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B&O BeoPlay A2
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Hemisphere View Drop Down
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    Posted: 25 November 2014 at 6:20am
Just spotted this on my travels:


Ludicrously expensive but from a purely engineering and design perspective, really well done.

They seem to have fit 2x 3 inch full range drivers, 2x 3 inch passive bass radiators and 2x 3/8" tweeters in a 360 degree Boominator style arrangement into a box smaller than a Minirig sub.

It looks like the drivers are balanced mode radiators, that would explain the low depth. 

Frequency response down to 55Hz seems dubious, but with that set of drivers and 60 Watts rms going into it it probably makes a decent racket, and if reviews of the BMR in Frankenspiel's FS-1 and FS-X are anything to go by, it probably sounds very hifi.


Edited by Hemisphere - 25 November 2014 at 6:26am
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bitSmasher View Drop Down
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180 what?!
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Hemisphere View Drop Down
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Edit: I should add that when I say "from an engineering perspective" I don't mean sound engineering, rather the choice of material processes.


Edited by Hemisphere - 25 November 2014 at 7:01am
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davey t View Drop Down
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Points: 1428 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote davey t Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 November 2014 at 9:29am
There's a detailed review of this and pretty much every portable speaker on the market on this guys blog:


Apparently it sounds very good but suffers from battery life and distortion issues at higher volumes. I don't like the use of opposing stereo drivers, especially on such a narrow product. It works ok on the UE boom but with this I think it's a bit weird. It doesn't stand upright on an uneven surface. 
Minirig portable soundsystem movement
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Hemisphere View Drop Down
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Hmm.

I think the B&O website is too well designed for it's own good.

It managed to convince me:

a) that it doesn't totally look like a purse
b) that the grilles were aluminium. I mean they really look aluminium.. very surprised to hear they're plastic.

Interestingly the one spec I was most dubious about seems to be the one spec it lives up to:

Quote Bass is the other more impressive part of the A2 as it reaches very deep, maybe even deepest of any comparable speakers I have heard so far. I heard clean bass notes down below 50Hz, but not only as slight hints of bass with a much lower amplitute, but real bass. Most other comparable speakers hardly manage to reach 60Hz

That would probably also explain the battery life issues.
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lutkeveld View Drop Down
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Points: 517 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote lutkeveld Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 November 2014 at 2:35pm
No need for BSC, force cancellation and 360 degrees sound can be very good reasons to go with opposing drivers. 

Deep bass on its own doesn't require extra power. You will trade it for efficiency (or a bigger box) which results in needing more watts for a specific SPL. 60 watts (if true) can compensate for it (in trade for battery life), resulting in 10db gain over the normal 6 watts total power.
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Hemisphere View Drop Down
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Judging from the review their trick is some sort of multi-band limiter - extension to 50Hz, up to a point. Turn it up and the extension is lost. 
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Saturnus View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Hemisphere Hemisphere wrote:

Judging from the review their trick is some sort of multi-band limiter - extension to 50Hz, up to a point. Turn it up and the extension is lost. 

Yeah. It's pretty normal. And pretty stupid way to design in my honest opinion. You're not getting any useful output and you compromise the design so that it has to be less efficient meaning you have to compensate with using a lot of extra power.

Deep bass extension in compact designs only looks good on paper.

On another note. That review site really tears the B&W TM7 a new one (and deservedly so, it's pretty miserable).
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Sheggy View Drop Down
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Points: 1991 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Sheggy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 November 2014 at 7:20pm
Hemisphere, Saturnus. Always good to get some insight from people who have an (objective) opinion.

I will now go to the B&O shop near me to give it ears. If it's shit, I'll let you know.

S
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Bams View Drop Down
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I already did and you can spare the effort. at first it sound really really really good with real lows. but after a few minutes of listening with my own source material, sometimes good, sometimes dubious at best, you notice it is missing a lot of musical information. feels the same like when listening to bose home audio. 

for a day at the beach or at a party in your backyard-great! serious listening...nah..

Beolit 12 is much more my cup of tea, slightly larger, but also a fuller sound missing less.


Edited by Bams - 26 November 2014 at 7:44pm
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Saturnus View Drop Down
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I think people are probably also expecting too much, or the advertising simply promises too much. The B&O A2 is really small. You can't really expect miracles as there's only so much you can fit into the tiny space available. To my knowledge laws of physics still apply so my best advise is to temper expectations accordingly.
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lutkeveld View Drop Down
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Points: 517 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote lutkeveld Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 November 2014 at 8:59pm
A lot of people buying these products don't know that physics laws exist. More money buys better sound is common thinking. I've seen people comparing portables to bookshelves.

It's really amazing what they can push out of such small enclosures with all the small tricks available like interleaved DC-DC boosting and DSP.


Edited by lutkeveld - 26 November 2014 at 9:00pm
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