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Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance Review

Rate this smart speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 69 36.1%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 85 44.5%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 31 16.2%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 6 3.1%

  • Total voters
    191

amirm

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This is a review, listening tests, equalization and detailed measurements of the Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance wireless speaker. It was kindly drop shipped by a member and costs US $3,299.
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker smart speaker wireless streamin...jpg

The Balance doesn't deviate much from the typical look of these speakers but does manage to feel/look luxurious. Importantly, it is substantially heavier than any other smart speaker I have tested, bringing hopes of higher playback volumes and bass response. I was pleased to find good connectivity including analog input which I used for measurements (does away with latency of wireless connection):
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker smart speaker wireless streamin...jpg

I do wish the ports were labeled however. The info is in the manual but that is also hard to read with every paragraph written in what seemed like a dozen different languages.

The design is complex as you can see from this picture:
bo_BeosoundBalance_hifi_news_mrch_2020_3.jpg


There is a woofer on the bottom followed by midrange in the middle and array of tweeters.

Typical of the class, you need to use an App to setup and configure the speaker. Like most of its competition, the app was a bit glitching, ending the setup with an error. But when I restarted the app, all was well and speaker was ready to be used. Navigation through the app was non-intuitive. For example, when try to play Tidal, it got me to login but then complained that the content can only play through the Tidal App???

Upon configuration, speaker has a forced room optimization where it played a single CHIRP tone and proceeded to activate that mode. Playing music at that point sounded decidedly "wrong" so after much searching, I found the option to turn that off. Turning it back on forces the calibration all over again, making it hard to do AB testing of what the difference is.

There are four or so playback scenarios from voice to "optimal." It defaults to Optimal which I again found to not sound good. For simplicity of measurements (and better sound as you will see later), I configured the Balance in "Front" mode. As the name indicates, this setting sounds more like a normal speaker with sound firing toward you.

Measuring such a complex design and interpreting the results is not straightforward. As such, I highly recommend that you don't skim through the review quick and do pay attention to the listening test section.

If you are not familiar with the measurements that are about to follow, I recommend watching my video on understanding speaker measurements:


Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance Speaker Measurements
It was challenging to find the tweeter as you cannot feel its location through the fabric. Nor is there a clear "front" reference. I guess at both, resulting in the following anechoic measurements:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker anechoic frequency response Mea...png


Due to complexity of the soundfield at higher frequencies with multiple tweeters overlapping each other, the off-axis response past 8 kHz or so drops in accuracy. On-axis response though, was hardly impacted. At first glance, this seems like a mess: we have pronounced resonances around 1500 and 3300 Hz and droop around 220 Hz. Note however that bass response goes quite deep which is very unusual for such a small speaker. The sound power hugs the on-axis response indicating that we have an omni speaker despite me selecting "front" mode. Given this early window and predicted in-room responses mirror on-axis response:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker early window frequency response...png


BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker Predicted in-room frequency res...png


It is harder to see the omni behavior through directivity plots but it is there if you look at the scale:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker Horizontal Beamwidth response M...png


See how the response goes to -180 degree or so up about 1.5 kHz. The contour graph shows this more clearly:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker Horizontal Directivity response...png


While there are potholes, the response is generally even in amplitude across the full ±180 degree spans.

Vertical response is decently broad but obviously not omni:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker Vertical Directivity response M...png


I stopped sweeping the speaker at 86 dBSPL and instead, added 80 dB for refence in our distortion tests:

BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker THD Distortion Measurement.png


BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker relative percentage THD Distort...png


Subjectively the response was much cleaner than what the above shows, perhaps due to ultra low distortion between 1 and 4 KHz where our hearing is most sensitive.

The waterfall display is super busy due to multiple resonances:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker CSD Waterfall Measurement.png


Step response also shows high level of complexity due to multiple drivers firing:

BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker step response Measurement.png


Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance Listening Tests and Equalization
Based on my setup experience and measurements I expected horrible sound when I fired the speaker in my near-field setup. To my surprise, the opposite was true: the deep bass was quite satisfying overall fidelity seemed pretty good! Surprised, I changed the setup from Front to Optimal and fidelity sank big time. I then ran the Room EQ and that made things even worse! On this topic, I don't see how EQ works when the measurement is at speaker rather than listening position.

I turned off Roon EQ and set the speaker back to front. Then started to develop a few crude filters to back out major issues in on-axis response:
BO Band and Olefsun Beosound Balance - Omnidirectional speaker Equalization.png

Sorry, forgot to drop down and show the actual filter settings (can't do it now without repowering the speaker). Will show them later. For now, it should be rather clear what the filters do. The collective set markedly improved fidelity. Female vocals were now more balanced and not so forward as with the stock tuning. That deep and clean sounding bass was there to provide major satisfaction.

Spatial effects were a major surprise. On some tracks with high frequency instrumentation, there was a gorgeous halo of sound in a hemisphere behind the speaker. Closing my eyes, I enjoyed that image maybe even more than a set of speakers in stereo configuration! There seems to be something to this omni response and back firing mid to high frequencies.

Sub-bass response was poor with clear distortion but go up a few hertz and per my earlier notes, the bass was absolutely clean. FYI most of my listening was with the volume at 50% with listening distance of about 2 meters/6 feet. Based on this, I think you will be able to fill even a large room with the Balance speaker.

Once there, I did not want to stop to take a picture of the speaker in my photo booth! The overall fidelity and experience was that good with equalization.

Conclusions
Coming into this review, I was not hopeful that I could quantify the performance of B&O Balance. But when I completed the full circle of analysis including listening tests and EQ, the story came together. First, the modes and room EQ in my opinion do a lot of damage. I don't know what listening tests were performed but in my book, they just sound wrong. Yes, I could have made before and after measurements but this is a complex speaker and single microphone measurements are going to be hard to interpret. Fortunately these modes can be turned off. Then with some EQ -- which would have been nice to have in the speaker itself as it clearly has that ability -- produced excellent sound. Despite the complexity of the speaker, measurements did provide great insight as to what needed fixing. Again, shame that this was not done in the speaker to begin with.

The old saying of diamond in a rough describes the speaker. If you can EQ it, I can recommend the Beosound Balance. We can fix the flaws with EQ but can't bring bass response and dynamics to the table which is the major failing of this class of speakers.
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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/
 

Attachments

  • Bang and Olefsun Balance.zip
    61 KB · Views: 50
There seems to be something to this omni response and back firing mid to high frequencies.
Hmm, paging @GXAlan ... ;)

This speaker seems to have some strong points for the class of omni-like lifestyle speaker... but for the money I couldn't justify it, even with the solid bass performance.

I once demo'd some of the B&O H-series wireless headphones at AXPONA or CES, can't remember which. However, I remember thinking the tuning was just awful, one of the worst I heard in that show. Given that it's a wireless BT headphone, they could have tuned it however they wanted... for whatever reason I think the "house sound" of B&O might just be really wonky, IMO really bad.

That might explain their idea of "optimal"... 2 anecdotes doesn't constitute a conclusive case, just sharing one.
 
Thanks for this review.

Interesting times, where we have "normal" speakers, omni speakers and cardioid-bass speakers available.

The attraction for omni speakers is not new.
There is something attractive linked to the very reverberated sound...
Too bad EQ is not implemented as it could on this one.
And the distortion level, well...
 
At least you can see that the engineers have put some thought into the design (e.g. distortion-free midrange). It's a pity that the tuning is apparently not optimal. Perhaps this can be corrected with a firmware update? Anyway, at this price it's mainly a lifestyle product. Thanks for measuring Amir, I guess it was not an easy task.
 
small correction:

Speaker Configuration
1 x ¾” tweeter
2 x 2” full-range
2 x 3” full-range
2 x 5 ¼” woofer

So two woofers at the bottom, array of midrange and just one tweeter. [looking at that "bloody" directivity I'd be curious how high that "full-range" drivers go]

As always thumb up for continous effort and the growing variety of tested products!
 
Here is my take on the EQ.
Please report your findings, positive or negative!

For the score rational your journey starts here
Explanation for the sub score
The following EQs are “anechoic” EQs to get the speaker right before room integration.
If you able to implement these EQs you must add EQ at LF for room integration, that is usually not optional… see hints there.

The raw data with corrected ER and PIR:

Score no EQ: -0.3
With Sub: 1.9


Spinorama with no EQ:
  • Make noise: check
  • Tons of resonances: check
B&O Balance No EQ Spinorama.png


Directivity:
Try to be Omni directional?
B&O Balance 2D surface Directivity Contour Only Data.png
B&O Balance Reflexion data.png

EQ design:
I have generated two EQs. The APO config files are attached.
  • The first one, labelled, LW is targeted at making the LW flat
  • The second, labelled Score, starts with the first one and adds the score as an optimization variable.
  • The EQs are designed in the context of regular stereo use i.e. domestic environment, no warranty is provided for a near field use in a studio environment although the LW might be better suited for this purpose.

Score EQ LW: 2.4
with sub: 4.0

Score EQ Score: 4.9
with sub: 62.

Code:
B&O Balance APO EQ LW 96000Hz
September132024-143954

Preamp: -3.90 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 0.1 Hz Gain 0.00 dB Q 0.12
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 110.0 Hz Gain -4.62 dB Q 0.84
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 236.8 Hz Gain 3.06 dB Q 2.58
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 371.4 Hz Gain -1.43 dB Q 3.29
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 806.2 Hz Gain -4.39 dB Q 1.96
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 1515.9 Hz Gain -7.70 dB Q 2.79
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 3440.4 Hz Gain -8.88 dB Q 2.20
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 5703.6 Hz Gain -3.17 dB Q 5.13
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 6978.2 Hz Gain 5.61 dB Q 3.74
Filter 10: ON PK Fc 13519.1 Hz Gain -3.10 dB Q 1.99

B&O Balance APO EQ Score 96000Hz
September132024-143954

Preamp: -1.60 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 0.1 Hz Gain 0.00 dB Q 0.13
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 114.5 Hz Gain -3.98 dB Q 0.55
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 233.8 Hz Gain 4.14 dB Q 2.25
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 412.5 Hz Gain -0.69 dB Q 4.47
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 785.8 Hz Gain -4.74 dB Q 1.54
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 1547.0 Hz Gain -7.05 dB Q 2.91
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 3488.8 Hz Gain -9.22 dB Q 2.07
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 5442.8 Hz Gain -3.25 dB Q 1.70
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 7088.7 Hz Gain 4.25 dB Q 2.89
Filter 10: ON PK Fc 10316.3 Hz Gain -6.33 dB Q 0.88

B&O Balance EQ Design.png


Spinorama EQ LW
B&O Balance LW EQ Spinorama.png


Spinorama EQ Score
B&O Balance Score EQ Spinorama.png


Zoom PIR-LW-ON
B&O Balance Zoom.png


Regression - Tonal
B&O Balance Regression.png

rest of the figures attached FYI
 

Attachments

  • B&O Balance LW data.png
    B&O Balance LW data.png
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  • B&O Balance Raw Directivity data.png
    B&O Balance Raw Directivity data.png
    549.4 KB · Views: 31
  • B&O Balance Normalized Directivity data.png
    B&O Balance Normalized Directivity data.png
    431.5 KB · Views: 30
  • B&O Balance 3D surface Horizontal Directivity Data.png
    B&O Balance 3D surface Horizontal Directivity Data.png
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  • B&O Balance 3D surface Vertical Directivity Data.png
    B&O Balance 3D surface Vertical Directivity Data.png
    352.5 KB · Views: 41
  • B&O Balance 2D surface Directivity Contour Data.png
    B&O Balance 2D surface Directivity Contour Data.png
    340.9 KB · Views: 34
  • B&O Balance APO EQ LW 96000Hz.txt
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  • B&O Balance APO EQ Score 96000Hz.txt
    567 bytes · Views: 29
2 x 2” full-range
2 x 3” full-range
That's interesting! It would explain the variation in response as the these driver cause beam forming at different frequencies.
 
Hmm, paging @GXAlan ... ;)

Lol. This is exactly what I have said about the Bose 901. I can tell the high frequency extension is limited, but it's a very enjoyable experience for not-a-lot-of-money. Like this speaker, there is a lot of bass with the 901 *in the right rooms*.

For what it's worth, this is only $1299 at Drop.

With PEQ, the results improve a lot because for a lot of these omnidirectional speakers, an omndirectional mic really is capturing what you might hear

BOSE 901
1726210450473.png
1726210476408.png



Going back to the B&O, I bet you would get a flatter frequency response *if* you didn't need to get down to 30 Hz. I also bet that going down 30Hz makes it a more enjoyable listening experience overall for someone just relaxing and listening to the music *non-critically.*

@amirm, Sonos also does the "local" room correction which typically just tries to figure out if the speaker is in the open, is adjacent to one wall, or in a corner. It'll be like the dip-switches on studio monitors. B&O is probably doing the same thing. Sonos also does regular room correction using the smartphone microphone.

There's a very real "enjoyment" you get with omnidirectional speakers. For classical music, omnidirectional speakers really helps it feels live. For vocals, I don't think the transparency or authenticity is there with teh Bose 901 -- but it's still pleasant, like listening to your favorite song in the car. I would never pick the Bose 901 as my only speaker (nor would I pick this B&O), but I certainly would recommend the combination of having a traditional system and an omnidirectional, special effects system.

What surprised me the most was that with my Bose 901 and I'm sure with other omnidirectional speakers too is how there's still a very good phantom center and left/right imaging.

Also, this isn't omnidirectional but note how the subjective experience seems to beat what you expect from the measurements.

My hypothesis is that if you took modern full range 4" drivers from Fostex or Scan Speak or Mark Audio, DSP'd them to be as flat as possible, and used 10 of them and made them omnidirectional, it would sound really good for classical music. Look at the native response of the Bose 901 and how it measures *after* Dirac using REW with 1/6 octave smoothing. The main problem is that a good full range driver is about $200, and if you wanted 10 per speaker, and wanted a stereo pair, you're now looking at $4000 in parts alone for an experiment that could horribly fail. Likewise, once you get to the budget of $4k, you can get really amazing traditional speakers that are guaranteed to sound great with a wide variety of music.

Someone needs to send @amirm the Sonos Era 300 to test. That measured really well when I had it, and I enjoyed the sound. I only returned it since I thought an "Era 500" was around the corner with HDMI support.
 
@amirm, Sonos also does the "local" room correction which typically just tries to figure out if the speaker is in the open, is adjacent to one wall, or in a corner.
This one also does that but manually asking after CHIRP analysis which it is (by wall or not).
 
Knowing the brand name Bang & Olufsen as that of some HiFi fossil from good old Denmark, learning about the price tag of this given speaker set here and that it is manufactured in China, I can’t help wondering if there are any speakers left in B&O’s portfolio that are still manufactured in Denmark. And what price tag they might have with them ...
 
Back in my long ago days with the brand, B&O used to spend much time in designing user interfaces so that *anybody* could pick up a remote control and get sound or picture very quickly, making it something of an object lesson at the time. A glitchy app may be manageable for 'us,' but what about our other halves not into tech as much - I read yesterday that half of elderly retirees here don't use a smart-phone and much of B&O's market of old, used to be older wealthy people!

I'm deeply suspicious of small bass drivers all but forced to go far lower than they can physically manage. These things are often put fairly tight to walls, making the 'drone' even worse. I admit I've not heard this one, but similar admittedly cheaper types are totally unnatural 'tone generators' lower down.


- This thing makes a Naim Muso look cheap (YIKES!!!!!) and if it's available in the US, I'd like one of these (either type) properly tested if possible after the dealer-hype we've been subjected to - they look and the control 'feels' nice as well and well up to the feel of 'Beoproducts' of old.
 
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