Bang Olufsen’s exclusive Atelier service celebrates 100 years by re-imagining its flagship speaker with an exposed, textured aluminum frame.
Summary
- Bang Olufsen’s Atelier service has created the Beolab 90 Titan Edition to mark the brand’s 100th anniversary.
- The design removes the speaker’s acoustic veils to expose a 65kg aluminum cabinet, which is hand-blasted with crushed volcanic rock.
- It retains the original’s 8,200-watt, 18-driver specs and is the first of five exclusive centenary models planned.
Bang Olufsen is marking its centenary by looking at its most advanced speaker, the Beolab 90. The Danish audio company’s exclusive Atelier service has produced the Beolab 90 Titan Edition, a limited-run model that also notes a decade since the speaker’s original 2015 launch.
This new edition is an exercise in material honesty. The Atelier service stripped the speaker of its acoustic veils, removing the fabric to expose the 65kg, hand-finished aluminum cabinet. This structural core has been given a textured finish, the result of being hand-blasted with fine particles of crushed volcanic rock.
The raw texture of the frame is set against polished base panels. This contrast is intended to create an “illusion of the speaker floating.” Other details are precise: the face mask on top is machined from a single block of solid aluminum, a process that requires 12 hours of milling. Delicate aluminum rings circle each woofer, and grooves machined around the drivers are meant to radiate like “sonic ripples.” Even the fasteners are part of the design, each one polished and engraved with “1925,” the year Bang Olufsen was founded.
The technology inside remains unchanged from the 2015 original. The Beolab 90 is still the brand’s flagship, built with 18 hand-made drivers, advanced DSP, and beam-forming technology. It delivers 8,200 watts per speaker. This processing allows the speaker to create a precise “sweet-spot” for a solitary listener or open up to a full 360-degree soundstage for social settings.
“More than a celebration of our legacy, this edition showcases a level of craftsmanship and bespoke capability that only Bang Olufsen can create,” says B&O’s CEO Kristian Teär. “It is a bold statement of what’s possible when artistry, technology and vision converge.”
The Titan Edition is the first of five exclusive creations the Atelier will produce for the centenary, all of which will be distinct interpretations of the Beolab 90 aimed at collectors.
Bang Olufsen has not released a price for the Titan Edition. A standard pair of Beolab 90 speakers costs $211,800, and this limited-edition version is expected to be priced significantly higher than that figure.
