The Beocreate 4-Channel Amplifier enables you to upgrade classic speakers with a Raspberry Pi. Our Beocreate 4-Channel Amplifier review tests out this speaker upgrade kit.
Somewhere, in the darkest recesses of your garage or loft, there may be speakers. Not speakers like today’s tiny, tinny Bluetooth excuses, but proper speakers: large, heavy, loud.
Although these monoliths are still capable of outperforming today’s examples, they are becoming increasingly useless. Why? Well, unless you’re holding on to your vintage amplifiers, there’s nothing left to drive them. So your wonderful, expensive pieces of engineering excellence sit gathering dust, playing only John Cage’s 4′33″. Until now.
Beocreate 4-Channel Amplifier review
Audiophile giant Bang & Olufsen has partnered with HiFiBerry to produce the Beocreate, a high-end digital sound processor and amplifier for the Raspberry Pi. Not so much a HAT as a full fedora, scarf, and cape, this monster upgrades your favourite tiny computer to audiophile quality.
Four channels (a whopping 2×60 W and 2×30 W) can be configured to drive not only standalone speakers, but also their individual woofers and tweeters.
The on-board DSP can be endlessly configured over the web, even in real-time as you’re listening, allowing for an incredible amount of tinkering that will have even the most dedicated perfectionist thinking ‘Oh, that’ll do’.
The Beocreate also upcycles your classic speakers to work with 21st century music sources. Add a Pi, hook up the wires, install some software, and you’ve got a Bluetooth, Spotify, and AirPlay speaker like no other.
Band and Olufsen with Raspberry Pi
B&O has targeted its classic CX50 and CX100 speakers, providing built-in profiles for the DSP to get the absolute best from them and guides to install everything inside the speakers. The good news is it also works with any passive speaker, providing a default ‘safe’ profile that you can then tweak if you see fit.
For a rather breathtaking £149, you do get very good build quality. On board are a power input (which also powers your Pi), four speaker terminals, and TOSLink connectors for digital input and output, enabling multiple Beocreates to be chained together. Your Raspberry Pi plugs in upside-down, with thoughtfully provided posts to hold it firmly in place. You can then power both boards from a single power supply (not supplied).
All that remains is to wire in your speakers and load up some software, a choice between a read-to-go image for ‘it just works’ or a more customisable Raspbian build with drivers and configuration already in place. Setup is a breeze despite confusing documentation. You can set up your WiFi connection and add sources such as AirPlay and Spotify Connect within a few minutes.
Once your double-decker-bus-scale speakers are down from the loft, you may struggle to work out where to connect them. There is a distinct lack of labelling and we restored to trial-and-error. Once connected, the result was pretty astonishing. Some of us of a, ahem, ‘middle-aged’ persuasion have forgotten the golden age of speakers as convenience has compromised audio quality. The depth and range of sound was wonderful. The point of this became obvious.
Digging deeper into the capabilities of this device, it supports the creation of DSP ‘profiles’ using the provided SigmaStudio software. You can play endlessly with crossover frequencies and filters, create a setup you like, and then store it on the Beocreate so anything playing on the Pi uses it. This is a level of control that can only have been imagined just a few years ago.
Beocreate Audio excellence
This is an unapologetically audiophile product – and in this case, that means expensive yet still value for money. If you just want to convert an old average speaker, there are cheaper options available. The documentation is described as in ‘beta’ and we couldn’t agree more. Although installation was easy, it was not obvious where to start, causing some initial frustration. That said, the sound quality is enough to get the credit card twitching.
If you’ve got a snazzy pair of speakers stashed away that never seem to make it down to the skip and you want to give them a new lease of life, then the Beocreate may reintroduce you to a world of incredible sound quality that many thought had been lost in portable speakers, earbuds, and laptops.
Beocreate 4-Channel Amplifier: The last word
An audiophile’s dream, the Beocreate is the missing link between the worlds of classic high-end speakers and modern streaming technology. As documentation improves, this will be solid choice for bringing your digital music back to life.
4/5
