The best soundbars are designed primarily to be heard, not seen. This new aluminum-clad behemoth from Bang & Olufsen, however, demands to be heard and seen, and it arrives with a price tag as lofty as its eye-catching “sculptural” design.
Slated to go on sale next month for a whopping $5,800, the Beosound Premiere from Bang & Olufsen arrives packed with speaker drivers—10 of them—as well as support for immersive Dolby Atmos audio.
Among the Beosound Premiere’s internal speakers are a quartet of 4 x 3-inch “racetrack”-style woofers to supply the bass, a pair of two-inch front-firing speakers, two more side-firing drivers for surround effects, and an up-firing driver sitting beneath 1,925 milled perforations, which pay “tribute to B&O’s 100-year heritage,” according to the company.
In all, those 10 drivers serve up seven channels of audio, ideal for streaming Dolby Atmos soundtracks, while Bang & Olufsen’s “Wide Stage” technology employs “driver-specific acoustic data” to help to boost the perceived width and height of the Premiere’s soundstage, and an Advanced Bass management system is designed to add oomph to the built-in woofers.
Bang & Olufsen’s $5,800 Beosound Premiere soundbar boasts an upfiring driver that sits beneath 1,925 milled perforations.
Bang & Olufsen
As far as ports go, the Beosound Premiere offers a single HDMI eARC connector that can handle lossless audio piped from a TV-connected Blu-ray player, along with a three-port gigabit ethernet switch (a premium connectivity feature for a soundbar), and dual-band Wi-Fi. You can stream music to the soundbar via Bluetooth as well as Apple’s AirPlay protocol, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and Deezer Connect.
Finally, there’s the Beosound Premiere’s “pure” aluminum shell, with the whole package adding up to a “sculptural masterpiece and bold expression of acoustic artistry,” boasts Bang & Olufsen CEO Kristian Teär.
The nearly 19-pound soundbar will be available in three variants: Natural Aluminum, Gold Tone, and Black Anthracite, while an included stand allows for either placing the unit on a tabletop or mounting it on a wall.
You’ll also be able to add an optional speaker cover, with a fabric cover in grey mélange available for $325, or a pair of wooden covers (oak and dark oak) crafted from single pieces of wood selling for a budget-busting $1,650 each.
If the standard $5,800 configuration of the Beosound Premiere isn’t premium enough for you, Bang & Olufsen is also offering a “Haute Edition” of the soundbar with “precision-milled grooves achieved through an intricate milling process” that takes 17 hours to complete, the company says.
B&O says it’s only manufacturing 25 units of the $15,700 “Haute Edition” soundbars, which will be individually numbered and arrive with their own certificates of authenticity.
This story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best media-streaming devices.