Lasting impressions: the newest Beoplay H100 headphones from B&O are for retains

Bang & Olufsen’s Beoplay H100 headphones are the brand new flagship private audio product from the Danish masters. After totally conquering the world of upscale hi-fi, B&O began making headphones within the late Seventies and solely diversified into wi-fi techniques in 2015 with the BeoPlay H8. With the brand new H100, the corporate was ranging from an enviable place, with merchandise that proceed to be admired and coveted.

‘We’re very a lot defining our personal targets and challenges,’ admits Tiina Karjalainen Kierysch, Bang & Olufsen’s head of design, ‘consolation is a giant focus, as is creating an immersive sound expertise. However it’s additionally about modularity [of design].’ The latter, which permits elements to be upgraded and changed to lengthen the lifetime of the system, will be difficult to realize with headphones and their tightly packaged electronics.

‘We began modular design with bigger merchandise like audio system,’ Kierysch says. ‘Now we now have a few user-replaceable elements, just like the internal headband, which will get lots of put on and tear. This will now be eliminated and washed and even changed. Likewise, the H100’s internal earcups are removable, utilizing magnets.’

The brand new Beoplay H100 sure keep B&O’s excessive audio benchmark along with marking this milestone on the corporate’s path to circularity. With the modular design strategy guaranteeing user-friendly replaceable elements and elements, there’s additionally a software program platform that’ll evolve and replace over time. Throw within the non-obligatory five-year guarantee and you’ve got a pair of headphones that ought to endure for many years.

One other side of the modular design is the bond it brings between the corporate and consumer. ‘It’s slightly bit charming for customers to have the ability to look contained in the product,’ Kierysch says. ‘You’ll additionally discover slightly secret hidden message from our founder.’ Different key serviceable elements embrace the circuit boards, drivers and batteries.

Design-wise, the H100s proceed the corporate’s wealthy custom of high quality and ease. The aluminium-framed headphones have a textile headband and lambskin leather-based earpads, with tech together with Dolby Atmos and B&O’s personal adaptive audio processing, EarSense. ‘We work with materials circularity in some ways,’ says Kierysch, including that B&O started its collaboration with the Cradle to Cradle Institute a number of years in the past to assist drive sustainable product improvement.

Comparatively simply recyclable supplies like aluminium are a begin, however as Kierysch says, ‘we are able to at all times enhance. It’s the identical with plastics’. She continues, ‘There’s one thing fascinating concerning the new biobased supplies, for instance. We love working with supplies for his or her particular traits.’

Bang & Olufsen’s head of product circularity and portfolio planning, Mads Kogsgaard Hansen, explains that the corporate has ‘prioritised longevity, upkeep and repairability via modular design… the headphones can adapt and evolve with new applied sciences for a very timeless design.’ Hansen hopes the headphones will get approval on the Cradle to Cradle Licensed Product Normal, changing into the third B&O product to get the nod.

All this ties in properly with a revival of curiosity in longevity, patina, and a much less medical, hotter relationship with our know-how. ‘Pure supplies typically age very fantastically,’ says Kierysch. ‘The patina can inform a narrative about itself. The H100s are operated by way of a contact interface on all sides, whereas there aren’t any fewer than ten microphones to compute the noise-cancelling algorithm, together with a twistable dial to lift or decrease the transparency impact. Lastly, the H100s can detect after they’re being worn or eliminated so there’s no want to modify them on or off.

Lastly, there’s format. A pair of headphones is format agnostic, in fact, and B&O’s latest output has included remastered variations of traditional document gamers (the Beogram 400 Collection) and even the 9000c multi-CD participant. Does the corporate observe tendencies in how clients hearken to music? ‘We concentrate, for positive,’ says Kierysch, ‘LPs are a really clear pattern, particularly amongst musical artists. Maybe CDs aren’t there but, however the 9000c was fairly an unconventional icon. We modified the CD participant from a black field to exhibiting off CDs as artwork. May there be a method of doing this for streaming? Perhaps.’

In the end, the H100 headphones faucet right into a rising want to protect and keep the perfect examples of know-how for so long as attainable. ‘I consider that over time, longevity will grow to be an increasing number of related,’ Kierysch says. ‘New supplies will solely be used in the event that they final. At Bang & Olufsen, we need to transfer away from merchandise changing into out of date too rapidly. Our merchandise are made to final and hold.’