Summary – B&O Beoplay A9 Review
The Beoplay A9 speaker by Bang & Olufsen is one of the best speakers you can find and a tribute to all music artists who value making good sound. These speakers are able to reproduce every single note in the audio frequency spectrum with clinical precision, allowing you to re-listen to music pieces with an enhanced depth of detail and accuracy. The A9 4th generation speaker is equipped with seven effective drivers with exceptional room-filling sound performance which is calibrated to suit the space that you put it in. It is equipped with active room compensation which ensures high quality sound – every instrument is heard with utmost clarity from the stroke of a piano to the vibration of guitar strings. You can even hear background noises in the recording that you may not have heard before together with subtle nuances. If you are looking for an iconic speaker to go with your room, go for the Beoplay A9 speaker.
Technical Specifications
Let’s talk about the Beoplay A9 speakers. This luxurious speaker can be attached to the wall with a wall-mounting accessory, or used as a floor standing speaker as part of your home. There’s lots of ways to connect to this speaker including using Airplay 2, Chromecast and wireless Bluetooth streaming. It also supports Wi-Fi connectivity for easy connection to home audio systems. It comes with the ability to automatically calibrate the sound performance to the shape of your room. The A9 also includes black walnut legs to complement the Black model and Oak legs for the white version. It’s pretty easy to change the cover to match your own home interior styling. We also liked the ability to sync up the speaker with other Bang & Olufsen speakers in your home for a multi-room wireless experience.
This speaker is pretty heavy and measures 27.6” wide, 35.75” high and 16.3” deep with the legs attached. It comes with its own dedicated amps for each speaker driver, including a 400 watt Class D amp for the bass (8” woofer), 2 X 200 watt Class D amps for the midrange (dual 3” tweeters), 2 X 200 watt Class D amps for full-range sound (1.5” full-range) and 2 X 150 watts Class D amps for the treble (dual 3/4” tweeters). This makes the speaker pretty much overkill in terms of output capacity, with plenty of power for loud sound output. We also recommend installing the Bang & Olufsen app which allows you to tweak settings such as the bass and treble, as well as setup the active room compensation for optimized sound performance.
Sound Performance
The Beoplay A9 delivers some of the cleanest audio we have heard from any speaker for a long time. It’s a speaker that really analyses the detail in the audio recording; it can really pick out the good and the bad aspects of any music recording. This means that things that you’ve probably never noticed before will come to light with the A9 speaker. The A9 speaker will accentuate every single detail in the music whether good or bad, so be prepared for some pleasant (and some unpleasant) surprises with this speaker.
The A9 has great bass response
One thing we need to point out with the A9 speaker is the bass. The bass from this speaker is simply mind-blowing with a considerable amount of depth. While it’s going to compare with a dedicated subwoofer, the level of bass detail that you get is tremendous and punchy. This makes EDM and rock music genres pretty fun to listen to with the speaker. That said, the active room compensation system does reduce the bass when turned on, so you may need to enhance the EQ to push up the lower bass ranges.
The Verdict?
The Beoplay A9 looks aesthetically pleasing and sounds even better. The amount of power and soundstage that you get from the A9 speaker is incredible, with impeccable highs, detailed mids and solid bass. The walnut legs that come with the speaker is beautiful, and the speaker curvature looks very modern and cool. The entire audio experience that you get with the A9 speaker is exceptionally unique – it’s a speaker with tremendous soundstage and power that can really bring out the good and the bad in audio recordings. You can also turn this speaker to max volume and not hear a shred of distortion. The A9 speaker provides a remarkable listening experience in shape and form with stunning aesthetic appeal.