Created in collaboration with globally-acclaimed Designer Michael Anastassiades, Beosound Edge is a thoughtful design from the Danish luxury audio brand that transforms the everyday mundane to musical mastery and adds aesthetic value to an interior.
The circular shape of Beosound Edge allows for two placement options. On the floor as a stunning centrepiece, amplifying and blending in with the colours of the furniture standing next to it, or placed on the wall as a true gravity-defying statement that divides spaces in the home. Proximity sensors detect when you get close to the speaker, discreetly illuminating the aluminium touch interface. Adjusting the sound is as magical as the sound coming from it – you gently roll Beosound Edge forwards and backwards to increase and decrease the volume. Softly to change the volume moderately, while a stronger touch will change it more dramatically. Let go, and it gently rolls back to its original position.
“With Beosound Edge, we are bringing forward a timeless design masterpiece that inspires the imagination with an interaction and experience never before seen in home audio. From a distance it is monolithic and discreet, hiding everything that suggests technology, yet it is unforgettable in sound performance punching above and beyond what you would expect for the size of the speaker,” says Bang & Olufsen Concept Manager, Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre.
Debuting the world’s first Active Bass Port
Drawing on acoustical technologies from Bang & Olufsen’s advanced BeoLab portfolio, Beosound Edge is surprisingly powerful despite its compact footprint. To deliver impressive bass capabilities, the Bang & Olufsen acoustic engineers have put in a huge 10" woofer bass driver on one side, which has an innovatively slim design and long excursion, while both sides of the speaker enjoy a dedicated 4” midrange and a three-quarter” tweeter.
To deliver a powerful sound experience at high volume, Beosound Edge debuts a ground-breaking acoustical technology named the Active Bass Port1. The Active Bass Port unites two classical concepts of loudspeaker design, the so-called ‘closed-box’ design and the ‘ported design’. The acoustic analogy resembles that of a car’s spoiler that automatically raises as the car speeds up. When playing at lower volumes, it is using the closed cabinet principle for the most accurate sound reproduction, and as you turn up the volume, the Active Bass Port opens to output more energised bass.
Design by distilling
Since the 1950s, Bang & Olufsen has been pioneering the use of aluminium making it almost synonymous with the brand. Remarkable craftsmanship and attention to detail are required to achieve the perfect circular frame and to polish the exterior to a flawless finish. To add an element of magic, Bang & Olufsen has built the physical touch interface into the aluminium frame by lasering microscopic holes invisible to the eye just allowing light to shine through.
To contrast the polished aluminium body, Beosound Edge comes with a matte black fabric cover, easily exchangeable as Bang & Olufsen will introduce new on-trend fabric colours over time. The black fabric surface almost draws you in – an illusion created by minimising the transition between the two surfaces and using matte fabric to contrast the reflective shine from the aluminium ring.
“It looks quite surreal as an object, because of the sudden depth change. A gap between the two materials would have allowed a tolerance to exist. Here, there is no tolerance, and the in-between space does not exist anymore which is amazing,” says Anastassiades. He elaborates on the speaker design: “We constantly pushed ourselves to distil the idea of removing layers upon layers until what remained was a visibly pure and simple object. Because what happens when you experience highly visual complex products is an initial impact, but once the novelty of that impact dies there is nothing left. With visually simple products, there is nothing there to give you that first attraction. No visual disturbance. But when you see it the second time around you suddenly pay attention and by the third encounter you become even more intrigued,” concludes Anastassiades.