Designed in collaboration with British industrial designer, Benjamin Hubert, the Beosound Balance by Bang & Olufsen is design poetry, in the form of a smart speaker.

Design it or not, space and atmosphere come as an inseparable pair. As people, we tend to be much more familiar with the former – after all, of the two it’s the one that we are able to see and touch. The latter, however, is much more elusive in nature; invisible, untouchable yet omnipresent, atmosphere is simply something instinctively (or intuitively) felt.

In residential projects, it is rare for ambiance design to receive the energy, budget and consideration equivalent to that of its spatial counterpart. Thankfully, the likes of Danish luxury audio-tech design brand, Bang & Olufsen, and London-based multi-disciplinary design practice, LAYER, have been devoting equal efforts to aesthetics as well as atmospherics to bring us the Beosound Balance by Benjamin Hubert.

 

The refined material palette softens the technology of the Beosound Balance and enables it to blend in seamlessly with quality furniture.

 

Inspired by interior objects and created with a passion for music, design and craftsmanship, the Beosound Balance by Benjamin Hubert is a smart speaker that redefines home audio in a way that only Bang & Olufsen is capable. “Bang & Olufsen has spent decades researching the influence of room acoustics on human perception, which resulted in the development of unique technologies in our flagship speakers,” says the brand’s tonmeister, Neo Kaplansis.

“The vision with Beosound Balance by Benjamin Hubert is to make the speaker feel like an extension of the atmosphere in the home, reflecting the place it is in and the person using it. The design is both sensorial and tactile, with a look and feel driven by high-quality interior craftsmanship and materials, as well as highly innovative,” shares Gavin Ivester, vice president of design for Bang & Olufsen.

Like a sound technician dressed in couture clothing, the Beosound Balance comes with seven uniquely configured speaker drivers with two opposing woofers that generate powerful bass while canceling out vibrations, sculpted into a cylinder, clad in knitted textile, and poised atop a base of solid oak.

 

The design is both sensorial and tactile, with a look and feel driven by high quality interior craftsmanship and materials.

 

This refined material palette softens the technology of the Beosound Balance and enables it to blend in seamlessly with quality furniture. Blending in as an interior object, Beosound Balance has a hidden touch interface to manually control the speaker. When approaching the speaker, the interface lights up as an invitation to interact. A few simple commands in swipe language is all you need to know to manually control volume; pause; play; skip; or select pre-saved tracks.

Bang & Olufsen have not forgotten that this is the 21^st Century, and no person nor thing need be restricted to solely touch communication – not when products can hear too. As any self-respecting smart speaker should, Beosound Balance by Benjamin Hubert supports Google Chromecast, Apple Airplay2 and Spotify Connect1. The speaker comes with leading voice assistants built-in: The Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa2 so, when you are on Wi-Fi, you can play music, check the news and much more completely hands free.

Bang & Olufsen
bang-olufsen.com

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