Beomaster 8000: Wrapping Up The Performance Tests

The current Beomaster 8000 restoration project has been going through quite a bit of testing in the last few weeks. Its owner mentioned that this Beomaster would occasionally come on by itself. Sometimes in the middle of the night it would come out of Standby mode and start playing music. It's always nice to listen to a Beomaster 8000 but you do want it to obey your commands.

I was confident that the restoration work I performed would address that issue but to test it I left the Beomaster plugged in on Standby mode for three full days. No hiccups and it never went into play mode by itself.

It was back to more listening tests while I set up the bench for some performance tests.

As Beolover recently posted, we don't really have the specific test information and test equipment that Bang & Olufsen used when they tested these Beomaster 8000 amplifiers with respect to what is in their technical specifications. On amplifiers there are usually only two service manual adjustments. No-load current (idle current) and DC Offset. That is the case with the Beomaster 8000. Other than those two adjustments a restored amplifier is expected to perform at the manufacturer listed specs for their design. We can use their published specifications as a guide as we collect our own measurements using test equipment available to us today. With these new measurements we will have measurable and repeatable values to compare our amplifier restorations.

Both Beolover and I use the QuantAsylum QA400 Audio Analyzer to make measurements. We also both use 8Ω fixed loads (power resistors mounted to large heatsinks) as dummy speaker loads during the tests. A small 0.08Ω to 0.1Ω resistor is added in series on each speaker load to allow direct measurements to the QA400 analyzer.  That is because the full voltage across the 8Ω load would damage the analyzer inputs. I have a pair of  QuantAsylum QA190 low noise, differential probes that allow measuring directly across the 8Ω (actually 8.08Ω in my case) dummy load. It should be noted that the updated QuantAsylum QA401 analyzer has built in differential inputs so the external probes are no longer necessary.

Here are some pictures of my test setup.

To run a direct measurement to the QA400 analyzer inputs from the 0.08Ω series resistor I use a coax cable with BNC connections for the analyzer and mini-grabbers for the 0.08Ω resistor.

Here is the Beomaster under test with the QA400 analyzer in the background and its measurement screen on my lab computer.

The QA400 analyzer, as described in Beolover's post, outputs a tone burst test signal for single frequency stimulus tests and a square wave impulse for frequency response test stimulus. I can run both left and right channel measurements at the same time as the analyzer provides the input to the Beomaster Tape 1 or Tape 2 left & right channel source inputs.

This test setup is easy to use and I can connect a bench DMM to the speaker loads to measure the actual voltage put out by the Beomaster output amplifier. One problem I run into is occasional noise that mucks with the measurement device sometimes. Usually down at the line 60Hz frequency. In my test setup the direct measurements across my 0.08Ω series resistor just don't provide as clean a measurement as the QA190 differential probes. I also have to monitor the QA190 probes though as they are battery powered (so the batteries need to be fresh).

For these Beomaster 8000 performance tests I decided to first grab a THD measurement for a 1KHz input signal right before it goes to the Beomaster Output Amplifier board. The audio signal goes from the input source (Tape 1 or 2) through the Preamplifier then to the Filter & Tone Control board. The path from the Filter & Tone Control board to the Output Amplifier is via connector 4P24. For this low voltage test I did use some direct probes with alligator clips to the QA400 inputs and not the QA190 probes. That is because of the space available to connect probes to.

Here is the THD measurement for a 1KHz input signal at 4P24.

The left and right channel THD is very low after going through all of the preamplifier and tone control circuitry.  Though it is very low (nearly -100dB) you can see the effect of some 60Hz noise picked up by the measurement cable.

Next was the 1KHz signal THD measurement after the Output Amplifier. This is measured across the 8.08Ω fixed speaker load at different output levels. It should be noted that during these tests I took the opportunity to calibrate the Tape 1 and Tape 2 input level trimmers again so I could make sure they are equal. I also tried to set them where I could set the Beomaster volume control on a level that produces 100W across the 8.08Ω load.  The result of that is a Beomaster volume level of 5.4 producing my 100W test output. The next volume level up (5.5) with this setup causes the clipping light to illuminate.

Here are left and right channel THD and SNR measurements at volume levels of 5.4 (~100W) and 5.3 (~67W).  I also turned the analyzer A Weighting mode on as the B&O specs use that.

The next volume level up (5.5) on the Beomaster puts the output amplifier into clipping so THD of 0.01% at the rated maximum power into 8.08Ω is very good. The next volume setting down (5.3) drops the THD to 0.008%.

Next is a check of the Beomaster frequency response. Beolover also describes this measurement with the QA400. I am showing the measurement picture produced by the QA400 measurement software (with a few of my own text comments added). It has frequency markers for three points I wanted to focus on (1KHz, 10KHz and 20KHz).

My results are pretty similar to what Beolover got although it appears the QA190 differential probes helped my measurements out on the low frequency noise. The drop at 20KHz was right around 1dB which is more than what the B&O published specs state but then our measurement methods are not exactly the same. Between these Beomaster performance results and the last few we have done it compares with very similar results. The results are definitely a pass for this Beomaster receiver.