they don’t have an analog line-in for my turntable.
It also would have allowed me to test pairing with my Eclipse (unsure about stability of WISA or speaker placement in my weirdly shaped room). I guess I can still do that next time I find ~$7K under the sofa cushions :D.
I have a gen1, but it is currently being used. I have a gen2 that is available. I don’t really want to buy a 2nd hand gen1 because of age/battery life. However, it is good to know that analog input to the gen2 is not an option.
Thanks for the answer. Not the one I was looking for but confirmed I’m not overlooking anything. I was hoping to avoid Bluetooth because it can be flakey, but it looks like the way forward… at least until she decides to upgrade to something better.
The mk11 actually includes mk11 in the product name on the product information sticker. An essence mk1 just says “essence”. An essence mk11 says “essence mk11”. There should be no confusion so long as you can see the sticker with the product name, model, serial number on the bottom of the unit.
Thanks for the clarification and warning. I guess I didn’t read the listing close enough. Given the price, I thought it might be used but missed it anyway.
It says there are 2 black balances for ~1600. Get ’em before they are gone.
I’d be interested to know who looked at it in Chicago. I’m in the area and my BS9000 is broken. I’d prefer not to ship it to get fixed.
I don’t have a Core, but on my Essence, when I check the local sources, they immediately show up in my sources pick list
The fact that you’re not seeing B&O Radio, maybe you need to upgrade your app? Also, go into the TuneIn/B&O Radio tab on the app (the little transmit icon in the lower right corner of the app), and click on the B&O Radio tab, this might prompt for a TuneIn -> B&O Radio upgrade.
Yes, it’s been officially discontinued a few months ago.
Replacements are the Level and the new A5 – both sound much better than Beosound 1 to be fair, even though in terms of design they’re far less iconic.
I have to disagree on this point. I tried a BS1 head to head with the Level, and the Level was not that much better to my ears. I know initially, the BS1 was pretty weak, but I believe it got much better sounding as it matured (and B&O upgraded the software). In my testing, yes, the Level sounded better when you were in its not very large “sweet spot”, but otherwise was comparable to the BS1. At least in my kitchen with my ears. I’ve had one for about 2 years, and I agree it works great in the kitchen.
Some people prefer warm and fuzzy. Nothing wrong with that. The BL3s are not as warm as the BL4000s. Sometimes it takes a little while for our ears to adjust.
Sometimes the additional resolution provided by newer/better speakers expose the weakness of the content or upstream hardware. Again, sometimes, it just sounds different (not necessarily better or worse).
I never had a problem with Spotify sound quality until I got a pair of Balances. Chromecast audio connected to BS9000 + BL1s sounded fine to my ears. Spotify streaming directly to Balances seemed to be missing something so I stream with Deezer mostly, but also listen to my digitized CDs more often.
All you can do is experiment because you are the only one the hears like you do. You don’t mention what you are currently using for streaming, but IIRC, the Airport Express is supposed to be provide reasonably good audio quality.
I don’t think there is a one size fits all solution. First, I might try a different audio source – maybe give Deezer a try, or better yet, if you can somehow stream digitized CDs via DLNA (for example), you’d be working from a known source quality. See if it sounds better. Try a new DAC (make sure you can return it if it doesn’t help).
If nothing helps, maybe buy a pair of BL4000s. They are pretty cheap now days.
With respect to the question of will PL cables sound better then line-in RCA cables, the answer is “it depends”. I don’t believe there is a hard and fast answer because the RCA cables are of an unknown quality. Let us know what you think.
About the Beo Remote, I think it’s just terminology.
The site says: “Beoremote One works with both Bluetooth and IR commands to control all your Bang & Olufsen products – both new and classic. Bluetooth is only available with compatible products.”
I have one to control a BV8 (ir) and some Bt devices. I find when I switch into IR mode. If I accidentally hit the wrong button – say Music – the remote seems to go back to bt mode (I assume) because it no longer controls my bv. To get it back, I have to select a bt source, the re-select IR mode and a source – like music. Kind of a pain and not anything I can train my wife about.
It is my understanding that the delay is an artifact of both digitizing and DSP’ing the audio on the Mozart speaker and the latency from transmitting over NL/ethernet (and then decoding/DSP’ing on the receive end).
For older speakers, there’s already a “NL/ML delay box” which delays the ML audio to account for the processing time required on the NL side. However, this doesn’t work for ML sources with directly attached speakers because there is no way to delay the audio between the ML source and its directly connected speakers, only ML distributed audio is delayed.
If I understand prior discussions on this topic, the ability to use Mozart speakers as “surround” speakers will require by-passing some of Mozart’s internal audio engine processing to minimize the delay to avoid lip synching issues as well as software changes on the BV to also account for this, now minimized, delay. I doubt if any of this is just API settings (at least until the underlying software supports this).
I must say, it seems pretty cool of B&O to publish this API.
Also, I’ve been using an Airport Express 3rd gen for quite a few years in a manner similar to XavierItzmann’s diagram above (providing a wireless ethernet connection for my BS5). It works fine. Similarly, I had an earlier version that went wonky.
Configuring “Link to other product” setting as Carolpa suggested did the trick. Thanks for the help everyone!
