Bang & Olufsen Closes Out Its Centennial Series with Wooden and Mother-of-Pearl Speakers

Last year, Bang & Olufsen kicked off its 100th birthday in style, rolling out its Atelier Editions of the Beolab 90 (a very expensive floor-standing speaker that was itself created for the hifi brand’s 90th jubilee back in 2015). So far, we’ve gotten the shiny silver Titan, the deep black Phantom, and the garishly purple Mirage.

For the centennial, five speakers were to be made in total, and, while they’re pretty much out of our own price range, we’ve been waiting patiently since December to see the final two. Now they’ve arrived.

Ten Years and Still the Standard

B&O spent eight years developing the Beolab 90 before unveiling the thing in 2015, led by acoustic specialist Dr. Geoff Martin and rooted in decades of research going back to the 1960s. The result was 18 Scan-Speak drivers per tower and 8,200 watts of amplification

What separates the Beolab 90 from other flagship speakers is its beam-forming tech. Active Room Compensation analyzes your space and adjusts accordingly, while Beam Width and Direction Control let you tailor sound dispersion across five different acoustic fronts. It’s essentially studio-level adaptability packaged for home use, assuming your home can handle speakers that weigh more than most people.

At 302lbs per speaker, this is not a product you move around casually. Its innovations in Beam Width Control, Active Room Compensation, and DSP processing have since filtered down into everything else in the B&O lineup, from the Beolab 28 and 50 to the Beosound Theatre. That foundation hasn’t changed for the Atelier editions.

Wood That Moves

The Monarch Edition is the more visually grounded of the two. Working with a Danish wood supplier it has been working with for over 75 years, B&O selected Rosewood Palisander specifically for its deep color and grain pattern, then scaled up the lamella size to let the material breathe. The result is angled, hand-carved rosewood lamellas that follow the curves and angles of the aluminum cabinet in a full 360-degree wrap, unified by a solid rosewood top ring and continued on the lower base panels.

Six wooden knots connect the lamellas, with the front one featuring a light-through-wood stripe that adds a surprisingly delicate detail at this scale. It contrasts against ochre-colored aluminum, and the semi-transparent fabric sections give you a glimpse of the drivers sitting behind all of it.

289 Spheres Per Panel

Built on that same foundation, the Zenith is still something else entirely. Six triangular panels, each containing 289 anodized aluminum spheres arranged in seven bespoke pearl-inspired colors, wrap around the cabinet. That’s 1,734 individual spheres per speaker, each mounted manually. B&O developed an entirely new mounting method to eliminate any risk of rub and buzz, particularly for the panels sitting in front of the woofers, where significant air displacement during playback creates real engineering problems.

The machined aluminum facemask is pearl blasted and anodized in dark gray, made to look like an oyster shell. Meanwhile, a circular mother-of-pearl inlay crowns the top and interacts with light in beautiful ways.

Spec Sheet

Pricing & Availability

Each edition is limited to just 10 pairs, available now through Bang & Olufsen stores, with the speakers making their public debut at the brand’s San Francisco Culture Store, which hosted the Phantom and Mirage unveiling back in December. Pricing starts at €480,000 (~$554,000) per pair, making these considerably more than the already formidable standard Beolab 90.

Recap

Bang & Olufsen Beolab 90 Atelier Monarch and Zenith Editions

Bang & Olufsen just unveiled the final two speakers in its five-part centennial Atelier series for the Beolab 90: the wood-wrapped Monarch Edition and the sphere-covered Zenith Edition, both limited to just 10 pairs each.

Learn More: Bang & Olufsen