beolab on bluetooth - Digital Scientific UK

BEOLAB ON BLUETOOTH
Bang & Olufson
BeoLab 6000s
despite being
twelve years old
remain an iconic
and desirable
speaker system.
Combining a preowned pair of
6000’s with a
BluTooth DAC
yields an
affordable, flexible,
high quality music
system but read
the section on
equalisation to get
the best
performance.
Bang & Olufson Style
Bluetooth Budget
By Michael Ellis Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Lust and the
Ravages of Time
I’ve lusted after a pair of
BeoLab 6000s ever since they
were introduced in to the B&O
line up in 1992. Of all the
speakers in the range the
6000 is the epitome of
minimalist styling. The pencil
thin columns perhaps
challenged the box shaped
speaker ethos more than any
speaker design in history.
Factoring in the cost of a
suitably matching BeoCenter
sound source just placed this
highly desirable kit out of my
budgetary grasp.
Twelve years on much has
changed, but the timeless
minimalist styling of the 6000
appeals to me as much now
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as it ever has done.
The 6000s and their bigger
brother 8000s are still highly
sought after and a lively trade
in these speakers can be seen
to take place on eBay. But the
world moves on and the
technological revolutions of
CDs and cassettes, found in
the BeoCenters of the 90’s
have succumbed to the
ravages of time and have long
been usurped by digital
streams as our favoured music
sources. This review describes
my experience in combining a
pre-owned pair of BeoLab
6000s with an inexpensive
Bluetooth DAC to stream
music from my Mac Book Pro
and iPhone. Steeaming from a
Windows or Linux or any
Bluetooth source should be
possible.
The Speakers
I purchased a pair of 6000s on
eBay for £320. After doing
some reading I learned that it
was worth checking them over
before parting with my cash so
I took along my iPhone
and a cable that
splits the
signal
from the
headphone socket into two
RCA phono sockets. Setting
the speaker input selector to
line input on each speaker I
was able to test them with
music played from my iPhone.
Placing my ear close to each
of the drive units I was able to verify
that all the drive units (two bass/mid
range and a tweeter) in each speaker
were functioning. In addition I
carefully removed the front frets (they
slide vertically upwards about half an
inch and then can be gently eased
off) The main thing to look for is that
the thin rubber
roll surrounds
on the edge of
the main drive
units show no
tears or signs of
perishing.
Having satisfied
myself they
were in good
order I loaded
them into my
car and drove
home.
listened through the FatMan/SX60
system, whereas through the
BluDAC/6000’s it loses some of that
definition and becomes flabby. I’ve
read reports of people adding a
subwoofer to the 6000s and some of
Fortunately there is a workaround
those reports say it makes matters
available by using Airfoil;
worse which is pretty much what I
commercially available software for
would expect. My experience is
$25 that lets you nominate any
subwoofers produce a loud but often
application to have its audio stream
mushy, poorly defined bass which
hijacked and re-routed to the audio
whilst adequate for boosting movie
device of your choice.
sound effects in a small speaker
surround sound AV cinema system
How Does it Sound?
Note this is a subjective non technical are entirely inappropriate in a decent
stereo hi-fi system.
review! It should also be taken in
context of the overall budget here of Equalisation
£380. For that price we’re in the
Having balanced the books in terms
cheaper end of the of the upmarket
of cost, is there anything that can be
sound docks from the likes of Bose,
done to bring a better sense of
Bowers & Wilkins, Libratone and
balance to the sound? I’ve found use
Cambridge Audio. I recently
of a graphic equaliser can go a long
auditioned a number of those
Bluetooth
way to improving the subjective
expensive sound docks as a
DAC
listening experience. There was a
Christmas present for my son and
There are many DACs available and
was disappointed by all of them. For time back in the days of analogue
when crucifix’s were waived at such
at a range of prices. Since I wanted
the record, for a similar budget my
to stream my audio wirelessly from
son plumped for a FatMan Mi with a devices and curses uttered about the
my MacBookPro and given my
sinfulness of introducing all this extra
pair of Cambridge Audio SX60
budget I decide to opt for the Crystal speakers. The difference in sound
corrupting distorting technology into
Acoustics Bluetooth BluDAC. It
the signal path. Now however, the
between the FatMan/SX60 system
and any of the docks was as marked equalisation is taking place in the
as having the band playing next door digital domain, and whilst it is
indubitably true that you cannot put
and having invited them into your
back what is not there, the
living room (Shame FatMan appear
arguments for distortion are not quite
not to be trading any more!).
the same. Sure the sound is in some
In this context the 6000s / BluDAC
sense more synthetic and even
combination is an out and out winner. arguably further from the original
employs APTX for the transmission of The impeachable timeless aesthetics sampled signal, but subjectively, at
high quality digital audio stream over of the best of B&O, the convenience least to my ears, the benefits of a
little equalisation are manifest.
Bluetooth and uses the well regarded of the infinite record collection
courtesy
Spotify
or
iTunes,
and
a
Woolfson DAC for converting that
If you are using iTunes you can use
sound quality that out of the box is
digital data into a line level analogue
the equaliser that is an integral part of
leagues better than any sound dock
signal suitable for the 6000’s line in.
the iTunes software. My
that I have heard. That said, the
The BluDAC was purchased for a
sound did not compare so favourably recommendation is you start with the
penny short of £60.
with my son’s Christmas present. The iTunes equaliser “Loudness” setting
and adjust from there.
main flaws I found with the sound
Setting Up
was that mid range seemed
Setting up could not be easier.
congested, harsh and too forward (I
Simply plug everything in, pair the
have seen the 6000s reviewed
Mac Book Pro with the BluDAC and
elsewhere as “shouty”), whilst the
select the Bluetooth for the output
bass being loud enough was
audio device on the Mac. One draw
uncontrolled and loose. The double
back from this approach though is
bass on Brubeck’s Take Five has a
that all sound produced on the Mac
iTunes equalisation settings
is routed through to the speakers. So real smack and dryness to it when
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not only sources such as iTunes and
Spotify, but also sounds produced for
alerts and alarms are also routed
which when listening at high volumes
can be very disconcerting.
The main improvement is made by subduing that
aggressive and congested upper midrange; 1K to 4K.
This makes vocals that were previously too harsh and
shouty take a more neutral and balanced profile. I then
found reigning back the bass finished things off to
produce a very a pleasing sound, though no amounts of
twiddling with the lower frequency will restore that missing
definition and tight control.
Spotify does not have a built in equaliser. Quite how
Spotify can tout a premium service with high bit rate
streaming audio and not provide any equalisation leaves
me dumfounded, particularly when there are nearly 2000
requests on their forum for such a feature. Fortunately
there are ways around this; either at no cost, using system
wide equalisation by piping the system sound through
Soundflower into Apple’s AULab software or you can fork
out $25 for the aforementioned AirFoil software which also
includes a simple graphic equaliser. Piping digital audio
streams in this way does not degrade the signal one jot as
it did in the old analogue days.
Fixing Up Spotify with AirFoil
As mentioned, Spotify wonderful service that it is, suffers
from a few limitations when running on a Mac. Most
notably the sound from Spotify just gets sent to wherever
your system sounds goes. So even if you do redirect your
system sound to your Bluetooth device all the other sound
effects, alerts and sounds from other applications get sent
along the same channel. The other main shortcoming is
that Spotify doesn’t have its own equalisation. By far the
easiest way to address these two issues is to buy AirFoil
from Rogue Amoeba.
Spotify and route it through to your selected
Bluetooth device.
Bring up Spotify’s Effects window to reveal the
equaliser settings.
Equalisation Settings
The Adaptive Bass Linearisation (ABL) incorporated in
BeoLab loudspeakers is a form of equalisation that is
used to compensate for the small bass drive units. Using
equalisation here is arguably just an extension of that
procedure so one might be tempted to think that there
should be a single setting that ought to apply for all your
listening needs. In practice, I have found I benefit from
having two different settings, one for stereo music and the
other when I am using the speakers for watching a movie
on my projector. I find that for movie watching boosting
the midrange section (almost the opposite what we did for
the music) results in dialog being much easier to pickup
and follow.
Once AirFoil is installed, goto the AirFoil preferences
and select your Bluetooth audio device under the
“Play Local Audio Through” section.
EQ Settings for Music
EQ Settings for Movies
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Select Spotify in the main AirFoil window from the
list of applications. This will hijack the audio from
FASHIONMONTHLY 5 May 2014
Applying System Wide Equalisation
(Apple Mac - Free Software)
switching between adjusted and unadjusted
output to see if the changes sound better.
If you do not want to purchase AirFoil, it is possible to
use free software to add system wide equalisation .
Start by downloading and installing Soundflower.
Soundflower is a free audio system extension that
allows applications to pass audio to other
applications.
Download Apple’s free AULab
Go to the Sound system preference panel and select
“Soundflower (2ch)” as the device to output sound to.
You can save the AULab settings as a document.
Opening this document will apply all the settings in
one easy step.
System Sound Preference
Start AU Lab and use the factory configuration to
create a new document when the Audio Input
Device is Soundflower (2ch) and the Audio Output
device is the Bluetooth device (yours may have a
different name)
AULab is a very sophisticated digital sound processing
program and offers many more audio processors than
just graphic EQ. Another use I have found is to use the
delay processor to add a small delay to the signal to
solve lip sync issues when using my video projector.
Useful Links
AirFoil from Rogue Amoeba https://
www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/.
AULab software from Apple https://
www.apple.com/uk/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/
Soundflower from http://
soundflower.en.softonic.com.
Crystal Acoustics BluDAC http://
www.crystalaudiovideo.com/ProductDetails/BluDAC-UK.aspx
AULab Document
Click on the popup menu directly under the
“Effects” label on the “Output 1” column and
select “AUGraphicsEQ” This will create a 31
channel graphic equaliser. Select “10 Bands” from
the popup menu and adjust the levels to taste.
The pictures above show the settings I have used
and you can replicated these as a starting point.
You can easily switch on and off the effects of
equalisation by clicking on the little “B” icon to the
left of the “AUGraphicsEQ” popup menu item in
the “Output 1” channel. This is useful for quickly
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