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Object Culture

Bang & Olufsen's Perfectly Round Speaker, Yea or Nay?

The Beosound Edge is pretty. Does it make sense as a speaker?

By Rain Noe - September 6, 2018

Bang & Olufsen is has always been one of those companies that combines technology with bold, occasionally polarizing designs. I admire that the company is willing to take risks, even if I don't always care for their individual efforts.

I am very curious to hear what you think about their forthcoming speakers, the Beosound Edge:

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Yes, they are visually beautiful. But like a lot of B&O designs they cannot blend in with your existing environment, but instead claim space as its own, announcing its presence and demanding attention.

I think the bit about rocking the entire speaker to adjust the volume is a bit absurd, and the wall mount in particular seems ill-conceived; why project sound parallel with the wall? Oughtn't it be fired into the room perpendicular to the wall?

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Time to weigh in, design fans: Yea or nay?

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

6 Comments

Ryan Hume

7 months ago

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IMO this model feels over-aestheticised for an audio product - an uninformed individual might have no real clue what it does if they encountered in out of context. That being said, B+O makes some very high quality products and remains unafraid to take risks which I applaud them for. I've used a Beoplay A9 in person and found it to be an excellent balance between being a soundsystem and a piece of furniture:

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- Ryan Hume
  
  Ryan Hume
  
  7 months ago
  
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Jason Depenbrock

7 months ago

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yay, physical controls like this should be embraced more. but you won't see me buying one at that price.

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Rob Podell

7 months ago

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I own a Beocenter 7700 with a pair of Beovox S45s and they sound effing awesome. B&O takes risks to produce gorgeous hifi equipment that is anything but ordinary. Is their stuff overpriced, and often proprietary and weird? Yup. But that's what makes it kind of cool.

As for not mounting the speaker flat against the wall, it probably has some ports on the back. If you mounted it flat the sound quality would suffer.

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Rodrigo Lauret

7 months ago

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Nay. Are B&O the Dyson airmultipliers of sound?

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Michael DiTullo

7 months ago

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Unfortunately their products just don't tend to sound that good... so what you are paying for is typically a wacky, hard to execute design. The question is do you want an 18" aluminum circle hanging off your wall that everyone will ask "what is that" to which you get to say "a really expensive speaker that doesn't sound that good..." . I'm biased obviously, but I demo their top of the line 2 channel tower speakers a couple of years ago and even though they had all of this directional tech I thought they sounded very muddy. With a good pair of speakers you should be able to play a stereo recording and get a very clear distinction between all of the instruments in the recording as well as a sense of where the musicians are in space based on how the track was mixed (especially if you are paying thousands of dollars for a speaker) and these just didn't have any of that.

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