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Pure sound is coming to your home
Bang & Olufsen produces speakers that adapt to your home, and can be placed anywhere without compromising the musical experience
A loudspeaker's performance is typically influenced by its position in the room, and the position of a loudspeaker has always been the subject of considerable debate. Should the listener design the room around his/her loudspeakers to get the best possible sound? Or should he/she compromise on the sound in favour of the layout of the room? In the 1980s, our acousticians and sound designers started making attempts to compensate for the problem of positioning. Not surprisingly, the first problem they encountered was bass. Bass sound waves are typically omni-directional, and it is difficult to determine where they are coming from. How the bass sounds depends on the room acoustics and the position of the loudspeaker in the room. To optimise bass performance, you need to be able to adapt the room to the bass, or - as our acoustic engineers soon discovered - to adapt the bass to the room.
| The adaptive approach Our patented Adaptive Bass Control (ABC) provided an intelligent solution to this problem. In essence, ABC enables the speaker to determine the acoustic characteristics of the room in which it is placed, verify its own position in this environment and adapt to it. To carry out the necessary measurements, one of our specialists invented the Moving Microphone System (MMS). A small microphone placed at the bottom of the speaker moves out in two different measuring positions, and a series of sound signals are sent out from the loudspeaker at different frequencies. The surroundings are measured as well as the loudspeaker's position in the room, and the digital filters in the speaker then adapt themselves accordingly. In short, the two Bang & Olufsen technologies, Moving Microphone System and Adaptive Bass Control, make it possible to place the individual loudspeaker anywhere in any room without compromising the sound quality. As calibration is made for each loudspeaker, optimised asymmetric positioning is also possible; for instance with one loudspeaker in a corner position while the other is free standing or close to a wall. Adaptive Bass Control and Moving Microphone System ensure that all customers experience great bass and, more importantly, that what they hear is as close as possible the original recording. Sweet spots galore Our BeoLab 5 loudspeaker is the first to utilise both these technologies. BeoLab 5 also incorporates another patented, technological sensation: the Acoustic Lens Technology (ALT) originally developed by two American music producers, and exclusively licensed to Bang & Olufsen. ALT enables the listener to move freely around the room while continuing to experience consistently excellent sound. In other words, there is no need to remain seated in the so-called sweet spot to enjoy a supreme sound experience. Expanding the sweet spot has troubled acoustic engineers for decades. Controlling the directivity and dispersion of particularly the higher frequencies has been a key concern for loudspeaker designers worldwide as these frequencies carry important sonic information about what you are listening to, and where the sound is coming from. The acoustic lenses on top of a range of Bang & Olufsen BeoLab speakers create an even 180 degree dispersion of sound in the horizontal plane. At the same time, vertical dispersion is controlled so that the detrimental early reflections from the floor and ceiling are minimized. The result is the closest possible reproduction of the original sound, not only in one sweet spot, but all across the room. |
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