Bang & Olufsen
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Bang & Olufsen (B&O) is a Danish company that designs and manufactures high end audio products, television sets, and telephones.
Products from B&O are intended to reflect cutting edge industrial design, both in appearance and in operation. B&O products' "retro-contemporary" design style are designed to change the way people feel about electronic goods and their space in our homes[[Citing sources citation needed]]. All of Bang and Olufsen's products are designed in house by a team of specialists. Many of B&O's products were designed by Jacob Jensen (reference [Jacob Jensen Web Site]), whose design firm is still in operation today. David Lewis has designed many of the most recent and well known Bang and Olufsen products
Past products
B&O products often have a unique appearance and user-interface and as such even early models are collectibles today. Information about prior B&O product can be found on "unofficial" or "fan" web sites (See External Links).B&O used a naming nomenclature for many of its products.
- Beocord refers to cassette decks. B&O was a pioneer in cassette technology, having had design involvement with Dolby HX Pro.
- Beomaster refers to receivers. B&O's more recent receivers features the ability to receive complex programming. The 5000 series through the 7000 series features two-way communication with the remote controller, called the "master control unit."
- Beocenter refers to whole system audio. B&O, at one time, made elobarate products that incorporated amplifiers, tuners, record players and cassette decks into a single, large, whole music system, called a "Beocenter."
- Beogram refers to turntables and later cd players. The more recent Beograms has tangential tone arms.
- Beolab refers to loudspeakers with built-in amplifiers; which claims to help eliminate the signal degradation which occurs by having an external amplifier.
- Beovox refers to normal passive loudspeakers.
- Beosystem refers to a line of products that worked together.
- Beocom refers to the company's line of telephones and telephone accessories, such as answering machines.
- Beovision refers to a line of televisions.
The present day, related companies and current products
In the 1990s B&O opened exclusive B&O stores selling directly to users, instead of selling through retailers. Production of audio separates was discontinued in favour of mini-type audio systems sold, as was usual for B&O, at a price higher than the industry average.In addition to consumer products, B&O operates a facility for high-precision aluminium manufacturing (reference [link]) and itself uses aluminum in many of its products.
In 1999, B&O, with Dr. Karsten Nielsen, formed ICEpower A/S. This company is devoted to the development of switching type Class D amplifiers [link]. This type of amplifier has improved efficiency compared to the more usual audio amplifiers of types A, AB, and B.
One of B&O's most successful recent products is the A8 Earbuds (designed by Anders Hermansen), which gained popularity as the Apple iPod reached prominence.
In the UK, one product in particular entered the public consciousness as a regular feature in Irish comedian Graham Norton's late night chat-show: 'So'. Every week the host would prank-call someone somewhere in the world on a provocative B&O banana-shaped telephone, the BeoCom 2.
Bang and Olufsen have also entered the mobile phone market by working with Samsung to produce the Serene
B&O's flagship speaker, the US $19,000 BeoLab 5, uses digital signal processing to calibrate its response to the room in which it sits. A pair of speakers also use 5000 watts of power in eight self-contained ICEpower modules (2500 watts in four modules per speaker). The midrange and treble drives are vertical, and radiate at horizontal discs, using so-called "acoustic lens technology" (licensed from Sausalito Audio Works) to disperse the sound in a horizontal plane of 180 degrees. References: [link], [link], [link], [link].
See also
- BeoSound 2
- BeoSound 4
- BeoLink
- BeoPort
External links
- [Official website]
- [Beoworld] An unofficial web site devoted to B&O.
- [Thogersen] A collector's website with photos of B&O products throughout the decades
- [Beocentral] A reference site containing descriptions and photos of B&O equipment
- [link] Specialists in pre-owned Bang & Olufsen products.
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