While many of us probably left our appetite for renovation projects back in 2020, Bang & Olufsen has seemingly run with the newfound hobby.
Having that year recreated 95 of its Beogram 4000c turntables from the 1970s, it has now revived another classic from the past for limited-edition sale: the Beosound 9000 CD player. Only this time it isn’t just a CD player (probably sensible), it's a fully fledged music system.
While the fully restored and reimagined six-disc CD changer from the 1990s lies at its nostalgic heart, the Beosystem 9000c also comprises the company’s 2021-released Beolab 28 active wireless speakers and a Beoremote One control. Today, 200 systems become available, priced at £45,000 / $55,000 each.
The second project in the brand’s recreated classics series came from a desire to “demonstrate that a second-life product can be just as attractive as a new product and that a high-quality item such as the Beosound 9000 doesn’t need to have an end-date,” says the company’s Mads Kogsgaard Hansen.
You can read more about the super-slim and ultra-smart Beolab 28 speakers here, but in a nutshell they have amplification built-in, offer wireless streaming via AirPlay 2, Chromecast and Bluetooth 5.0, and, in true B&O fashion, sport some unique mechanical wizardry: when the system is switched on, the speakers slide aside into either ‘narrow’ (focused stereo image) or ‘wide’ (wider dispersion) mode.
As for the resurrected Beosound 9000 CD player, B&O managed to source 200 of them to bring back to its factory in Struer, Denmark – the very place where they were first created in 1996. Closing another satisfying circle, some of the technicians who worked on the original have played a hand in inspecting, repairing, cleaning and tuning the players for this project, too.
Presumably so that the CD player and speaker pairing would get the nod of appreciation from even the most meticulous interior designer, Bang & Olufsen inverted the deep black and natural aluminium finishes of the original colourway of Beosound 9000 to match the Beolab 28’s aluminium lamellas and black aluminium base. Every aluminium element of the CD player is a re-machined and re-anodised original part – hairline brushed, etched and pearl-blasted.
According to Bang & Olufsen, the industrial designer of the original Beosound 9000, David Lewis, advocated designs that allowed owners to see – and be ‘in touch with’ their music, hence the visibility of all six CDs through a glass lid. The idea apparently came to him while walking past a record store in London where six CDs were laid out in a row in the window. To complement that visual flare, the CD-changer mechanism moves from the first CD to the sixth, and momentarily holds it so that owners can read the text on the disc, before registering the information and playing it back.
MORE:
Tight on space? This superb vinyl and streaming hi-fi system is ideal for smaller rooms
How to buy second-hand and vintage hi-fi speakers
How do we make hi-fi sustainable? We asked Bang & Olufsen to find out
