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New Loudspeaker Eliminates Distortive Influence
fejrskov writes "The Danish audio/video company 'Bang & Olufsen' announced a new loudspeaker which promises to eliminate the bad influence from walls, floors and ceilings on the sound. This is achieved by using two technologies: ALT (Acoustic Lens Technology) uses sound dispersing lenses to make sound travel equally in all directions. ABC (Adaptive Bass Control) involves sliding a tiny microphone out at the base of the speaker, playing a series of test sounds, and adapting the bass according to the measured acoustic response. Each active loudspeaker contains amplifiers for a total of 2500W (!) output using B&O's patented ICEPower concept. The price? Approximately 55.000 Danish kroner (8.000 Euro) each."
Thats $8,494.07 USD.
http://xe.com/
Actually, at the current exchange rate, it would be $18,345.61 for us savages. :)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I'm surprised they got a patent on this, the military has been studying this for years. Edelman's recent work uses inverse functions to counter multipath interference in sonar with security applications. The only difference here is application as far as I can tell, the technique appears similar.
I think the biggest thing you could do to eliminate the boxy low frequency resonances is get rid of the parallel walls and floor/ceiling. I realize this isn't easy. Could you built a stout partition running diagonally through the room and put the drummer in one triangle? Or you could cover two walls and the ceiling with randomly sized protrusions - maybe hand-carved foam with a skin of concrete. They need to be pretty rigid. The problem with that second idea is that it will only spread the resonance a bit, not get rid of it. Imagine a distribution curve of room widths. It will go from a single sharp peak to a fairly narrow hump. Actually this might work pretty well - one project I worked on had a tunnel with nonuniform (organic) roughly textured concrete walls. It was very accoustically dead - did not sound like a concrete tunnel at all.
Maybe cut off 3 corners of the room with diagonal partitions, choosing the dimensions for diversity of resonances? But then you approach a cylinder, which is even worse, because from the center of the room you see a relatively constant distance to the walls.
I'm sure you already know that the hard flat surfaces need soft stuff on top to avoid high frequency reflections - but that's the easy part.
B&O's hardware is gorgeous. Simply works of art.
:)
However, I also listened to their speakers and was utterly blown away by how awful they sounded.
In general, the rule for speakers is the sleeker/fancier they look, the crappier they sound. Nobody has really improved on the rectangular sealed box. Add ports (or "bass labyrinth" as bose calls it) and you get a bandpass boost that makes small speakers sound louder, but totally fucks the frequency response and distorts everything at higher volume levels. A driver needs a sealed chamber behind it to stabilize it for clean mids - channel that air around to the front of the box and it just starts to slop. Sealed box == clean sound but you need a lot more power and bigger drivers.
In the end I went with the BEO9000 wall-mount changer, but there was no way I'd have their speakers even if they were 1/10th the price. I just picked up a pair of Infinity studio monitors and a seaparate amp, and the sound is just phenomenal. I would love to take these speakers into the B&O show room and listen to them double-blind in the same room... I'll bet this pair of big rectangular speakers sound better than their "sleek and elegant" speakers for 1/4 the price.
I'm definitely going to head down there and listen to the new ones though. It doesn't look like they've made compromises on sound quality to get more power from a smaller box... they're just huge. Too bad I can't afford 'em.
BTW, B&O is big on using funky proprietary connectors for everything. The analog connections use 5-pin DIN connectors (???). However, they will sell you the necessary adaptors if you want to use your own choice of amp/speakers.
Sad that such a topic shows up on Slashdot without mentioning open source solutions which are cheap to free. Check out Digital Room Correction and BruteFIR for instance.
tcboo
text
Dave
B&O kit is for people with more money than sense (sense of hearing that is). The amount you pay for it, you can get the same results with kit a tenth of the price. You are only paying for the design.
IMHO, all this crap that companies like B&O and Bose spew about their R&D and the latest gadget they've come up with to "shape" the sound or whatever has little basis in reality at all. Audio reproduction is not a mystery. It is well known how to get good results. There's no secret to it and B&O have not made any breakthroughs.
So if you have the cash and the inclination, instead of spending 8 grand on a pair of these speakers, get yourself some kit from Quad, TAG McLaren Audio, Arcam, Mission, etc. I'm willing to bet you could put together an entire system that'd sound ten times as good as these for a quarter of the cost of these speakers alone, without any of this nonsense they're putting in them.
Having said all that, I'm currently listening to a pair of B&O speakers, although they are about 30 or 40 years old. Obviously they had a bit more of a clue back then as the speakers sound amazing, although they were marred by the very long and very thin cables they came with. A bit of modification of the terminals to accept a thicker cable made them sound like a completely different set of speakers. It makes me wonder, if B&O were prepared to completely ruin the sound for the sake of the design of the cable, of all things.. what else are they doing?
B&O have historically targetted a certain demographic, and done very well by doing so. Namely, the wealthy who want an obviously expensive and gorgeous sound system, but who don't really know or care much about the sound itself. B&O is one of the fashion trend setters for speakers. For example, Sony's chrome metal column home theatre systems were designed to look very similar to one of B&O's older systems.
B&O's spiel on audio lenses, etc. really is a bit of a smokescreen. There's no new technology here, and probably not a particularily good implementation of existing tech. However, it has great packaging, glossy magazine ads, and you can bet your arse those B&O store salespeople are smoooooooth!
Bose is sort of a low end version of B&O. Bose has the most effective and innovative marketing department of any speaker company out there. High margins for dealers, salesperson training, you name it. Watching a bose demo is as entertaining as watching a carnival sideshow. They'll play those little plywood boxes with paper cones through PVC tubing, inside other much larger "Speaker boxes", and a plethora of other gimmichs while gushing about how great they sound. You'd be surprised at what people will believe if they're told to. White Van speaker companies like Dogg Digital or Nuance are but pale imitators of the origional master, Dr.Bose. Truly a master.
While I respect them as highly profitable and effective companies, would I buy B&O or Bose myself? Probably not. When you want better sound for your dollar it is best to go elsewhere.
I see what you mean. I look at rain turning into hail and I immediately say "it's so obvious, it must be... 32 degrees!". Or I look at water in a pan, and when it starts boiling it just screams "212 degreees"! Amazing how well it adapts to daily experiences.
What relevant thing happens at 0 F...? Or at 100 F, for that matter?
The centigrade scale is based on water, which is "just" one of the most common (and arguably the most important) substances on Earth. Do you know what the Farenheit scale is based on? Let me quote from a History site:
"For seven years Fahrenheit worked out an alcohol thermometer scale based on three points. He chose the freezing point of a certain salt-water mixture for zero. He used the freezing point of water for 32 degrees. And body temperature he called 96 degrees.
Why the funny numbers? He originally used a twelve-point scale with zero, four, and twelve for those three benchmarks. Then he put eight gradations in each large division. That's how he got that strange 96 number - it was eight times twelve. Body temperature is actually a tad higher than 96, but it was close. Later, Fahrenheit made mercury thermometers that let him use the boiling point of water instead of human body temperature for the high mark."
But of course, by then the "standard" had been defined, so water now had to boil at the lovely temperature of "212 degrees".
In other words, Farenheit is the way it is because of legacy support (what does that remind me of?). Its "design" was shaped by the equipment's limitations and by totally arbitrary things such as "the freezing point of a certain salt-water mixture".
Just because you're used to something doesn't mean it's "better" and it certainly doesn't mean that whoever invented it spent much time thinking about it. Look at some modern "standards" and you'll see things haven't changed much since 1700.
RMN
~~~
P.S. - If centigrade is "stupid" but Kelvin is "smart", then why did Kelvin adopt the same "size" for the degrees? The only difference between Celsius (centigrade) and Kelvin is that Celsius' zero is based on water and Kelvin uses the absolute zero.
Actually, 136dB - 108dB is 28dB, divide that by 6dB and that's how many times the level has doubled. It's actually more than 2^4 = 16 times as loud. The 2500W is probably the input wattage it can handle without blowing up. B&O's tend to be really oddly shaped, which probably really lowers efficiency, thus the lower SPL.
and watch the stuffy sales clerk walk around like a snob and turn everything off including the lights without speaking to you until you leave.
that's how "Good" B&O equipment is. they're worse than Bose when it comes to selling for 8x markup.
B&O are known for stuff that looks artsy, sound good and don't interact well with other's products, at greatly inflated prices.
Bose is known for stuff that looks good, sound OK at best, at greatly inflated prices. Bose's QC also allows a 10dB variation to "pass" as a qualified product when most quality manufacturers use 3dB or less.
For half the price of that Lifestyle 35 you can get an Anthony Gallo set that looks better, sounds better and the speakers are little 3" to 4" spheres. IIRC, they don't rely on a midrange to do a tweeter's job or a woofer's job like Bose does.
I don't think the auto adjust is included but I wouldn't pay much for something I can do by hand and an audio meter for free, $40 if you don't have an audio meter. It's much easier to do than installing or using any computer.
If you want speakers that actually sound good, then try an electrostatic or planar speaker.
Make that good looking speakers that actually sound good, but even base models are still a bit expensive. The one thing that electrostatics do is keep everything pretty well in phase, but the magnitude is actually often all over the place often at least +- 5dB. They also still need a bass module (i.e. a "box") because planars don't have enough excursion.
This joke has never been very funny, however now with a plummeting US $ (the Canadian dollar has gained about 14% against the US $ in the past couple of months), it really seems tired. For the record $8,494 US $ is about $11,806 Canadian $.
Cheers
The speakers having decent frequency response is nice. However, having a room that is properly constructed and placing the loudspeakers where they provide the best sound stage is even more important.
All this gimmicky digital signal processing to achieve better sound won't improve things if you don't have the right kind of room, and don't have the speakers in the right places.
The right places aren't going to be readily apparent in a showroom either. It might be the corners, or it might be 1/3 the way across one wall of the room. Depends on how well bass is felt in the room.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Nobody has really improved on the rectangular sealed box.
Actually, this isn't quite true, and your comments suggest you don't really understand how a loudspeaker operates.
Add ports (or "bass labyrinth" as bose calls it) and you get a bandpass boost that makes small speakers sound louder, but totally fucks the frequency response and distorts everything at higher volume levels.
A port and a "bass labyrinth" are two very different things. A conventional ported enclosure is a time-tested and very acceptable design. The mass of the air in the port, along with the compliance of the air in the box, forms a second-order resonator. Another second-order system is formed by the mass of the driver, its compliance, and the compliance of the enclosed air volume. Coupled together, the resulting fourth-order system can be tuned in a variety of ways ("alignments") to give flat and deep bass response out of a generally smaller enclosure than a simple sealed box. Improper alignments can lead to tubby "one-note" bass, but any bad design in general will sound bad, so this is not a particular flaw of ported boxes.
A "bass labyrinth" is a type of transmission line that delays (and therefore changes the phase) of bass frequencies traveling through it. Properly implemented, the transmission line can be arranged to augment bass response. Audiophile transmission lines are usually filled with a material such as wool or dacron that slows the speed of sound and absorbs high-frequency reflections. Some audiophiles swear by transmission line sound. Proper transmission line speakers are quite large. The small "bass labyrinth" of Bose ilk is generally not an audiophile design.
Sealed and ported boxes are high-pass designs. A bandpass enclosure is a distinct and different technology. Again, a proper bandpass woofer enclosure is not necessarily a bad thing, but the technique can be abused.
A driver needs a sealed chamber behind it to stabilize it for clean mids - channel that air around to the front of the box and it just starts to slop.
The enclosure serves several purposes and you seem to be confusing two of them here. One purpose is to separate the front wave from the out-of-phase back wave in order to avoid progressive cancellation of output at decreasing frequencies. (But there are some very good so-called "dipole" designs that deliberately allow both sides of the driver to radiate. For an excellent description and superb DIY designs, see http://www.linkwitzlab.com). The other purpose is to provide an air compliance ("spring") that augments the mechanical compliance of the driver. The air is a relatively consistent, predictable, linear compliance that in many ways is easier to deal with than the mechanical properties of the driver. The sealed-box enclosure has the advantage of being fairly small and having defined low-frequency characteristics that give it advantages over "infinite baffle" designs that use stiffer, lower-compliance drivers.
Sealed box == clean sound but you need a lot more power and bigger drivers.
The efficiency of a loudspeaker is defined at mid-band frequencies, away from the bass region where the effects of enclosure design we're talking about here are important. For a given driver, the SPL output for a given power will be the same at midband, regardless of whether the box is sealed or ported. Generally speaking, assuming proper designs, the ported box will have lower frequency response and lower driver excursion at bass frequencies. This is because in the ported design, the port radiates sound by stealing bass energy from the driver, whereas in the sealed box, the driver is responsible for all sound output.
Although many drivers can be used in either a sealed or ported box, generally the electrical, mechanical, and acoustic properties are set by the manufacturer so that one type of enclosure or the other is optimum.
It's worth noting, however, that because of the lower-order roll-off, th
What is wrong with STANDARD 5-pin DIN connectors (DIN = Deutsche Industrie Norm). It was the most widely available connector for audio when they started their link system.
You can make adaptors yourself, there is not much of a secret how sound is transmitted through it.
BTW, B&O is big on using funky proprietary connectors for everything. The analog connections use 5-pin DIN connectors (???).
Most european audio gear I've seen used DIN connectors. It would seem to be the european (or at least German) standard for connecting audio gear.
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
No. Ethanol boils at 173.12F, freezes at -174.28F (78.4 and -114.6 Celsius respectively). Fahrenheit also fucked up when setting 100F to be body temperature; it is actually 98.4F, and it's not constant anyways. 0F was supposed to be the coldest temperature he could obtain, a water/salt mixture. He was also off on that one, the coldest possible mixture can attain -4F.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
http://home.earthlink.net/~busenitz/bs.html
Linn is a small Scottish company with extraordinary engineering and products. Linn does what Bose and B&O attempt to do but without all the glitz and with incredible performance out of compact electronics. Their speakers are good too, so they offer complete systems. See:
linn.co.uk
For their 'low end' all in one home theatre CD, DVD, Tuner, 5.1 channel preamp/amplifier, multi-room capable receiver, see Linn's Classik Movie System (CMS) and CMS Di[gital] at:
classik.com
You'll also find their entry level Classik Music (two channel amp, tuner, preamp, multi-room capable) System. The newer, more complete Classik Movie includes CD/DVD/Tuner with 5 channel amplifier and component video out. The brand new CMS Di includes all the features of the Classik Movie but adds an even better CD/DVD processor and source input for both video (component video in) and audio (toslink optical 5.1 channel). The advanced CD/DVD sound processing is trickle down technology from Linn's brand new, state of the art Unidisk CD/DVD/DVD-A/SACD disc player.
All three Classiks have the same tiny form factor, except the new 5.1 channel Movie units have more controls and therefore a different face (same diminutive size though).
Despite their diminutive size, these units are better than most separates. Needless to say, Linn is very popular in Japan where tiny, powerful, state of the art electronics are a sign of excellence.
The pricing is under $2k ($1500?) for the Classik Music (CD, Tuner, et al.), $3k for the Classik Movie all-in-one (DVD, et al.), and $5k for the no-compromise movie Di (Unidisk processing trickle down, and component video and toslink inputs). The Di is not exactly cheap but packs amazing capabilities and superior quality into unbelievably compact package.
The units even include multi-room capabilities using multiple Classik units (Linn's "Connect" system), or connecting to Linn's versatile "Knekt" system to connect a variety of Linn components throughout the home/office into one system. Both Connect and Knekt offer keypad controls (e.g., wall-mount units to control the Linn Classik or other (Linn and non-Linn (by IR) components)).
Linn technology is unique in its blend of high technology and no-compromise emphasis on audio quality. For example, Linn uses surface mount technology and switch-mode power supplies which are rare in audiophile products (due to complications Linn has innovated beyond). In contrast, Bose has a reputation for taking cheap components and equalizing the hell out of them to get the semblance of accurate sound (but delivering an essentially synthesized sound on any music). B&O offers a genuine value in style, design, and compactness, but with some significant (but not necessarily critical) sonic compromises. Linn does not take the sonic shortcuts.
Instead, Linn innovates in a variety of ways (the first audiophile quality CD/DVD/DVD-A/SACD transport, innovative FM tuner technology, active speaker amplification, multi-room capabilities, etc.) and trickles the technologies throughout their product line. Few if any other companies even have the capability to pack everything into a single compact box with top flight musical and video quality as in the Classik product line. For Linn, the Classik just takes advantage of a host of their more advanced power supply, amplifier, tuner, multi-room, CD/DVD, and video technology all in one unit.
IOW, what Bose and B&O market in appearance, Linn delivers in performance. Anecdotally, Linn delivers the soul of music, musicians often choose Linn over other audiophile systems, and Linn deliver foot tapping sonic excellence. Linn's byline is "pitch accurate" sound. Let your ears be the judge.