Review: Burmester B10

Burmester is a high-end company from Berlin that is best known for its high-performance electronics in unmistakable cabinets in high-gloss polished chrome. You notice them. That the company is also perhaps the best organized I have ever visited is a completely different matter. All documentation, measurements, repair and upgrade history and more are archived about each individual product that has ever been produced at Burmester. It is nothing short of impressive. The company simply knows everything about your particular device.

I visited the company a little over a year ago, and Dieter Burmester showed with great enthusiasm a couple of prototypes of an upcoming tripod speaker. It looked very promising, and we agreed that I should take a closer look at them when they were completely finished.

Maybe there was a reason why he was so enthusiastic about this model B10. The story is that the core of the B10 has existed for a long time, but then as a specially built monitor speaker in Dieter Burmester’s own studio – before the company Burmester (and in parallel) he could put a professional guitarist on the business card, and he has always worked as a producer in his own recording studio, which is of a high class and diligently used. For that reason, of course, he also made sure to have a pair of potent monitor speakers in his studio. However, they were so good that he was encouraged and driven to put them into production. This has resulted in the B10, which has naturally matured and been modified in part to be able to function as a speaker for listening to music instead of in the studio and for recording.

Baffle upon baffle The
cabinet is in true Burmese spirit square. Very square. And quite large to be a modern tripod speaker. The goal is 22 x 39 x 28 cm (b / h / d) and the weight is 11.5 kg. This means that the speaker is both quite pretty and a bit bulky at the same time.

The front is worth a separate chapter. The front baffle is produced in a whole 48 mm thick MDF, here the two elements that are of the type 17 cm bass / middle register element are attached with a type of fiberglass membrane and a ring radiator for the treble. Both elements are specially developed for Burmester. But on top of this powerful baffle, they have also put on a centimeter-thick aluminum plate with, as far as I can see, a type of vibration-damping material between the cabinet and aluminum. There are not many vibrations conducted from that baffle out into this cabinet no!

Besides a bass port and Burmester’s own slightly different, but well-functioning terminals (single-wire) there is a bass +/- switch. In combination with the supplied foam rubber plugs for the bass port, it can change the bass performance and the way to play more dB. In my lineup, I got the best result with the bass switch at minus and no plug in the gate. It gave a rap and distinct bass reproduction of the kind I personally like, with good transient response and attack.

Setup
You should be aware that this speaker requires a tripod. It also means that you get to experiment a bit with the height of the speaker. In general, it is a good rule of thumb to make sure the treble element is level with your ears when you are sitting down and listening.

Normally, a studio speaker is a near-field monitor placed at an angle so that it mostly plays right into your head. In the living room it can be a little different, and from the schematic graphics in the user manual, it looks as if the speaker is recommended to have no angle at all.

Definitely an opportunity for experimentation, and I ended up at an angle that after all did not differ significantly from the one that most speakers tend to end up with in this lineup – provided they are not designed for anything else. This is a parameter that can, among other things, affect the room reproduction, it is about how the treble spread works.

Burmester also indicates a fairly free position against the back wall and lets the room decide. Since you give the option to adjust the bass on the speaker itself, it is believed that it can control the bass in the reproduction. In my case, the B10 ended up about 50 cm into the room.

Burmester B10: Quality does not deny itself

I have said it before: when you connect a number of products, you immediately hear that there is something out there called quality. These cases usually cost a lot, but it’s just that if you get over this limit, many curtain layers have been removed between the listener and the music.

Unfortunately, this is something that one must experience in order to properly absorb it. Something that can really be summed up in one word: musical joy.

When you connect the Burmester B10, it plays the word quality with the first note. You can not go wrong, here we play music. It does so with a transparency and a joy of playing that is truly contagious. An absolutely excellent listening window with a nice intertransient silence (it shuts up when it should!) Makes the musician and instrument appear starry and with enough air between them.

That the speaker has a history as a monitor speaker can be well understood. It reveals a lot, but without highlighting – “see what I have found” – the various cases unnecessarily. You hear it if you know the art of hearing, but you do not get it delivered with a nail gun in your head, something unfortunately many speakers have historically done – it has admittedly gotten better in recent years.

There is also a nice dynamic without violence, the dynamic is never vulgar. In addition, the speaker can also play low with high yield, a criterion that I just feel is becoming more and more important. The last thing that is worth mentioning is that the B10 has an impressive sound accuracy, it clearly sounds real every time the speaker plays.

Conclusion

Burmester B10 is the smallest speaker from the German high-end manufacturer. Still, it is clearly high-end, just the right way. This means that it has a confident playing style with excellent room and fine sound accuracy.

The B10 is quite expensive for a tripod speaker to be, in addition, the supplement comes with a tripod. However, you still get full value and more for your investment. And besides, you get a great deal of musical joy, which is probably what we’re all looking for – or what?