Beolab 90

Why it is renowned

Stereophile reviewed the Beolab 90 in December 2016. Kalman Rubinson, who had heard a final prototype at the factory in Struer, called it something unique, a speaker built to control how it spreads sound across the whole audio band and so lessen the room's hold on what the listener hears.¹ For the company's hundredth year it was remade in five limited Atelier Editions: Titan, Shadow, Zenith, Monarch and Mirage.²

The story

The name marks Bang & Olufsen's 90th anniversary, kept in 2015, the year the speaker was first shown to the press in New York.¹ Its shape was drawn by Thorsten Frackenpohl and André Poulheim; Gert Munch, Jakob Dyre and the tonmeister Geoff Martin led its technical development.¹

Each speaker holds 18 drivers in three stacked enclosures, every driver with its own converter and ICEpower amplifier, all run by one digital signal processor.¹ Three front drivers play as an ordinary three-way speaker; the other fifteen shape how the sound spreads into the room, set as Narrow, Wide or Omni, and the beam can be turned towards another seat. The speaker also corrects for the room it stands in.¹ The cabinet is clad in aluminium, oak and fabric, in black anthracite, natural aluminium or oak.³¹