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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."
Wow, the BeoLab 5 is one unique speaker. Aside from the price tag I couldn't afford if I wanted, I wouldn't have anywhere to put it. It's much more intrusive than the BeoLab 6000, but then, if you can afford 16.000 Euro for the speakers, you can probably re-design the room to match.
Additional note: the first B&O page linked has some display issues on Safari.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I hear they make 'stereo' equipment as well.
Seriously, though. I listened to some very, very expensive B&O speakers in their showroom, and I was astonished at how awful they sounded. No midrange and bass everywhere. Maybe it's just my ears, but it would take a vast improvement for me to ever consider spending that much money on their speakers.
What would REALLY be neat is if they could make microphones that weren't affected by room dimensions, walls, etc. Doing home recordings can be a giant pain, especially when recording drums... the room contributes so much to the sound, and since most home musicians can't afford gigantic rooms, you wind up recording in a tiny room which, for those of you that know acoustics, makes things very boomy and difficult to control. Then we have to go and spend hundreds of dollars on bass traps for the room corners, which still don't fix the problem, they just make it less noticable... sigh.
evil adrian
At my church, we meet in a room that looks like the inside of a whale (no, really). To counter this, we installed a computer-based equalization system from Meyer sound labs: the SIM II. Not counting the speakers' cost (about half-a-million), the SIM unit itself ran us (I think) about $35,000 with microphones--and you still do some hand-tuning. Nice to see "mini-SIM" technology at work (especially because it's automagic).
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
Seriously, "acoustic lens" is just a fancy term for a horn, something that has been used for years to control dispersion and distortion. Also, a mic extended from the base to measure the low-end response? Has anyone heard of a Real Time Analyzer (RTA)? Linear X makes a PC based RTA for around $900 (PCRTAjr). If you can afford a $16,000 pair of speakers, you can afford to buy an RTA to set it up, or find a dealer that has one.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Are these loudspeakers designed for use in say, a PA system? Or for use in home theater, or theater theater? Perhaps for DJing purposes? What exactly is it intended to do that a well equalized set of JBL speakers can't produce?
Seems like it's only prominant feature is the ability to produce 360 degree sound, but for that price, you could easily get 5 or 6 high quality speakers and arrange them in a circle.
The flash based site doesn't yield any useful specs either.
Check out the latest Bose Lifestyle systems with Adapti-Q(sp?).
They include special "headphones" (microphones you wear on your head). You sit in five locations where you normally listen to music/movies and play the special CD. It listens to itself and adapts the system to your living room. Yes, the change is clearly audible.
It also means your speakers don't have to be in a perfect rectangle. Place them anywhere you want and it will adapt.
I got the Lifestyle 35 (integrated DVD/AM/FM) for $3000 US. RF remote, sounds awesome and the speakers are *tiny*.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
Okay, so the ALT disperses sound in all directions. That doesn't stop the acoustic presence of walls, floor, ceiling, and whatnot.
Acoustic reflections are going to happen unless you treat the surfaces that the sound is reflecting off. And to make a room more accurate, absorption is only one of the necessary treatments. Without diffusion, the room will sound very dead and, to many, quite uncomfortable.
The design (and placement) of an audio source is only one small part of making a room sound good.
Been into any hoity-toity restaurants in the past few years and noticed you can't understand the person 2 feet away from you? The popular design of restaurant spaces lately includes big vaulted ceilings and lots of open space, but few use any acoustic treatments in these spaces, causing large, boomy rooms.
It's not the source of the audio that needs to be changed (the talking people or the loudspeaker), it's the room itself.
The ALT simply attempts to remove the focal point (or sweet spot) from speaker placement. I've not heard one of these, but my feeling from looking at their website is the eliptical dispersion simply puts the focal point in a spot where no one actually sits and then tries to relfect that spot to the rest of the room.
Jory
As I understand it, SI recognizes the ambiguity of the decimal vs. the place value separator. I believe that the encouraged convention is to use a nonbreaking space every three digits to mark place values--this way, either a comma or a period marks a decimal. No ambiguity.
As an aside, the European system makes more sense from a design standpoint. You use the smallest possible symbol (period) to mark groups of three digits. The most important place value you tag with a larger symbol (comma), so it stands out. For the record, I grew up in Canada, and we use the 'American' convention for decimals.
Of course, real /.ers should use scientific notation for everything.
~Idarubicin
This Tracking Downconverter supplies their 11" cube subs with enough power to get the stroke of the subwoofer to over 2"... that's moving quite a bit of air. With I believe an 8 pound magnet, and 16 pounds of dead weight on the opposite side (moved thanks to Newton) they pack 18Hz flat response into a tiny package. I was wondering if this 'ICEpower' is just the same thing.
You can check out Sunfire's 'True Subwoofer' here.
---
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
If you really want a speaker that performs in a similar manner and you're not afraid to build it yourself, take a look at:
http://www.agora.dk/users/ole.thofte/conus1.htm
This is the Conus I speaker by Ole Thofte- he estimates that it costs about $85 to build, and it should sound as good or better than the $8,000 B&O speaker. And as for the little microphone? If you get some books and a few pieces of test equipment, you can take care of this yourself at a very low price. Either that or you have an extra $7,915 to hire a professional to do setup and placement for you.
Also, the acoustic lens is nothing new. I just looked it up in the Audio Cyclopedia, and while there was no date of origin, the Cyclopedia is copyrighted 1959, so the acoustic lens is at least 44 years old. This is just another example of tarting up old technology and trying to pass it off as something new. This kind of snakeoil is not unusual in high-end audio.
What's sad is that if you want a decent stereo and not pay a fortune for it these days, you have to build it yourself. Speakers sold at the big box electronics stores are not good (including Bose; if you don't believe me, go Google for some performance specs on them. Your $20 computer speakers probably have more accurate reproduction), a quick comparison with "good" speakers leaves no doubt, whether you're an audiophile or not. As for me, I dropped about $250 to build a pair of full-range ribbon loudspeakers with wonderfully flat response. Could have built them for less, a lot of the price was for two types of exotic wood I wanted to use. Anyone seriously interested in good sound should skip this overpriced crap and check out the DIY forums on the Internet. You really can set up a wonderful system for well under $1,000.
IAAL
I've actually heard one "art" type speaker that was worth someting, and that is the B&W Nautilus. I've got no idea if all their chatter about the tapered tubes has any foundation in science, or is just marketing hype. However, the speaker does bak up all its hype with good sound. It really does sound great and measure flat. But, interestingly enough, I'd say it is no better than the SC-Vs from the now closed down Dunlavy Audio Labs. They built your standard boxy speakers ranging from large to huge, with a semetric driver arrangment, 1 tweeter in teh middle and 2x of each mid/woofer on the top and bottom, moving out in order of size. All in all they were the most accurate for the money I could find. But ya, boxy, boring speakers seem to be the way to go. I've seen some small modifications, but every kind of speaker that has impressed me (other then the Nautilus) has been a normal box type, with a normal arrangment of drivers.