Bang & Olufsen reimagines the home speaker: Announcing Beosound Edge
Created in collaboration with globally acclaimed designer Michael Anastassiades, Beosound Edge is yet another thoughtful design from the Danish luxury audio brand that transforms the everyday mundane to musical mastery and adds aesthetic value to the home.
The circular shape of Beosound Edge, a Bang & Olufsen speaker available in Ibiza 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 per 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 3⁄4" 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 energized bass. If its needed you could ask any question to the Bang & Olufsen´s technical service located in Ibiza.
Design by distilling
Since the 1950´s, Bang & Olufsen has been pioneering the use of aluminium making it almost synonymous with the brand. Remarkable craftmanship 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 matt 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 minimizing 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 designer Michael Anastassiades and 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", says Michael Anastassiades.
Directional Sound Control: You decide the radiation
The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Edge available in Ibiza, comes with 360-degree room filling sound from both sides of the speaker, and the new Directional Sound Control allows the user to define the direction that the sound radiates creating two acoustic fronts. This ensures that a room can be divided into an active listening area and a more passive listening area. Controlling the directional sound is controlled through the Bang & Olufsen app.
Freedom of connectivity and voice-control
Beosound Edge comes with the major industry standard technologies to provide the best streaming experience and to let you enjoy the streaming service of your choice. It comes with AirPlay 2, Chromecast2 and Bluetooth and it supports voice interaction when paired with either a Google Assistant-enabled speaker, such as Beosound 1 and Beosound 2, or an Amazon Echo device.
Michael Anastassiades was trained as a civil engineer at London´s Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine before taking a Master´s Degree in Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art. Founding his London based studio in 1994, Anastassiades went on to establish his eponymous brand in 2007 to produce his signature pieces, a collection of lighting, furniture, jewellery and tabletop objects. The studio´s philosophy is a continuous search for eclecticism, individuality and timeless qualities in design. He has designed products with various leading manufacturers including Flos, Herman Miller, Salvatori, Puiforcat, Lobmeyr, SCP and Svenskt Tenn.
Michael Anastassiades´ work is featured in permanent collections at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Crafts Council in London, the FRAC Centre in Orleans France, the MAK in Vienna and Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Time And Again at the Geymüllerschlössel/MAK in Vienna, To Be Perfectly Frank at Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm, Norfolk House music room at the Victoria & Albert museum in London, Cyprus Presidency at the European Parliament in Brussels Belgium, Atelier Jesper Brussels.
About the designer
Michael Anastassiades was trained as a civil engineer at London´s Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine before taking a Master´s Degree in Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art. Founding his London- based studio in 1994, Anastassiades went on to establish his eponymous brand in 2007 to produce his signature pieces, a collection of lighting, furniture, jewellery and tabletop objects. The studio´s philosophy is a continuous search for eclecticism, individuality and timeless qualities in design. He has designed products with various leading manufacturers including Flos, Herman Miller, Salvatori, Puiforcat, Lobmeyr, SCP and Svenskt Tenn.
Michael Anastassiades´ work is featured in permanent collections at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Crafts Council in London, the FRAC Centre in Orleans France, the MAK in Vienna and Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Time And Again at the Geymüllerschlössel/MAK in Vienna, To Be Perfectly Frank at Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm, Norfolk House music room at the Victoria & Albert museum in London, Cyprus Presidency at the European Parliament in Brussels Belgium, Atelier Jesper Brussels.