Burmester B18 Review
Burmester introduces with the new B18 a down-to-earth offshoot of the bookshelf speaker B10. But could the father of the role model be proud of the new addition to the family?
Stefan Schickedanz
You probably know the situation from your circle of friends: As soon as you haven’t seen the children of friends or relatives for a few years, the sentence “You’ve grown so much!” slips out. In this case, the father himself must have felt the same when he saw the bookshelf speaker B10 he had created on behalf of Dieter Burmester after its transformation into the floor-standing B18.
The development team—Jan Schuppe (Design), Martin Lorenz (Acoustics), and Pascal Bings (Concept)—who raised the new 2.5-way design, asked speaker designer Bernd Stark for feedback on the listening test. He must have been overcome with fatherly pride. The B18, presented at the CES in Las Vegas, is almost three times as tall as the B10, which was based on a studio monitor for Dieter Burmester, but it is oriented around the design and components of its little sister.
An exclusive Burmester ring radiator made of titanium foil explores the highs with utmost care. The aerodynamically optimized mid-woofer with a 17 cm glass fiber membrane is based on the driver of the B10, developed in collaboration with an automotive supplier.
Burmester and Porsche
No wonder, then, that veteran Bernd Stark is considered by insiders to be a fan of the ring radiator. Due to the connection between Burmester and Porsche, the developer turned to a chassis supplier from the automotive sector for the woofer. The mid-woofers of the B10 speakers and their developments in the new B18 are based on this technology transfer. For example, the 17 cm membrane of the drivers, equipped with an aerodynamically optimized cast basket, is made of glass fiber.
An exclusive Burmester ring radiator made of titanium foil explores the highs with utmost care. The aerodynamically optimized mid-woofer with a 17 cm glass fiber membrane is based on the driver of the B10, developed in collaboration with an automotive supplier.
Based on this strong performance, the three-person development team set out to nurture a grown-up, yet affordable (at least by the standards of the luxury brand Burmester) floor-standing speaker from the small B10. The result looks very good without being over the top or taking up too much space.
In the B18, the ring radiator specially made for Burmester with titanium foil suspended inside and outside meets two 17 cm cones with a bass reflex cabinet for the bass and a closed chamber for the mid-bass range. The elaborate 2.5-way crossover, also housed in a separate chamber, crosses over at 400 and 2300 Hertz. It also offers the possibility to adapt the speaker to the room acoustics via a switchable high-pass filter. In conjunction with the included foam plugs, which can be used to dampen the bass reflex opening, this results in four tuning variants for different rooms and tastes.
The switchable high-pass filter boosts the bass broadly by 2 dB in the “+” position. In combination with the foam plugs included with the B18 for its rear bass reflex opening, this results in four tuning variants for different room sizes and wall distances.
Slender and Elegant
An additional contribution to the harmony between the speaker and the home is made by the housing of the handmade speaker, available in many real wood and high-gloss lacquer finishes. It was optimized on the computer using FEM analysis and has a newly developed, computer-calculated spring-mass damping system for decoupling from the floor. The massive and particularly torsion-resistant sandwich front made of aluminum and MDF also promotes the precision of bass reproduction—not least through reduced resonance, which could even be detected in the exemplary decay spectrum in our laboratory.
The slim, timelessly elegant design convinced the eyes of the listening jury at first sight. And it didn’t require a long aria to charm the ears. The B18 possessed all the virtues to captivate ambitious audiophiles as well as fun-oriented listeners. That it offered a balanced sound need not be emphasized given the genetics of the new Burmester speaker. But what cannot be stressed enough was its enormous lightness and playfulness with which it reproduced every type of music. The ring radiator delivered high-frequency resolution beyond usual domes, yet never sounded harsh or forward. The other frequency ranges offered a comparable level and ensured that one immersed in the performance. One almost had to force oneself not to forget the technology over the immense listening pleasure—keyword boogie factor. At least in our test, that was the real challenge, because the reproduction seemed seamless.
An additional luxury problem: Because the B18 looked so refined and played so maturely, one had to keep reminding oneself of its price and its place in the model hierarchy. Otherwise, one risked, following the post-truth zeitgeist, judging according to the perceived price range in the five-digit area, where many of its virtues have at least been experienced individually before. But the fact is, the Burmester B18 costs only half as much as it appears.
Otherwise, it also gave the music lover immense joy, while leaving the inner bean counter, eager for sober evaluation, at a loss. Apart from its finely detailed, elegant manner, this speaker was hard to grasp with familiar schemes. Yes, the upper bass was rather rich than dry. And yes, it didn’t delve particularly deep into the bass. Its imaging was relatively large and stable but wasn’t necessarily breaking records in terms of three-dimensionality. But who wants to hear the speaker instead of the music?
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