Burmester 061 & 082 & B20
I had a rare opportunity to audition a symphatetic combination of Burmester electronics and loudspeakers; sympathetic because, had the system been put together with Burmester’s top line products, Reference Line actually, it could have intimitated an ordinary reviewer such as me.
In the constellation, the Classic Line 061 CD player (8150 e), and the 082 integrated amplifier (9350 e) represented blue collar middle class Burmester. The working class hero would be the Rondo Line B-20, currently the least expensive Burmester loudspeaker (5990 e). The Burmester Blue speaker cable (2x3m, 1990 e) and the XLR silver interconnect (750 e per pair) completed the picture.
Just a word about each component. The 061 CD is a direct drive top loader with three digital inputs/two outputs, balanced/unbalanced analogue outputs, and Burmester DA-conversion with 96kHz/24 bit upsampling. The really stunning looking 082 is a 140 watt (4 ohms) integrated amp with 5 inputs, 3 balanced, various adjustable settings and oversized toroidal transformer.
The vented 3-way B20 is a recent design. The crossover is acoustically isolated, the oval woofers are side-firing, the midrange driver has a Kevlar cone, and the A.M.T. ribbon tweeter, the same as in Elac 2-ways, is horn-loaded (it's a true horn, not a shallow waveguide). The drivers are crossed at 200 and 3000 Hz. The finish combines macassar/elsberry/silver.
And how did the system as a system sound? Well, for some 25000 euros sounds expensive. Maybe so but Burmesters are made expensive. They look expensive. Their built quality is expensive. The service is of the kind what one would expect from an expensive brand. The reputation is expensive. It’s not by accident that Porsche and Bugatti have chosen Burmester to design and manufacture sound systems for some models. These are facts of life.
Those who seriously consider buying this or any other Burmester system, or pieces of it, probably have the resources to do so. When certain line is crossed, the cost is beyond the point. And that does not concern only Burmester, of course, but other 'luxury' brands as well, even though many of these brands, Burmester icluded, may not want to be regarded solely as a luxury mark.
But then there’s the somewhat more pertinent question: Are they worth the money? Curiously enough this question too is to some extent irrelevant because the notion "worth" in the context captures clearly so much more than simply the system's sonic performance, some of the reasons being the same as listed above. So the question we're dealing with here is NOT: Can one have the same quality of sound with less money. Probably one can, but for potential customers there are so many other positive things to consider and take into account.
The listening room was rather spacious. Walls were partly covered by wooden panels. Large space and big windows made boomy bass improbable. This is good to keep in mind because the Burmester loudspeakers are designed to reproduce as low bass notes as enabled by their physical size, and may therefore excite room modes at small volumes. No such modes were noticeable at the listening seat circa 4 metres away from the speaker line, the seat itself far from the rear or any other wall. The speakers too were well off the wall behind them, and more than two metres away from side walls. Almost an ideal listening space then.
The first impression - feeling - of the sound is ever so important no matter how hard one tries to not let it be conclusive. My first impression of the sound of this Burmester 'mini' system was genuinly favourable, and for two reasons mainly. I very much welcomed that the system didn’t tend to compensate its relatively modest physical size (speakers) with a bigger than life, airy kind of sound. The soundstage was markedly wider than tall. Some systems create a sound that fills the area between the floor and the ceiling; this wasn't such a system. Secondly, the tonal balance was cleverly executed. It made the sound pleasurable, non-aggressive to listen to but still not departing from what would be generally considere as neutral.
Despite the size of the speakers, I didn't feel that the sound would have been limited in the bass. Maybe because I'm not a bass hungry guy. Maybe because the manufacturer has it right that the -3dB point is at 35 Hz. It's kind of hard to believe but that's how the bass sounded to me. Irrespectively of how low they go, each system (speaker) produces the bass with its own way, style. This Burmeste style was not a thick, round bass but still sufficient for most of my music samples. More than once I was tempted to describe the bass as "tasty" (rather than deep or low).
Organ music made an useful example. The lowest registres weren’t as forceful and as powerful as they would have been in some more massive system but they came out fine in the sense that they were believable both in terms of extension and sheer amount. Nothing to ridicule about. The bass was great even when the track did not contain low-mid bass notes. Where I would have wanted a different, more effective bass was piano samples containing meaningful left-hand playing.
Organ music also exemplified how the sound was limited. The upper registers, stops of the organ, sounded slightly 'small' or 'thin', not having the impact they have in a real life (church). My educated guess is that this is the single most important aspect, in which the bigger and more expensive Burmester systems/speakers better the performance of this system. This caharacteristic concerns only the frequency response and its tonal equivalences. The quality of the treble over the whole HF range was quite good, and attributable to the qualities associated with A.M.T. tweeters.
The dual nature of the sound - low but not abundant bass and not as relaxed and open upper midrange/treble as possible - was repeated from a music sample to another. Interestingly "narrowing" the timbre didn't extend to vocal music: human voices mostly came out correct, pure and clean, and in harmony with the rest of the frequency band. This suggests that the tightness is slightly higher up than in the vocal range. A track with a cello and double basses, the cello sounded slightly more edgy and sharper than I’ve used to. On the other hand, in a track in which a soprano sax could easily get harsh, it didn’t. Acoustic non-classic guitar music worked beautifully, and so on. Such is life of a hi-fi reviewer.
All in all, the system gave a stable, coherent and systematic performance over a good number of music samples, - and it did it with a certain "quality". This is important because it is this "certain quality" that often distinguishes good sounding systems and systems that do not necessarily sound any better but provide a more mature, more consistent, more thoughtful sounding performance. The quality is not part of, but supervenes on other more straightforward propeties of the sound, eg. on how much resolution the system provides - the Burmester system did fine in this respect, or how the system resolves the rhythmic side of the music - the Burmester system had no problems with this either.
Second opinion by Keijo Tanskanen:
This opinion was written completely independently of the review above, and may therefore contain repetition (editor's note)
This setup did a great work in reproducing meaningful structures (what is wrote on the partiture) of music without underlining any kind of details. While doing so it did not loose sight of the information contained in a recording. The definition of the performance was somewhat compromised, eg. the bass could have been more extended, there could have been more micro-level details in the sound etc., but the compromises seemed to be well and thoughtfully chosen.
I was delighted that relatively small and affordable speakers could reproduce all the essential information they were asked to perform. The presentation was full-bodied Burmester presentation and avoided, successfully to my mind, distinctive faults such as nasality of the sound. The speakers shared many sonic features with bigger Busrmester models missing only their bottom registre and elevated soundstage properties. Still I had the feeling that the quality front end of this system could have benefitted from a higher level speakers.
Now the sonic picture wasn't fully 3-dimensional or organized. Especially vertically the soundstage left me wishing more. This (imperfect vertical structure of the soundstage) was perhaps the most distinctive defect in the sound from my personal perspective. Otherwise the system delivered a well-focused sound and reproduced spatial information in a way that probably suits well for numerous enthusiasts. The system served music as much as it served the sound.
Over the years, I've listened to several Burmester setups. Somehow they all resemble each other. All have possessed a stamp of quality. The Burmester quality is not limited to the sound only. You have to consider reliability, looks and construction too. During my listening session I had very a relaxing and comfortable feeling and that may very well be a sign of the Burmester quality.
After my visit I got a vision in which for example a musician who values exceptional reliability and impressive looks of an equipment in addition to his structural listening manners, might very well end up in owning a system like this Burmester setup. The quality is present everywhere in this system, not only in the sound. What may limit eagerness to purchase this system is that the sort of quality does not come without cost.
Toisaalta setti tarjosi kuitenkin mielestäni kokonaisuutena ärsyttämätöntä
musiikintoistoa ja teki olennaiset asiat "riittävän" tunnollisesti ja
oikein. Jäi kuitenkin sellainen mielikuva, että kyseinen etupää olisi
ansainnut vieläkin laadukkaammat kaiuttimet seurakseen, sillä vastaavalla
elektroniikalla olen kuullut parempiakin esityksiä. B-20:t olisivat
varmasti toimineet paremmin hiukan pienemmässä tilassa.