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amazon.com has lowered their price on the Beosound Level aluminum/black to $1127.
Apparently their discounts were precedent to a new B&O discount of 20% off the Level and the Stage — the aluminum & black fabric models only — because amazon is matching their price for the Stage, $1599. (B&O 20% visible from the USA, I didn’t check elsewhere.)
[EDIT: As of April 5, amazon’s price for the Level is back up to $1299, roughly the same ($20 cheaper) as B&O website.]
Visible in the USA at least, today amazon.com has the black/aluminum Beosound Level on sale at US$1213.62. They call that “26% off” but of course that’s post- last year’s price hike. The gold color is not quite so marked-down at US$1679. Non-GVA, of course.
Ten-year-old rerun, sorry, but didn’t see this in the archive: “Covert Affairs”, season 4 episode 4, BL8000 in Augie’s apartment:
(Had to be filmed earlier in 2013, because surely they would have used the BL18 if it were available — released October 30. Nice “wooden tuning fork” floor lamp, too.)
Then in episode 5 we see something that looks like a BS 9000… except that the whole thing is under glass, not just the loader?!!
And that turntable is not a Beogram — missed opportunity for cool…
though the lucite base underneath the plinth is pretty swish. (Also continuity mistake, LP label switches from white to red.)[Oops, squash that
hypothesisWAG!]@Mikipedia is one of the few people with many speakers fulfilling several roles. @Sandyb has just the two speakers and the Theatre. Speculation: Perhaps when switching listening positions, the Theatre cycles thru each speaker, powering it up — and instead of accumulating/max-ing the wait times of all speakers before their amplifiers click on, it performs the delay per speaker (or pair) serially? After moving, when he sets it up again, maybe @Mikipedia can try with only one pair of external speakers…
Likely not the A9 that is the exception, rather its GVA-ness: Wasn’t it the case that with GVA loaded, Google had control of your calendar(==schedule) thus prohibited licensees from having a function that “ought” to be done inside the Google ecosystem? Therefore I believe if you tell your Google Assistant to set an alarm on that device, it works just like Googoolians would expect. (Based on faded memories; I returned the only GVA product I ever purchased when it kept shouting at me its microphone was turned off. Too bad, really, it was the dregs of the BeoSound 1 NewYork Editions and was a real bargain.)
If you are actually looking at the speaker it is much easier to determine 8002 vs. 8000 by the new LED “teardrop” molded at the bottom of the 8002 speaker grille, rather than by its serial number, viz:
Winter Park, FL store is open as of today: Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-5.
The website today says, “Beosound A9: Don’t mess with the classics. Unless it’s to bring them bang up to date. Beosound A9 is now available with stereo pairing, smoother in-app setup, and improved Wi-Fi performance. ” But it lists the same Wi-Fi specs as before (2.4/5GHz, ac support). Does anybody know what is improved? Was the old SoC/antenna combo sub-par? One other thing I noticed about the Gen.5 is that the USB C Aux Input is apparently only analog? Whereas Gen.4 spec lists a 3.5mm jack that was “combi”, i.e. supported optical too? I don’t have one to test… does anybody know if that was true?
Your BS2 has GVA? Gen.3 will not. Balance still GVA-optional.
Thanks, I recall that in the manual but I always thought that MK2 was compatible with everything and being the thicker type was less susceptible to noise.
You would think so, but alas, not: Either the “spare” wires in the Mk.2 cables are picking up the noise, or else the Mk.3 cable is adding a ground. (Not specific to BL3; e.g. BV10->BL18 requires Mk.3 (4-wire) because Mk.2 (8-wire) makes that “data” chirp on volume up/dn.)
I had the same issue taking a regular CAT7 (flat cable), connecting my Beolab3s (with RJ45 to PL connector) and the issue was bad. I could clearly hear an impulse when pressing vol +/-.
Using an 8-wire RJ45-connector Cat.8 (has both pair shield & connector ground) patch cord drove BL18 without noise, ***provided a 4-wire Mk.3 PowerLink cable was used from the BV first***, before the PL-RJ converter dongle. Both flat cable & round worked; shouldn’t matter if the pair twist is to spec. Also Cat.7 should be OK if it’s SFTP (shield&foil-twisted-pair) with the grounded metallic connector head. I chose Cat.8 for the “safety” guarantee (higher data rates = better shielding), but that shouldn’t have mattered. BTW, a (so-called) “Cat.8” female-to-female connector worked OK in that chain, too.
I don’t know if my pl cables are mk2 or mk3, but they are pretty thick and have the litte triangle…
I believe that triangle on the DIN plug was just a B&O convention to help keep track. Third parties, like the folks who made my Mk.3 cable, don’t necessarily follow that convention. (One unverified source claims that generally, the triangle merely points to the positive lead, or to pin 1.)
Does anyone know if there’s anything new in the BS2 edition 3 versus the current edition?
The board supporting Mozart has Bluetooth 5.3, uses a USB-C for Aux input, and a microphone for “Active Room Compensation”.
No idea what the issue can be, but… suggestions?… Ennh, only bad ones… (1) As @MM says above, just wire the suckers. Or at least two of them, WAG-ing that reducing the overall address count or frequency usage might avoid some bug. In the same vein, wire or turn off the one principally drop-out speaker “permanently” to see if that fixes it forever, or sooner or later just moves the problem. (2) Crazy DIY experiment: Buy a WiSA SoundSend ($179) and connect it with some other TV, and let that link to all the speakers to see if they stay connected. If not, return it and try #1 above. But if the SoundSend amazingly works, blame B&O and start wasting time with their “professional” tech support. (3) Experiment #2: Switch your network to 2.4GHz only, for all devices. Truly, unless you are a massive data consumer with many, many devices competing, or have an old 802.11b device bleating on, you won’t even notice. Well, except reception will improve everywhere! (Unless you have neighbors competing for the 2.4GHz channels, of course.)
20% off Beolab 18s *IF* you buy a Theatre at full price. USA & Canada only, in store only, March 1 thru April 30.
Seeing as they raised the price of the Theatre by $500 on March 1, and the “excess discount” of 5% over the previous sale (15%) on the Beolab 18s amounts to $500, the left hand giveth and the right hand taketh away. But if you were already planning to buy this particular combo before the price increase, now’s the time!
Also a 25% discount offered on Beolab 18s when full-price Theatre is bought, if you also buy *TWO* Beolab 19s (also discounted the 25%). Some marketing person made the margins work out right, but it undercuts the notion that one sub with a pair of 18s was the proper bundle.
28 February 2023 at 06:14 in reply to: Connect 3rd brand active subwoofer to Beolab 18 yes/no? #44225+1 on all of @Sretam’s points. I have not yet purchased anything myself, so anybody else, actual personal experience please! But if nobody else follows up, here’s what I learned so far:
• Getting the speakers to sync (latency) so there isn’t reinforcement or cancellation at certain frequencies is a solved problem: Beolab 18 is 4.4msec per Geoff Martin (https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2017/12/06/bo-tech-beolab-loudspeakers-and-third-party-systems/) and SVS SB-1000 PRO is 6 msec per “Jack Gilvey” at SVS (https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/latency-on-svs-sb-1000-pro.124469/) so putting the subwoofer 38cm further forward seems about right. Maybe at those low frequencies it doesn’t matter; you often see instructions to move a subwoofer around to cancel the room dimensions reinforcing certain frequencies (modes), and rarely does anybody say it ruined the frequency response of their main speakers. But because crossover filters aren’t perfect, unless you set the SVS super-low, it’s guaranteed to overlap with the BLs.
• Because Powerlink splitters work, and because the Beolab 18 speakers were intended to be daisy-chained to each other and thence to a Beolab 19, it seems highly likely that both RJ45 jacks inside the Beolab 18 are always active, simply wired together. So you would buy an RJ45-to-DIN8 dongle, part # 6271237, from a B&O dealer and a Powerlink-to-2xRCA cable from wherever.
• In order to match the subwoofer level and crossover for even frequency response, plus of course room modes (no matter whose sub you buy!), I would get a copy of Room EQ Wizard (free) and a UMIK-1 (cheap) to look at the output of your new setup and tweak it using the SVS App. Especially because you are using it for music and not as a movie boom-box, this will repay your effort. But maybe you could do it by-ear if you have enough time or are both gifted and lucky (or not too persnickety).
Please report back with your results. There are plenty of posts on integrating (e.g.) KEF LS50s and an SVS sub, but I have not yet seen a single post about Beolab 18s!
Block diagram shows the two Powerlink outputs are simply wired in parallel on the BS9000. So noise generated by a faulty speaker *might* propagate to the other cable, regardless of whether they are daisy-chained or not — it’s just a dumb bus, not separate output drivers. Start by disconnecting the aftermarket MK.2 (thick, 8-wire) cable and set it aside. Then test: Run the BS9000 with just one BL3 at a time, and use the MK.3 (thin, 4-wire incl. ground/shield) cable for that single speaker. You’ll quickly discover if one speaker is whining, or the BS9000 is. Don’t forget to try both channels with each single speaker, using the L/R switch.
(N.B. I have never personally experienced a high-pitched whine, only the well-known click&buzz when the volume control was pressed, from using 8-wire cables.)
[Edit: You might also try plugging in headphones and see if your whine sounds on them. Not sure what that result would mean, but someone else will know.]
Since this question has sat for a week without answers,… Because I run an old Denon AVR-4310CI and various B&O equipment, but not mixed(*), I don’t strictly qualify to answer you. Nevertheless:
1) You should read Geoff Martin’s blog post on this topic, particularly latency when mixing speakers, if you haven’t already: https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2017/12/06/bo-tech-beolab-loudspeakers-and-third-party-systems/
His comment about the impossibility of setting speaker distance to a very large number in the AVR *probably* (but not certainly) also applies to Audyssey and Dirac measuring a distance and then deciding “that can’t be right”. If B&O ever get the Mozart platform speakers to work with the Theatre, they will have to implement a lower-latency set of filters than they now have — or, more likely, a mode that turns their own DSP off entirely and lets the Theatre supply an appropriately delayed & EQ’ed signal. So for now, I wouldn’t use Mozart platform speakers with AVRs. (No personal experience; maybe Audyssey and Dirac have been designed to support abritrary delays, but buffering many channels of audio must have *some* practical limit.)
2) I’ve seen multiple AVR reviews say things like “beware line-level out vs. speaker out is all or nothing”, i.e. you can switch all of the outputs to use the RCA jacks or none of them — except for the fancier models. So test your AVR if you plan to mix BeoVox (or any passive) speakers with BeoLab (self-amplified) ones. That said, my 4310CI “External Power Amplifier” option does not seem to have any menu setting to choose, and the manual merely warns not to use both outputs at the same time — which implies that they are all always active. (I’m sorry I don’t have the oomph to set everything up to see if Audyssey applies to the line-outs or only the speaker-outs, but except for annoying license restrictions I see no reason why it would not: the line-out is merely a feed from the wires to that channel’s amplifier board.)
Good luck, and please post (& photo!-) what you end up using for the AVR & the various channels.
(*) I have run them combined but only in the simplest way: using a Beovision 10 as a monitor from the AVR, with 5.1 Definitive Technology Mythos speakers. But that doesn’t take any great leap of tech support, being all old-fashioned HD & Dolby Digital, not 4K & Atmos.
Nice! I believe you could remove the 4 black rubber bumpers from the corners of the Level — they were intended for shipping, although they do fit very sleekly! Underneath are tiny rubber dots & ells which hold the Level away just far enough from scratching the windowsill (or vice versa!-). See close-up of @MBee’s unit at the top of this page, fully disrobed.
I paid membership fee once just to get a service manual. I felt prize drawing was worthless in the USA because shipping would cost more than the value of the item, and it was likely to arrive as scraps of metal and shards of glass anyway. So I stopped paying after getting the manual and just “donated” time, giving answers to newbies that the old-guard — who had true technical knowledge — couldn’t be bothered typing for the Nth time over&over again (which seems entirely appropriate).
Mybe you could change Gold to paywall manuals, and make Silver paywall the Archives? See americastestkitchen.com for an example of how Cooks Illustrated made “freely available” recipes that aren’t really freely available except to subscribers, yet have google hits that somehow show excerpts with the hit text un-ellided. The archives would otherwise show up as 3-line “abstracts” with blurred-out long text. (Yikes, sorry for more work, Keith!)
Or maybe you could blast-mail B&O dealerships, who are theoretically independent, asking each for a modest donation as a public service? Renew annually, asking again. The value of keeping even a few customers out of their hair is a couple hundred or so per dealer, without even thinking about it.
Free ideas, worth every penny. Not free to make happen, alas. But some management consultant would say you should capitalize on your existing relationships: You already know a great many people, and making that pay off is easier (in theory) than striking new deals. Another idea is harder to implement but I’ll throw it out just in case it triggers something: “Form a partnership with youth.” How that applies here I have no idea, but it’s axiomatic in some circles.
That same YouTube channel (Enes Yilmazer) just posted the Wallace Cunningham “Cascade” 2012 house in Park City, Utah with Beolab 18 & 19:
Oddly, it does not have speakers in the ceiling of every room, unlike most contemporary American mansions. (Maybe they’re all hidden mud-in speakers, but with sloped ceilings and glass and Serpentine Verde stone walls, it must be an audio echo nightmare.) A small theater room has a Beosound Stage. No B&O televisions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6JI1rmvqdU
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