Stan
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
-
I am no longer young so my hearing is not as good as it once was. With that out of the way, I prefer my pair of Balances to both my BL8000s and BL1s (being driven by a BS9000). I hear them pull out sounds and textures that I had never heard with the same music on the 1s or 8000s. It’s like music through the Balances reaches out and grabs me whereas the 1s give me a very pretty picture. I can also fairly reliably hear the difference between Spotify and ripped CDs (on well recorded music) with the Balances, but not with my other speakers. Spotify sounds flat, not as dynamic or punchy… kind of like the BLs relative to the Balances. It didn’t surprise me that they were better than the 8000s, but I was shocked when I found them better than the 1s.
It could be the rooms in which they are located. I have pretty optimal placement for my Balances because they are in my office, and I have full control of their placement. The 1s are in a common living area so there could are some compromises in their location, but I always like them a lot. The 1s get shrieky at very high volumes, but I rarely turn up the volume that loud. I have been tempted to test the Balances in the 1s location, but I’ve been too lazy to set them up (and does it really matter?).
One other odd opinion: I thought a single BS2 sounded a bit better than a single Balance. However, when I added the 2nd Balance and created a stereo pair. Wow!
I’ve never heard B&O passive speakers so I cannot comment on the Balances relative to those. However, I vote for the new speakers.
I have a stereo pair of Balances that I listen to daily. I really like them, and think the stereo pair sounds so much better (more than 2x) than a single. I also much prefer them to the Level. I’m not a “bass head”, but find the well controlled bass of the Balance tremendous. I don’t know why one would want to run a stereo pair in omni mode. This seems to defeat the purpose of stereo pairing – just run them individually if you want Omni mode. I also don’t think the mids are washed out, but we all hear differently.
I have no experience with the Bl17s
Not available to me in the US yet. It’s always a bit of a roll of the dice, but I don’t think there’s been a “bad” release in a few years. I will probably upgrade when I am able.
I have both Deezer and Spotify. I mostly use Deezer because it sounds better on my Bs Balance pair, and this is my primary music system at the moment. I was surprised that it sounded better because I couldn’t hear much of a difference with my older systems.
A black BS1 was in fact my gateway to B&O. As Steve suggests, it has since gone to university (and back) with my son. I had a turntable connected at one point, but my son has always had it connected to his computer. I recently offered him some BL4000s as an upgrade, but he thought they were too flashy. He said he likes the BS1 because no one in his age group has ever seen one (quite rare in the us)…and it does all the audio stuff quite well.
Looks great. Solves the biggest issue with my Eclipse gen1 – what happens when the screen dies? I wish they had this 5? years ago when I bought my Eclipse…
An M3 works fine to extend the NL network so devices (turntable, receiver, etc.) not near your speakers can be used. However, in most cases, it’s easier to just connect the device directly to the speaker system. BS2, Balance, Level, Core, Essence MK2 all have line-in capability.
Higher frequency sound tends to be directional. This means that speakers tend to sound best when the high frequency drivers are pointed at your head (where your ears live). In this case, the higher frequencies will be directed toward the ceiling rather than your head. It would probably sound best in that position if it were pointed down toward your sitting area (maybe put the rear leg on a book (or two) if this doesn’t make it too unsteady or look too weird).
You should definitely run the room calibration given it’s in the corner and close to the ceiling, but that will not help the higher frequencies going toward the ceiling rather than the sitting area.
I’m sure B&O considered the “delay problem”, but decided they were not going to solve it with these “lower end” (for B&O) speakers. Perhaps it would have required an upgraded processor and related components which would have raised the price too much. Engineering/Product Development is all about trade-offs, and weighing the cost vs. benefit of thousands of design decisions. Sometimes, they get it right, sometimes they don’t. If they don’t get it right for you, don’t buy the product… or learn to live with the limitation. Get a pair of BL28s if you don’t want a delay (I wish).
About the fact that GVA does not allow the distribution of line-in audio, I haven’t seen an explanation for this, and I can’t think of a reasonable one, except for it being some kind of weird licensing restriction imposed by Google. When in doubt, blame the lawyers. 😀
The line-in to my non-GVA Balance (which I assume is the same as a Level since both are Mozart devices) has a perceptible delay that cannot be eliminated. This is one reason it is sold as a “music only” speaker (lip synching issues for TV audio).
With the older devices (i.e. Essence mk2, BS2 gen1, possibly core), there is an option to remove the delay at the cost of not being able to distribute the line-in audio via NL. I have not found a similar configuration setting for the Balance. Of course, if your Levels have GVA, then they will not distribute the line-in audio (not that this is needed for your application, but it’s a weird limitation that needs to be mentioned whenever possible) so there is an ever so slight possibility that there is no delay. However, I’m pretty sure that regardless of GVA status there is still a delay as there needs to be time for the DSP to work its magic (something not happening in an Essence mk2, and to a lesser extend in the BS2)
To my knowledge, the BL-transmitter doesn’t provide any cross over settings. It simply sends whatever the source provides.
A Level can join a core/essence mk2 with no perceptible delay via Network Link… I can listen to multiple NL devices, one being a Balance, without an “echo”. Not the path I went… I bought two Balances, but you do you. If you like the sound that is all that matters.
Google would be required to use Chromecast, but if you’re using Chromecast, you’re already in deep with Google so one more device shouldn’t be a problem (I would think).
I don’t have any advice for this specific problem, but here are some things I’ve had to do to make various B&O products work.
- Reboot your phone
- Drop and re-add the BT pairing in your phone.
- Drop the device from the app, delete the BT pairing, restart the app, add the device to the app “from scratch”.
- Do all of 3) above, but also reset the A1.
- If you have multiple A1s, delete them all and try 3) and 4) above
- Try all of the above in an area with little BT interference. For example, in my office, I have a BT keyboard and mouse, a laptop, a tablet, a phone, a smart watch, all using BT from time to time. I’ve had to leave my office for another room there are no other devices to get some things to work (not necessarily with B&O, but other BT devices).
I looked at my wife’s iPhone, and it did not have this option. However, I upgraded the software to a version released in mid-July, and it appeared. Therefore, I’d recommend upgrading the app (if you haven’t already).
Did you scroll down all the way? (Sarcasm)
My software version is 4.1.0.45586 on Android.
I have not had time to play with it.
I would be surprised if B&O radio provides a higher bit rate than TuneIn since, it is my understanding, that neither service is actually providing the bit-stream, but rather more or less providing a catalog to find and connect to the bit-stream. The audio provider is the one actually broadcasting the bit-stream. I recall in the early days of streaming radio, some stations had higher and lower bitrate offerings – mostly for those folks who still had slow internet – but in today’s world of broadband everywhere, I would think most broadcasters probably don’t do that any longer.
I was going to test this, but then decided it would be too difficult since B&O radio capable devices can’t do TuneIn and vice-versa. Yeah, I could use bluetooth or Chromecast, but that’s adding another variable or two to the audio chain.
Thanks. I’m not in a big hurry to fix it so maybe I will wait to see how things turn out for you. Please post any further positive or negative experiences.
Although speaking of new features, you can now play Deezer “flow” directly from the beo app to a Mozart device (without the Deezer app). Unfortunately, the “flow” button doesn’t appear for non-Mozart devices.
Not sure when this showed up (as I just got my first Mozart device), but this was something I always wanted.All true. However (as reported above), when one selects a station, the app reports “Action not supported by the selected product”.
I can “multi-room” the beo radio station from a Mozart device to a non-Mozart device, but that’s (obviously) not quite the same as playing it directly.
