Thorough is a phrase that may simply be utilized to this app. It’s secure, simple to navigate, logical, and even fairly handsome. Right here’s the place you’ll be able to test on remaining battery life, assign favourite radio stations or playlists to the preset buttons, and examine EQ settings through each a graphic “goal” and the extra frequent bass and treble sliders. Right here’s the place you’ll be able to set default and most volumes, create a stereo pair should you’ve invested in a couple of of those sonic picnic baskets, and swap loudness on or off.
Software program updates, Bang & Olufsen’s admirable Radio function and the TuneIn equal, and Deezer streaming service integration are all obtainable. Right here’s the place you’ll be able to run a “room optimization” routine in an effort to calibrate your A5 to its particular circumstances, and swap the omni impact on or off. The A5 can not, nevertheless, calibrate itself on the fly routinely just like the Sonos Move—it have to be instructed to take action.
Room-Filling Sound (Sure, Actually)
As soon as the Besound A5 is ready as much as your satisfaction, it proves an completed and entertaining pay attention. As soon as via a stream of Benjamin Clementine’s “Residue” is sufficient to verify it: The A5 might appear like a premium frivolity, however the place the intense concern of sound is anxious, this B&O is all enterprise.
Total, it is a poised, hefty, and full-scale pay attention that sounds fairly bigger than its bodily dimensions. Plenty of merchandise optimistically describe their sound as “room-filling,” however the Beosound A5 can really accomplish that. Even large-ish rooms pose no issues for it, with out having to interrupt an excessive amount of of a sweat the place quantity ranges are involved.
Low-frequency extension is sort of startling, and the A5 controls its bass presence correctly. Straight edges on the assault of low-end sounds implies that tempos and real looking, rhythmic expression is nice, and momentum is appreciable. The world’s not wanting wi-fi audio system that may dig as deep and hit as laborious because the Beosound A5, however the authority and management this speaker demonstrates is in a lot shorter provide.
On the reverse finish of the frequency vary, there’s brilliance and no little assault to treble sounds. However the authority the A5 has over its top-end output isn’t any extra equivocal than it’s on the backside finish, so sounds by no means threaten to develop into edgy or laborious. Even at important quantity (and never solely is the A5 able to taking part in at important quantity, it’s joyful and unstressed when it does so, and doesn’t alter its sonic traits within the slightest), treble sounds keep their form or self-discipline. So it’s by no means lower than a snug and convincing pay attention.
In between, the midrange is simply as completed and engrossing. Even a compressed recording or radio broadcast is given enough respiration house via the midrange—and vocalists are in a position to totally categorical themselves in consequence. The transition from midrange to bass at one finish, and to treble on the different, is easy, constant, and by no means apparent. Tonality is impartial all through, and there’s no under- or overstatement of any explicit space of the frequency vary.
Spatial Audio? Type Of
The unity and coherence of the Beosound A5’s total presentation is spectacular and on no account a given, regardless of how a lot you’re spending in your audio tools. Element ranges are at all times excessive, and the Bang & Olufsen is especially spectacular in the best way it attends to even the smallest transients and harmonic variations in a recording. The broader dynamics of “quiet” and “loud” are simply as confidently handled, too, because the A5 places fairly a distance between the 2 positions with no audible effort.
{Photograph}: Bang & Olufsen
Nonetheless, the declare for 360-degree sound is rarely fairly made good on, it’s honest to say, though the Beosound A5 creates a big, immersive, and correctly organized soundstage. The brand new Sonos Era 300 is a much more convincing performer the place the nuts and bolts of spatial audio is anxious, however then, it’s not fairly a direct competitor of this speaker. It’s mains-powered and extra reasonably priced, and it seems profoundly daft. The A5 merely seems a bit uncommon. However in terms of presenting a giant, enveloping sound, the Beosound A5 is the wi-fi speaker to beat.
So the place does this go away the B&O Beosound A5 (other than in your picnic blanket, I imply)? There’s little question its enchantment will probably be pretty restricted, if for no different cause than that it’s a number of orders of magnitude dearer than every other worthwhile battery-powered speaker. Those that have the wherewithal, although, and are turned on (reasonably than mildly freaked out) by the seems, will discover themselves in possession of among the best audio system Bang & Olufsen has ever produced—which, by extension, means among the best pound-for-pound audio system round.
