Thorough is a phrase that may simply be utilized to this app. It’s steady, straightforward to navigate, logical, and even fairly handsome. Right here’s the place you’ll be able to examine 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 widespread bass and treble sliders. Right here’s the place you’ll be able to set default and most volumes, create a stereo pair in the event you’ve invested in multiple of those sonic picnic baskets, and change loudness on or off.
Software program updates, Bang & Olufsen’s admirable Radio characteristic and the TuneIn equal, and Deezer streaming service integration are all out there. Right here’s the place you’ll be able to run a “room optimization” routine so as to calibrate your A5 to its particular circumstances, and change the omni impact on or off. The A5 can’t, nevertheless, calibrate itself on the fly routinely just like the Sonos Transfer—it have to be instructed to take action.
Room-Filling Sound (Sure, Actually)
As soon as the Besound A5 is about as much as your satisfaction, it proves an achieved and entertaining hear. As soon as by a stream of Benjamin Clementine’s “Residue” is sufficient to verify it: The A5 might seem like a premium frivolity, however the place the intense concern of sound is worried, this B&O is all enterprise.
General, it is a poised, hefty, and full-scale hear that sounds fairly bigger than its bodily dimensions. A number of merchandise optimistically describe their sound as “room-filling,” however the Beosound A5 can truly achieve this. 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 kind of startling, and the A5 controls its bass presence correctly. Straight edges on the assault of low-end sounds implies that tempos and lifelike, rhythmic expression is sweet, and momentum is appreciable. The world’s not in need of wi-fi audio system that may dig as deep and hit as exhausting 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 is not any extra equivocal than it’s on the backside finish, so sounds by no means threaten to turn out to be edgy or exhausting. Even at important quantity (and never solely is the A5 able to taking part in at important quantity, it’s completely happy and unstressed when it does so, and doesn’t alter its sonic traits within the slightest), treble sounds preserve their form or self-discipline. So it’s by no means lower than a cushty and convincing hear.
In between, the midrange is simply as achieved and engrossing. Even a compressed recording or radio broadcast is given ample respiration house by the midrange—and vocalists are in a position to absolutely specific themselves consequently. 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? Kind Of
The unity and coherence of the Beosound A5’s general presentation is spectacular and certainly not a given, irrespective 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 truthful to say, regardless that the Beosound A5 creates a big, immersive, and correctly organized soundstage. The brand new Sonos Period 300 is a much more convincing performer the place the nuts and bolts of spatial audio is worried, 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 relating to presenting an enormous, enveloping sound, the Beosound A5 is the wi-fi speaker to beat.
So the place does this depart the B&O Beosound A5 (aside from in your picnic blanket, I imply)? There’s little doubt its attraction will likely be pretty restricted, if for no different motive than that it’s a number of orders of magnitude dearer than some other worthwhile battery-powered speaker. Those that have the wherewithal, although, and are turned on (fairly than mildly freaked out) by the seems, will discover themselves in possession of among the finest audio system Bang & Olufsen has ever produced—which, by extension, means among the finest pound-for-pound audio system round.