Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance Review

[sealman]

A plastic spoon will perform the same as a gold one! Telling your friends about your gold spoon will get a different response than telling them about the plastic one. For some people that is important.

I edited (added on) my post above for this exact reason.

 

[amirm]

I "kind of" would like to see some more options when grading products.

It is hard enough to defend one of four ratings. Going finer would not be practical. The data is not that specific regarding that conclusions. This is why I even go to two choices of recommended vs not.

 

[testp]

I think it's fine.

I actually never consider the poll (or vote), only read measurements and final conclusion mostly.

 

[Spocko]

The way I see it is the more expensive a product is it should perform better than something much less expensive that does the (amp vs amp etc) same job.
The bigger the price difference the better the expensive product better perform and offer something the cheaper product does not offer.
How much that sways my opinion is just my opinion.

I believe a product's worth is more than just a simple cost = performance metric because that's reductionism taken to an extreme. Yes, measurable performance is one metric but let me list a few more that add to the cost of the product that you haven't mentioned but needs to be considered in terms of value and benefit to the consumer - I've listed a few obvious ones below:

1. Warranty. Products that carry a 5 yr warranty will always be more expensive everything else being near equal. This is critically important beyond measurements because the consumer will own this product for more than 1 year - just because Amir love it over the course of 2 weeks doesn't mean it will last beyond 1 year's usage. This is also a good heuristic for (1) quality control and (2) robustness of parts, all of which add to the value of the product without improving measured performance.
2. Customer support. Real employees who are trained in the use of your product to help you troubleshoot over the phone costs much more than "free" information found on Reddit through trial and error.
3. Place of manufacture. Speakers made in China that perform similar to Genelec speakers made in Finland but at only 20% the cost - what's not to love? How about knowing that the premium paid for Genelec means their employees are all paid a fair living wage with healthcare and benefits while the product itself is produced with responsible sustainability in mind.
4. Design/Ergonomics. The unsung hero of a product. It costs much more to hire experienced designers who exhaustively iterate the product and its intended use case than to stick high performing parts into a generic metal container. In a well designed product, the proportions, placement and texture are all carefully chosen to optimize for the intended user experience - we take for granted that design is a matter of course and this is unfortunate because iterating design is a very expensive process in the hardware manufacturing world.

So if you extract only measurable performance as the single metric to assess value and leave out the rest, you unfairly discount all the other unmeasured but tangible metrics that are integral to a product's value over the life of its ownership experience.

And regarding the free "plastic spoon" performing equal to a metal one - we are suffocating our oceans with plastic spoons while killing ourselves with microplastics permanently taking residence in our tissues - there is always a price and it's not always $$.

 

[BlackTalon]

And that is why I have no issues with rating being performance-based only. We as individuals have our own weighting scale for everything else. For instance, I don't see myself willingly paying 500% of the China cost to buy something of the same performance (and level of construction) from Finland. And I may balance a preference for strip-mining vs microplastics different from someone else (plus here in the US most ore is shipped to China for processing and then shipped back to the US.

Just let me know about the performance and build quality and I'll weigh all the other factors using my own, unique, scales.

 

[Victoria]

Ohh. Count on this thread awakening me from the grave. Hahaha!~

Before I start though, three disclaimers:

1. I've read the review.
2. I haven't yet read most replies to this thread.
3. I've owned this speaker for a number of years now and it's my daily driver.

With that out of the way, I'll also start by saying that I've never been Bang & Olufsen's biggest fan, despite my fondness of ICEpower. I've used ICEpower amplifiers long before Class-D was even considered an acceptable form of audio amplification; thus when I needed to downsize my setup due to housing issues (I'm currently in a tiny home) it was only natural for me to see what B&O was up to when I needed to purchase my next new -- and critically: only -- speaker.

I decided on the BeoSound Balance for three simple reasons:

A. This speaker measures 20cm across and has 850W of oompf on tap; this metric alone makes it hard to beat.
B. Since I don't use the top of the speaker it's an excellent place for me to put my plushies.
C. I mostly listen to metal and trust me when I say this: the only measurement I really care about is how low the bass goes and how loud.

The one thing about this speaker that is genuinely hard to wrap your head around is how ludicrously loud it gets without much distortion to the point of it being dangerous. I have this speaker volume limited in the app to 60% for the safety of my own ears. It's frankly insane how loud this speaker can play especially when you consider its size. What's even more insane is just how much power we have available at the lower end of the frequency spectrum.

Seriously does this look like a speaker with not just one, but TWO 5 1/4" woofers inside... with *each* woofer having 200W of amplification available to it?

Not only that, but as Amir has said... this speaker is heavy; and hilariously enough my version is even heavier because I own the one with the marble base. Yep, real marble. Every single time I need to move this speaker -- which admittedly isn't very often -- I'm stunned at how heavy it is. And that's a good thing. Because one other genre of music I listen to is Hi-Tech; it's a bit of an obscure one but let's just say it's a form of electronic music where it's not uncommon to see tracks going from 200-300BPM and down to 20Hz. And this speaker absolutely excels here because it's stable as a rock (no pun intended given what mine is made of lol). Literally everything in my room will start moving... except the speaker. I've owned actual dedicated subwoofers in the past with less punch.

So... yeah. Trust me when I say that this speaker has its place, and it looks gorgeous.

As Amir has mentioned however, forget the room compensation crap. It's weird. And I also agree that having the speaker in front-facing mode is probably what you'd want unless you really need your output to be omnidirectional. My speaker is on my desk up against a wall since that's where my notebook is, but it works gorgeously both when I'm on my notebook and when I'm doing chores around my home.

And that's another thing: frequency response means buggerall when your listening position isn't optimal; which is basically me about 80% of the time I'm listening to this speaker. So again the only metric I give a crap about is power. And this speaker has a lot of it. Too much even. Don't forget that this speaker is more about filling a room with music than requiring a perfect frequency response which won't matter all that much anyway for what it was designed to do. Sure, it's expensive. But you know what else is expensive in a small house? Desk and floor real-estate. I really can't afford to have anything bigger than this speaker, so and I do take my interior design quite seriously. So in that sense this speaker was literally designed for me. Small. Beautiful. Powerful. It's great.

And yes, yes. I know which forum I'm on. But you know what? Science is also about admitting when we just have other priorities. And I made this purchasing decision fully aware that B&O's history with frequency response isn't going to be on my side, but that doesn't mean that this speaker isn't capable of offering satisfaction to me in other areas which I am currently required to prioritize, so here we are.

And you know what? Once I finally move and buy my dream Genelec floor standing setup... I'm still keeping this speaker... in my bedroom.

 

[KSTR]

And you know what? Once I finally move and buy my dream Genelec floor standing setup

Make sure your living room is large enough for a stereo pair and room treatment and then enjoy the discovery of an immersive holographic soundstage ;-) It could well be that it gives you nothing, of course.

You post is an excellent example that preference is extremely individual and that's a good thing.

 

[IAmAlwaysSerious]

So again the only metric I give a crap about is power. And this speaker has a lot of it. Too much even.

If you're never turning it up, though, that power is beyond useless. I doubt it actually does 850 watts for more than an infinitesimal fraction of a second even at max volume, but at 60% you're not likely ever going above a few dozen watts when the bass really kicks in.

There's also no way this thing is playing anything audible at 20Hz, or even particularly close to that low. Amir says it plays down to 30Hz but his graph has that terribly close the threshold of hearing. From more than a meter, that likely will be hard or impossible to hear.
That shouldn't matter to you if you're enjoying it, but we shouldn't mislead the readers here.

But it sounds like you're enjoying it, so keep on keeping on. It certainly looks like a good speaker, if not exactly great value for money.
You might like something like a Devialet a bit more though, for less money. The devialet Mania is somewhat comparable at like a bit more than a quarter of the cost.

 

[Spocko]

...

Just let me know about the performance and build quality and I'll weigh all the other factors using my own, unique, scales.

ASR does not review "build quality" to the same degree as performance, but I get your point.

 

[Postlan]

Despite the amount of EQ required?

Well, I just realized that if I stick my two SONOS mono speakers back to back, it’ll become omni-directional, lol.

 

[Martijn Mensink]

There's much to be said for omnidirectional speakers, particularly if you have only one speaker instead of a stereo pair. Most seem rather flawed, though. Is it really so hard to do? MBL seem to have almost omnidirectional response, but they seem to be paying a price in response smoothness. I remember seeing measurements of the original Apple smart speaker once. If I remember correctly, those did a pretty good job of being both omni and having smooth response.

 

[holdingpants01]

As for the 850W power

 

[IAmAlwaysSerious]

As for the 850W power

View attachment 393096

In their defense, the chip amps probably could keep the 850W power output up for a few seconds before overheating... If the caps didn't give out first.

I'm not sure why they're allowed to advertise those specs when they're clearly nonsense. And I don't think they're the only ones doing it.

Edit: Just remembered that two of their amps (the woofers) are each rated at 200W. You could argue that the 50 watt amp could run full power for the five minutes that are required for the FTC test, but there is no way that either of the 200 Watt amps are getting through that test. Anyone know how to file a complaint?

 

[Ste_S]

Some snobbishness about 'lifestyle' speakers in general in this thread. I've been quite impressed by a stereo pair of Apple Homepod Mini's for not much money (relatively), and kinda think they're the future.

In ten years time I think we'll see a lot of trad front firing only speaker companies go bust, replaced by omni-directional speakers from companies who can do software. Not that I think B&O will be one of those companies, outside of licensing their brand in the same way Zeiss does with Sony for optics.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Some snobbishness about 'lifestyle' speakers in general in this thread. I've been quite impressed by a stereo pair of Apple Homepod Mini's for not much money (relatively), and kinda think they're the future.

In ten years time I think we'll see a lot of trad front firing only speaker companies go bust, replaced by omni-directional speakers from companies who can do software. Not that I think B&O will be one of those companies, outside of licensing their brand in the same way Zeiss does with Sony for optics.

We have one Homepod Mini and it sounds absurdly good for something so tiny. A pair would be great for our upstairs system if we didn't already have a Denon CEOL Piccolo and 2 old MA7s for that. Like you, I get the feeling that a big change is happening, and I wonder if "serious" stereo systems will become even more niche than they already are.

 

[Victoria]

As for the 850W power

View attachment 393096

Nice spot! Would love to see what’s up with the discrepancy. That’s most certainly not peak power in my experience though because if I remove my volume limiter and bias the EQ towards bass I can definitely get more oompf out of this thing than even 100W dedicated subwoofers which I know were spec’d correctly. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the specs are entirely BS yet though but they could definitely be stretching the truth; because we do know that we can get this kind of power out of chip amps (running them parallel and what not) into a single woofer. Who knows, maybe the 2x200W claim for the woofers is peak for a few ns/ms lol which is in no way sustainable for however/whatever methodology they use to come up with that 100W figure on the label. Shrugs. Anyone with more knowledge able to chime in here?

 

[IAmAlwaysSerious]

Nice spot! Would love to see what’s up with the discrepancy. That’s most certainly not peak power in my experience though because if I remove my volume limiter and bias the EQ towards bass I can definitely get more oompf out of this thing than even 100W dedicated subwoofers which I know were spec’d correctly. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the specs are entirely BS yet though but they could definitely be stretching the truth; because we do know that we can get this kind of power out of chip amps (running them parallel and what not) into a single woofer. Who knows, maybe the 2x200W claim for the woofers is peak for a few ns/ms lol which is in no way sustainable for however/whatever methodology they use to come up with that 100W figure on the label. Shrugs. Anyone with more knowledge able to chime in here?

The same way my Devialet Mania says it does ((2x38)+(4x25)) = 176W; Onboard power storage.
In the case of the Devialet, though, they have capacitors and a fairly sizeable battery. They could pretend that the battery is capable of producing 176W when necessary, but i doubt that can actually be done. The Charging cable maxes out somewhere around 35W from my testing, and is rated for only 30 watts. The battery in there is 11 volts, so that would be 16 amps peak draw from a small lithium ion... Not likely, but i guess technically possible.

The 100W in the B&O is likely pretty close to correct, but might be off by a few watts up or down. No way it's feeding even one of those woofer amps, let alone the two plus others. I bet it's not much more than 110W or it might be considered some sort of safety issue to say 100W on the label.
And the B&O ain't got no battery.

So we're left with capacitors. Caps don't hold much power but they can hand all of it out almost instantly i f required.

The amps i've played with typically have a power supply refilling some bulk caps, and the amplifier drawing from those caps. If you draw more continuous power than the power supply can replenish, the voltage in the caps drops and the total output of the amps ends up being whatever the power supply can give minus the efficiency losses (and usually adding some terrible distortion).
But if you have brief peaks (maybe a cymbal crash or the attack on a particularly loud note) followed by a few moments of lower power draw (maybe the sustain on a piano note or just whatever thing is happening that isn't incredibly loud), then you don't drain the caps too much.
Decently mastered music often has a few notes that go right near clipping for a few wave cycles, or even a half a wave cycle, followed by time at a much lower power level.
When the peaks are short like that, the capacitors don't discharge too much and your average power stays relatively low.

So at full volume on the B&O (well, probably. It's complicated), those peaks might hit 850 Watts. And theoretically, that should be okay so long as the average power over maybe a half a second or a second stays below 100W.
If your volume is a little lower, power requirements drops substantially. Most people will still think that 850 Watts is still doing them some kind of good below max volume, but it isn't. (again, probably. It's complicated.)

On the other hand, that doesn't actually meet the legal requirements to advertise amplifier power in the US, as i understand it. (i'd love for someone to chime in if i'm wrong).

But then, on the third hand (you've got one, right?), it doesn't really matter what the amp power is like because speaker efficiency plays a part as well. Plus there's likely some cool DSP stuff going on. (Well, in the Mania. Who knows what B&O is doing with that crazy frequency response...)
That DSP stuff might, depending on the implementation, lower the peak possible power out of an amp.



To sum up: it's all a terrible lie, and plenty of people buying a Bang & Olufson speaker generally won't look into or maybe even understand it. It looks pretty and the bass probably hits harder than the tiny speaker in your phone or a cheap soundbar. The bass should kick the ass of any bookshelves a B&O owner is likely to buy.
So who cares if the label is lying to the customer?

Either way, i'd avoid playing dubstep near max volume. If you're lucky, it'll either cause ridiculous distortion, or trigger some power protection circuit. If you're unlucky, it could let some magic smoke out.

 

[ip2k]

I just a wanted to share some perspective and subjective experience as an owner of the Beosound Balance (in Natural Oak). My wife and I picked it up on Drop (formerly Massdrop) a few months ago as it was on massive sale for $1400 pre-tax, with free shipping. $1530.16 all-in. It’s our first B&O product but I’ve been familiar with them for a long time.

We wanted something for our nursery that fit with the way the room looks (wife is a designer, mostly UX and software these days) and sounded as good as possible with few visible cables. We also have a Naim Mu-so Qb in a guest bedroom so when friends and family stay over, they can listen to music with what many of them have described as “great-sounding” quality easily from their phones (AirPlay + aux cable make it easy). The Qb was purchased used, I believe for around $300.

I have a few decades of experience dabbling in hifi, but my interests these days skew toward the professional market. Still some snake oil, but less. Our main room uses Dynaudio Core 59s through a MiniDSP SHD with Dirac and some Dante to run sound from the projector setup in the same room. I’ve been considering switching to a Trinnov Nova-based setup there but I’m not convinced it would make a big-enough difference, and it still doesn’t fix the biggest issue my wife has with our current setup of having multiple remotes, and the IR remote for the MiniDSP works poorly (bad range / command repeat issues etc).

My music production room has the JBL L100s I grew up with, KEF LS50s, and iLoud MTM MKiis, with Adcom 5800 and GFA-555 for amps for the first two. That room needs more treatment as the bass in particular gets pretty wonky outside of a narrow area, so the iLouds work better for more critical listening, but the JBLs are fun when I’m just messing around playing synths or bass in there. I’ve probably got a dozen or pairs of good headphones too, eg Shure KSE1200, Westone ES80, Audeze MM-500, Sennheiser HD 800S, Beyerdynamic 1770 Pro, etc etc mostly fed with an RME ADI-2 Pro with balanced cables for most of those. There are some LXMini Studios in our attic that simply don’t fit well into any room at the moment, and getting to chat with Siegfried Linkwitz and Nelson Pass at Burning Amp in San Francisco some years back was a definite highlight of my years in this hobby.

I’m into field recording and music production as hobbies, building some of my own gear like Jecklin disks and messing with HRTFs and DSP filter design to try to realize my longstanding idea of being able to bring the ambience of a beautiful forest hiking experience into some type of sound performance in a gallery or club setting. I’ve been to NAMM a few times and CES a few more, and I work in an industry that requires professional sound production and critical monitoring to produce TV and film. I also grew up playing with car audio and speaker building

All this is to say that I like to think that I have a decent idea of what “good” sounds like subjectively.

The Beosound Balance sounds surprisingly good to my wife and I in the same way that the Bowers & Wilkins system in our Volvo does. I know they’re not perfect or ruler-flat, but they’re both very fun and do theirs job in a very aesthetically-pleasing way in the form factor that fits best for that application. The room correction in our application seems to tighten up bass and make it sound less boomy. I’ve tried it off and on and my wife and I agree that it’s better with it. Placing it further from the wall as recommended in their setup guide also helps, and it’s about a foot from a wall atop a shelving unit at the moment.

[edited to add this paragraph] Regarding build quality, the exterior is aluminum, wood, fabric, and some kind of silicone or plastic gripper material on the bottom. I’m sure there’s lots of plastic and metal inside, but it feels super solid and premium, as it should for this price. Even the cord is a nice woven thing with a nicely-shaped plug. I like that there’s a hardware mic disconnect switch on the bottom of the unit as well. They got many details right with this, including things like the ramping of the touch volume control around the perimeter of the top and the way the indicators light up when your hand goes near the device but fade out when you’re away. A lot of R&D has gone into this thing, and the resulting user experience is pretty good in my opinion. I also had some trouble with the app at first, but nothing a power cycle and Bluetooth cycle in iOS couldn’t resolve. The firmware updates went smoothly but did take quite a while, about 10-15 mins if memory serves.

We’re quite happy with our purchase and hope to raise our new children around good sound and good vibes, and for us, the Balance does a wonderful job. Right now, they’re working their way through the Seasame Street back catalogue, but we expect this speaker to be the one they grow up with for a good decade or so. I can’t say if it’s “worth” what it costs for anyone else, but for our application, it’s the one product we were able to find that looks great where it needs to be while delivering highly-enjoyable entertainment for our family.

That’s why I rate it as 5/5 for what it is.

 

[amj101]

Nice spot! Would love to see what’s up with the discrepancy. That’s most certainly not peak power in my experience though because if I remove my volume limiter and bias the EQ towards bass I can definitely get more oompf out of this thing than even 100W dedicated subwoofers which I know were spec’d correctly. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the specs are entirely BS yet though but they could definitely be stretching the truth; because we do know that we can get this kind of power out of chip amps (running them parallel and what not) into a single woofer. Who knows, maybe the 2x200W claim for the woofers is peak for a few ns/ms lol which is in no way sustainable for however/whatever methodology they use to come up with that 100W figure on the label. Shrugs. Anyone with more knowledge able to chime in here?

Not entirely sure how B&O officially calculates the numbers for that, but it's pretty clearly driven by the marketing department given this blog post by Geoff Martin.

What Use are Watts?

#83 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers Imagine water coming out of a garden hose, filling up a watering can (it’s nice out…

www.tonmeister.ca

 

[IAmAlwaysSerious]

Not entirely sure how B&O officially calculates the numbers for that, but it's pretty clearly driven by the marketing department given this blog post by Geoff Martin.

The numbers they gave are just the peak theoretical numbers for all of the chip amps inside. They're not real power numbers because the power supply can't keep even two of the amp fed at max power, let alone the seven amps inside.

There really isn't anything more to be said about it. B&O lie about the power numbers because it makes them look better. But the numbers are physically impossible.