Examining Beosound Edge (left) and Beoplay A9 (right).
#Note: Find full B&O review list at the bottom.
When you're getting a B&O speaker, you never pay just for the functionality.
You always pay a significant amount for its lovely style as well.
For this reason, when deciding between Beoplay A9 vs Beosound Edge, I'd highly recommend you to check out the B&O AR Experience app before buying.
Using your smartphone camera, it simulates how each B&O speakers would exactly look like in your own already furnished home.
Beosound Edge is listed at 3,500 - 3,800 USD and Beoplay A9 at 3,000 - 3,250 USD - depending on the color selections.
You see, these speakers are far from being cheap, so I'd recommend you to read this relatively short post entirely, but if you're looking for a summary, here it is:
- Inside an apartment flat: You'd probably better get a Beoplay A9.
- For large estates (like mansions) and/or for commercial uses (restaurants, stores, etc): Keep in mind that Beosound Edge propagates the sound on both ends, and then proceed at your own taste for their looks.
Now let's get to their bolts and nuts.
Power
As I clarified in my previous post, Beoplay A9 is pretty strong.
Disregard them. They're for the 3rd generation Beoplay A9, which is discontinued.
I contacted the B&O Customer Service about this as well (mail history at the bottom of this post) and shared my findings in the table below.
So much that if you're living in an apartment flat without any soundproofing, then let alone full volume, you probably wouldn't even need to / be able to use it at half of its power.
In larger spaces, Beosound Edge is even stronger than the Beoplay A9, but that's mainly because it propagates the sound on both ends (more on this in a minute).
If you place both Beosound Edge and Beoplay A9 in the corner or in front of the wall, Beoplay A9 might even sound stronger than the Beosound Edge.
But the most important take away here is that if you're living in an apartment flat, I'd recommend you to disregard the difference between their powers. They're both much stronger than enough.
Amplifiers | 1 x 400 Watt class D for bass 2 x 200 Watt class D for midrange 2 x 200 Watt class D for fullrange 2 x 150 Watt class D for treble | 2 x 200 Watt (woofer) 4 x 100 Watt (mid-ranges/tweeters) |
Driver units | 1 x 8" Woofer 2 x 3" Midrange 2 x ¾" Tweeter 2 x 1½” Full-range | 1 x 10” dual coil woofer 2 x 4” midrange 2 x 3/4” tweeter |
Maximum loudness | 100 dB SPL | 104 dB SPL |
Bass capability | 95 dB SPL | 92 dB SPL |
Bass capability refers to producing high basses. Generally speaking, the more the bass capability, the less the distortion with the songs with strong basses.
However, you won't be able to notice the 3 dB of difference - even if you have a PhD on these speakers.
Sound quality
Have you ever noticed that there often tends to be quite the opposite opinions about a speaker?
I can understand this for more "personal taste" kinda products like clothing, for example.
But for engineering products like speakers? Personal tastes and preferences probably still play a role. But shouldn't it be less?
Why is it that we can't set a universal metric for sound quality?
First time I asked this question to myself has been a pivotal day.
Because it turns out that in the mid 90's, Electrical Engineer PhD Floyd Toole came up with a method called Spinorama. This is exactly what he accomplished with this. Turns out that his book Sound Reproduction is like the bible of audiophiles.
Put it simply, Spinorama is a set of measurements that gives a comprehensive overview of a speaker's performance from various angles.
It allows you to compare the performances of different speakers before even laying your ears hands on them.
Isn't that amazing?
This is why Spinorama was apparently groundbreaking news for audio industry. Hence in the mid-late 2010's, most brands and magazines began publishing Spinorama measurements, despite the challenges of making such measurements.
Fortunately, now we have the Spinorama data for a bunch of quite popular speakers. Pierre Aubert put all this untidy data together and put it into https://www.spinorama.org/. This is a stunning source. Pretty valuable stuff from him right there.
All good up to this point.
Now there comes a caveat.
Since the sound speakers propagate are in the form of omnidirectional waves, all measurements are obtained in anechoic or semi-anechoic chambers (a super-quiet room where soundwaves don't bounce back, here's how different that room sounds [a mind blowing time-adjusted video]).
This is a problem because it means that Spinorama alone, unfortunately, won't give us all we need. Placement and reflections play an equally important role there too.
This is why most A-class brands (like SVS, Bang & Olufsen, etc) often come up with room correction features, adjusted either manually or automatically. The EQ adapts itself to the placement (room, corner, center, etc) for a better (deeper and more accurate) sound. Which is great.
Additionally they often emphasize the importance of placement, here is an example: https://www.svsound.com/blogs/subwoofer-setup-and-tuning/75365187-the-art-of-subwoofer-placement
Anyways...
The source code under Pierre Aubert's work is licensed under GPL (General public license). He didn't perform any of the measurements himself, and instead he compiled all of them into one place, so that makes sense.
At this point, I thought that if there was a tool that combined both the Spinorama with the room acoustics data, it'd be extremely useful.
Unfortunately, it turns out that there wasn't any.
This is where I stepped in and partnered with an Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD in order to achieve this.
We combined Spinorama data with room acoustics and came up with Soundton. A very simple, 2D online tool that allows you to:
- Reveal optimal speaker positions in a room,
- Test with real speakers from real brands,
- Compare different speakers and different positions in the room.
It can be very valuable for the vast majority.
The colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) listening experience.
It works the best with subwoofers since Soundton processes low frequency response waves only.
- Soundton is going to be, say, 80% accurate. Not 100%.
- Because, other parameters such as the age/materials of the building, furniture/windows in place also have an impact on room acoustics.
- If you want absolutely the most detailed room analysis, then what you need is an acoustics consultant. Mind you that's going to require deep pockets and patience though... assuming you find the right person and they get the job done.