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B&O Beolab 20 Speaker Review

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 132 47.8%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 109 39.5%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 26 9.4%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 9 3.3%

  • Total voters
    276

amirm

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This is a review and detailed measurements of Bang & Olufsen (B&O) Beolab 20 speaker. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $15,000.
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Band Olufson B&O Review.jpg

You expect out of box industrial design from B&O and that is what they deliver. The Beolab 20 is an active, 3-way, sealed design. The woofer and mid-range are behind the cone cloth. The tweeter is unusual in the way it fires up into an acoustic lens of sorts:

Beolab 20 Active Speaker Band Olufson B&O Tweeter Review.jpg


The back side is made out of some kind of rubber (?) with a panel that removes to expose the inputs, power, etc.:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Band Olufson B&O wireless WISA Input Review.jpg


I was disappointed in the look, feel and component selections there. As you may be able to see, there is dust on the lower shelf. The RCA connectors are the ultra-cheap looking tin coated ones instead of gold. The dip switches work but again, don't give the feeling of luxury. On the positive from there is support for wireless streaming in the form of WISA (but sadly not bluetooth). And digital input. This requires synchronization between the two speaker which they are doing with a toslink out to the other speaker. And then you would need some kind of volume control.

The measurements you are about to see are generated by the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). Critical measurements are made anechoic with others being in-room. Temperature of the measurement room was rather low at 57 degrees F. Reference axis was that of the tweeter. Speaker was tested with he switches as you see with the Free-space selection. Even though I have two speakers, listening tests per research was performed using a single one.

Beolab 20 Measurements
Let's start as usual with our anechoic, CEA-2034 standard compliant frequency response measurements:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Anechoic CEA2034 Frequency Response Measurements.png


Wow, I don't think I have measured a speaker that goes essentially flat down 20 Hz and especially one in this compact size! That is the good news. The bad news is that there is fair amount of variations, resonances and disturbances along the way. The plurality of these will make it difficult to develop an EQ for this speaker. We can see clues to some of these issues in our near-field measurements of each driver:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker near-field Frequency Response Measurements.png


Note that I could not visually located the mid-range so that response may be approximate. But the woofer is not and we can see resonant peaks. The mid-range's upper spectrum also has a lot of ups and downs. And there is peaking in the tweeter as well. I am assuming DSP is used in this speaker. If so, surprising that they have not attempted to quell these variations with better crossovers and filtering.

Back to CEA-2034, here is our early window response which again, doesn't look all that nice:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker early window Frequency Response Measurements.png


So naturally our combined predicted in-room response has issues:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Anechoic CEA2034 predicted in-room Frequency Response Measurements.png


There is large variation in dispersion of the speaker:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Anechoic Horizontal Beamwidth Measurements.png


I was surprised and disappointed to see the super narrowing of the tweeter response above 8 to 10 kHz.
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Anechoic Horizontal directivity Measurements.png


Vertically we have a very messy situation:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Anechoic Vertical directivity Measurements.png


So much going on outside of our solid areas indicating secondary diffraction and such.

Distortion is not bad at 86 dBSPL but gets worse at an odd position in response:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Near-field Driver Frequency Response Measurements.png

Beolab 20 Active Speaker THD Distortion Response Measurements.png


I looked at woofer response and it was not the cause of the peaking around 800 Hz. Instead, it seems to be the midrange that is complaining:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Nidrange Relative THD Distortion Response Measurements.png


It is also responsible for multiple resonances up high which we saw in near-field response of the driver.

Waterfall display shows resonances:
Beolab speaker active CSD waterfall measurements.png


Finally, here is the step response for fans of that measurement:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Step Response Measurements.png



Beolab 20 Speaker Listening Tests
I placed the speaker as you see in the intro shot in my main listening room. I had just tested a $500 speaker with the famous Stevie Ray Vaughan track, the Tin Pan Alley. I expected it to sound even better on Beolab 20. Instead, I found the experience the other way around. It sounded dull and unexciting. So I skipped that and went to my standard reference tracks of female performances. Fidelity was improved here with a bit more bass presence that I typically hear from small speakers. As I progressed through tracks, I realized that the Beolab was activating my room mode at 105 Hz so started to EQ that and made more corrections after that:
Beolab 20 Active Speaker Euqalization EQ.png


As I noted in the review, building an EQ by eye is going to be difficult and it was. I *think* I made an improvement but I am not sure it translated across all tracks. The highs needed a boost so I put in the shelving filter initially at 2 dB but had to knock that down as it was a bit bright. A less lazy approach with multiple filters would have avoided that perhaps.

The initial filter set did not have that high-pass filter. I jumped into my tracks with sub-bass (< 30 Hz) content expecting great performance. The Beolab played this range but what I heard was quite distorted and odd sounding. The above filter reduced that some but what I was hearing was still abnormal and I preferred not having that sub-bass than what I heard. We see high distortion in bass frequencies in the measurements confirming what I was hearing.

On the positive front, high-pitch notes at times resonated around the room in a way I had not heard before. They would sparkle against different points in 3-D space which was a nice effect! So that tweeter design is doing something.

Overall, the response as I noted was variable. On some tracks such as Deadmou5, the speaker sounded wonderful. But on others as I noted, it was a let down. Maybe more work with positioning and filtering helps.

Conclusions
B&O is known for innovating in design department when it comes to looks of the products. At the same time, they have extensive engineering and research facilities. The latter gave me hope that they could tame the restrictions that the industrial imposes on design. Alas, it doesn't seem to be the case here. I think driving the speaker to have 20 Hz response but with distortion is unwise. There are a lot of resonances and interference patterns between the three drivers which I think could have been dealt with better. Clearly what we have is nicer than some just going for looks. But as a hi-fi product, it doesn't fit the bill quite right.

I am sad to not be able to recommend the B&O Beolab 20 speaker. Performance is too uneven given the very high cost.

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
 

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OP
amirm

amirm

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amj101

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There's some interesting info about the 20s archived on the old Beoworld forum (Geoff Martin was responsible for tuning the speaker I believe, and some of these posts actually from him): https://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/t/14149.aspx?PageIndex=1
This is because the DSP of the 20 allows us to to far more than is possible with the analogue processing of the 9. We do a great deal of work using the processing power in the DSP to counteract resonances (cause by various things in the hardware) in the time domain. This is not possible using analogue processing. In addition, we can ensure that the phase responses of the three drivers are aligned across the two crossovers (in the "old days" this was thought of as time-alignment, but time alignment is a somewhat one-dimensional way to think of the problem. You have to consider this problem of driver interaction in three-dimensional space and across frequency bands.) We can push the low frequency range of the 20 much lower because we can approach its physical limits more closely due to the DSP. And so on and so on...
There's also another post I'm trying to find, may update if/when I do with more stuff about the 20s. Anyways, plan on exchanging the 20s for 9s for testing soon.
 

martijn86

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What where they thinking with those input connectors?! Overall interesting speaker (tweeter design, full range, wireless) for $1500. I get paying double that for a luxury lifestyle brand and industrial design but 10x that is rediculous.
 

JktHifi

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$15000 because money lie.

I don’t like 3-way speaker because the mid range from the third way used to create noise. The 2-way speakers are much better all way around. 2-channel (stereo) amplifier, 2-way speaker, and 2-terminal (bi-wire) is the best configuration to get seperation between left/right and high/low frequency.
 
Last edited:

AndreaT

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I was less than impressed many years ago when I listened to a stereo setting of this speaker at the house of my wealthy cousin. My high expectations were not satisfied as the overall impression was of a dull and un-engaging musical experience, playing tracks I was well accustomed to. Not worth the high asking price. The quality of the input connectors shows how little B&O cares for substance when it is hidden from immediate view.
Thank you Amir for a most excellent and thoughtful review.
 

pierre

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Interesting speaker (at least different). The price looks like to be 11k CHF on the B&O website locally. The speaker may looks like that without the cover and that answer the question of where the midrange is.
1679120566490.png
https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2014/12/11/naked-truth-part-4/

Score is 5.3 and goes to 5.9 with an EQ. Since the bass are excellent, it doesn't improve much with a subwoofer 5.9 and 6.6. with both subwoofer and EQ.
Target market is unlikely to add a crossover and a subwoofer but possibly B&O has one that does it automatically.

The EQ tracks the small oscillations on the LW and/or PIR but that's minor variations. The speaker has already been optimised to have a as flat as possible LW. The EQ optimise for a flatter PIR which may not be a good idea for this speaker. I would love to listen to this one with and without EQ.

Last time I went to a B&O store I listened to a 50k system and was disappointed (Beolab 50, now around 40k). The store didn't even know how to use the room correction system.

I am wondering if the quasi-omni nature could help in some cases. A friend of mine had the Beo 5 which looks similar and there were good which high SPL ability.

filters_eq.jpg

If you have a graphical EQ, you get more or less the same results:

eq_compare.jpg
 
Last edited:

Tangband

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This is a review and detailed measurements of Band & Olufsen (B&O) Beolab 20 speaker. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $15,000.
View attachment 272656
You expect out of box industrial design from B&O and that is what they deliver. The Beolab 20 is an active, 3-way, sealed design. The woofer and mid-range are behind the cone cloth. The tweeter is unusual in the way it fires up into an acoustic lens of sorts:

View attachment 272657

The back side is made out of some kind of rubber (?) with a panel that removes to expose the inputs, power, etc.:
View attachment 272658

I was disappointed in the look, feel and component selections there. As you may be able to see, there is dust on the lower shelf. The RCA connectors are the ultra-cheap looking tin coated ones instead of gold. The dip switches work but again, don't give the feeling of luxury. On the positive from there is support for wireless streaming in the form of WISA (but sadly not bluetooth). And digital input. This requires synchronization between the two speaker which they are doing with a toslink out to the other speaker. And then you would need some kind of volume control.

The measurements you are about to see are generated by the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). Critical measurements are made anechoic with others being in-room. Temperature of the measurement room was rather low at 57 degrees F. Reference axis was that of the tweeter. Speaker was tested with he switches as you see with the Free-space selection. Even though I have two speakers, listening tests per research was performed using a single one.

Beolab 20 Measurements
Let's start as usual with our anechoic, CEA-2034 standard compliant frequency response measurements:
View attachment 272659

Wow, I don't think I have measured a speaker that goes essentially flat down 20 Hz and especially one in this compact size! That is the good news. The bad news is that there is fair amount of variations, resonances and disturbances along the way. The plurality of these will make it difficult to develop an EQ for this speaker. We can see clues to some of these issues in our near-field measurements of each driver:
View attachment 272660

Note that I could not visually located the mid-range so that response may be approximate. But the woofer is not and we can see resonant peaks. The mid-range's upper spectrum also has a lot of ups and downs. And there is peaking in the tweeter as well. I am assuming DSP is used in this speaker. If so, surprising that they have not attempted to quell these variations with better crossovers and filtering.

Back to CEA-2034, here is our early window response which again, doesn't look all that nice:
View attachment 272661

So naturally our combined predicted in-room response has issues:
View attachment 272662

There is large variation in dispersion of the speaker:
View attachment 272663

I was surprised and disappointed to see the super narrowing of the tweeter response above 8 to 10 kHz.
View attachment 272664

Vertically we have a very messy situation:
View attachment 272665

So much going on outside of our solid areas indicating secondary diffraction and such.

Distortion is not bad at 86 dBSPL but gets worse at an odd position in response:
View attachment 272666
View attachment 272667

I looked at woofer response and it was not the cause of the peaking around 800 Hz. Instead, it seems to be the midrange that is complaining:
View attachment 272668

It is also responsible for multiple resonances up high which we saw in near-field response of the driver.

Waterfall display shows resonances:
View attachment 272669

Finally, here is the step response for fans of that measurement:
View attachment 272670


Beolab 20 Speaker Listening Tests
I placed the speaker as you see in the intro shot in my main listening room. I had just tested a $500 speaker with the famous Stevie Ray Vaughan track, the Tin Cup Alley. I expected it to sound even better on Beolab 20. Instead, I found the experience the other way around. It sounded dull and unexciting. So I skipped that and went to my standard reference tracks of female performances. Fidelity was improved here with a bit more bass presence that I typically hear from small speakers. As I progressed through tracks, I realized that the Beolab was activating my room mode at 105 Hz so started to EQ that and made more corrections after that:
View attachment 272671

As I noted in the review, building an EQ by eye is going to be difficult and it was. I *think* I made an improvement but I am not sure it translated across all tracks. The highs needed a boost so I put in the shelving filter initially at 2 dB but had to knock that down as it was a bit bright. A less lazy approach with multiple filters would have avoided that perhaps.

The initial filter set did not have that high-pass filter. I jumped into my tracks with sub-bass (< 30 Hz) content expecting great performance. The Beolab played this range but what I heard was quite distorted and odd sounding. The above filter reduced that some but what I was hearing was still abnormal and I preferred not having that sub-bass than what I heard. We see high distortion in bass frequencies in the measurements confirming what I was hearing.

On the positive front, high-pitch notes at times resonated around the room in a way I had not heard before. They would sparkle against different points in 3-D space which was a nice effect! So that tweeter design is doing something.

Overall, the response as I noted was variable. On some tracks such as Deadmou5, the speaker sounded wonderful. But on others as I noted, it was a let down. Maybe more work with positioning and filtering helps.

Conclusions
B&O is known for innovating in design department when it comes to looks of the products. At the same time, they have extensive engineering and research facilities. The latter gave me hope that they could tame the restrictions that the industrial imposes on design. Alas, it doesn't seem to be the case here. I think driving the speaker to have 20 Hz response but with distortion is unwise. There are a lot of resonances and interference patterns between the three drivers which I think could have been dealt with better. Clearly what we have is nicer than some just going for looks. But as a hi-fi product, it doesn't fit the bill quite right.

I am sad to not be able to recommend the B&O Beolab 20 speaker. Performance is too uneven given the very high cost.

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Interesting review. During the time B/O released this speaker, there were a lot of hope that it would sound good. I listened very carefully to this speaker .
Interesting technique .
9512B1E3-3AE6-4CD7-B57B-DDDDE7E832D7.jpeg
 
Last edited:

polmuaddib

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I don't know.... that frequency response looks good to me. Would those small resonances and jagged line be audible?
But I agree, 15k is ridiculous for an ugly speaker. Looks cheap.
 

Tks

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Never thought these sounded good in the Benz's I'd be in. Always suspected they were more an "audiophile-y" company than a serious audio fidelity one.
 

HarmonicTHD

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Disappointing indeed. But very good to know, because given the (alleged?) scientific approach B&O takes, I always wondered how they would fare. Now we know.

I listened to them once in a very highly treated room. Not impressed, but again that could have been due to a number of things.

Thanks for sending this in and it is great to see a more higher priced speaker being measured for a change again.
 

Bjorn

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It's interesting to see the narrowing in the highs. The idea with the lens is to maintain wide directivity in the treble, but we can see this doesn't work that well.

Edit: If we look at the horizontal polars B&O have published themselves of the much more expensive Beolab 90 which uses an array of tweeters, we actually see a similar result.

Horizontal polar in wide mode:
Wide polar.jpg


And Beolab 90 in narrow mode:
Narrow polar.jpg


I'm probably not the only one thinking about E.T. head here!
59b076d3-3527-4812-89d7-5153f5e27893.jpg
 
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