The Beosystem 9000c CD Player
Bang & Olufsen’s reissued classic will make you want to dust off your CDs
It has taken this writer several decades to figure out what Bang & Olufsen really is, design-wise.
You see, for me, the essence of B&O has always seemed to be a 1960s or 1970s Stanley Kubrick–movie set designer’s vision of what home gadgetry would look like in the 2020s. But ironically, now that we’re in the 2020s, B&O’s products look like the work of an unbelievably brave and futuristic designer from at least 50 years ago.
For your columnist, who was also designed several decades ago, this is a huge plus. I can’t walk into a B&O store without wanting everything, and a visit to their factory and museum in western Denmark a few years ago almost gave me palpitations.
But being slightly stuck in the past when it comes to aesthetics is also the reason why B&O struggles a little in the modern world. The problem isn’t that hi-fi snobs dislike it—they basically dislike anything that looks superb, and they’re not the target market. It’s not that B&O sounds bad or outdated, either, because it’s technically glorious. It just has the air about it of being a bit self-consciously designer, a tad try-hard—and paradoxically old-fashioned.
Rather cleverly, B&O has been making the most of this perception of the brand since 2020. In that year, they released a limited edition—just 100—of a heavily refurbished and modernized 1972 turntable, allied with more modern components to make a full hi-fi system of breathtaking beauty. Priced at $65,000, it sold out within weeks, with B&O-lovers around the world trampling on each other to secure one.
What nobody outside the company knew was that, at the time, B&O was already working on phase two of this lucrative nostalgia trip, a reimagining of their 1996 classic, the Beosound 9000 CD player, which featured a long row of six CDs, naked and proud, their artwork showing through glass. The Beosound 9000 was most commonly seen hanging vertically on the walls of Kubrick set–type homes, but could also be set up lying flat.
Two hundred of the “new” Beosound 9000c players have now been released as a package with a pair of modern Beolab active speakers. The electronics are entirely new, and each $55,000 system has been re-engineered by B&O staff brought out of retirement to work again at their original desks.
Getting hold of the hardware to cannibalize was quite an operation. Old 9000 units, working or not, were surreptitiously bought up from around the world, mostly on eBay, and shipped to Struer, B&O’s hometown these past 99 years.
A lot of the old 9000s harvested for recycling were hanging on walls, apparently, loaded with CDs but not used in years. I suspect the same will happen even now that the CD decks have been meticulously rebuilt, because the new 9000c system can also stream music from your tablet, computer, or phone using AirPlay or Bluetooth.
Whatever you choose to listen to, the new system sounds magnificent. If you buy one, do make sure you have enough CDs with artwork on them to display—a lot of early discs had no great visual appeal. And if you don’t want the new system but would love to get your old Beosystem 9000 working again (as a CD deck, but without modern features such as streaming), B&O is willing—and now has the components and the expertise—to refurbish a limited number of originals. B&O dealers should be able to advise.
The Zwilling Fresh & Save 7-Piece Vacuum Cube Set
The easiest way to keep your food fresh is also the best way to marinate it
It was Aristotle, supposedly, in the fourth century B.C., who said, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” He was probably referring more to political and philosophical vacuums than he was to physical nothingness, but he was right on the science front nevertheless. Bugs that make food go bad need air. So if you can store food, even in the refrigerator, under vacuum, it stays fresh much longer. This is why vacuum sealers, which usually cost four figures or more, are standard restaurant-kitchen equipment.
If you want the same technology at home, the German kitchen-gadget-meister Zwilling is your best bet. It has a great range of glass food-storage boxes for the refrigerator, along with plastic vacuum-storage bags for the freezer, all of which can be simply—and rather satisfyingly—evacuated with Zwilling’s $60 vacuum pump, which looks a lot like the Zwilling’s electric salt and pepper mills.
Zwilling has now expanded its range to an extensive selection of stackable plastic containers, which are much lighter, use the same vacuum pump, and can be used in a fridge or pantry. There’s a variety of starter kits, or you can buy elements separately.
If sucking the air out of food containers for everything from leftovers to cereals becomes addictive, you may like to know about a new, more powerful domestic vacuum-container system from Italy, not due to arrive in the U.S. until next year—the company, Bipod, won’t ship to the States in the meantime—but worth buying if you are in Europe. Their product is called the Droid, and it’s a lot more expensive than Zwilling’s—the starter set, with vacuum pump and three vessels, comes out to $400.
The advantage, it was claimed at the system’s launch in London earlier this week, is that the Bipod Droid vacuum is a little stronger than Zwilling’s, removing 95 percent of the air. One online tester got a tomato to last six weeks in the refrigerator using the Bipod.
A more interesting benefit, however, is that marinating under the kind of vacuum the Bipod creates seems to be much faster and more effective than in the air—the makers say a marinade that might take hours to work well can be done in 30 minutes this way.
The Shokz OpenFit Earbuds
Listen to music out in the world without sacrificing safety
Shokz, a 20-year-old audio company in Austin, Texas, has long specialized in headphones that don’t isolate users from the sound around them. This has traditionally been done by bone conduction through the skull, which works well and leaves the users—typically urban runners and cyclists—aware of their surroundings. But the audio quality afforded by bone conduction is decent at best.
Another common way for city headphone wearers to hear approaching cars, bikes, or madmen while listening to music is the now ubiquitous “ambient” setting on Bluetooth headphones, which uses the built-in microphones to pipe in environmental sounds. It’s O.K., but also not great.
Shokz’s new OpenFit model, however, is a very different animal. It places a powerful miniature speaker right by the entrance to the ear canal, rather than sealed into it. The effect is almost magical. You hear the music at pretty much full blast, but you can still clearly hear what’s going on around you. This writer was not expecting the OpenFit to be more than a gimmick, but it works really well.
The Vieunite Textura Digital Canvas
A digital frame that might finally normalize the heretofore imperfect technology
Digital art frames, whether you use them to display paintings, photographs, or NFTs, are pretty much a background technology. They’re fun. They bring interest to a bit of wall space that doesn’t quite merit your best art. But they’re also kind of … well, not in great taste. A nice, minimal, modern frame around a canvas-like surface flicking through hundreds of great works of art seems like a neat idea, but it’s remarkable how soon you take it for granted and stop noticing it.
You also need to consider how to power them without involving a messy dangling cable. Having an electrician chase out a channel in the wall seems a bit drastic for a gadget you might get bored with. Placing the digital canvas on a cabinet is one popular solution.
If you are unperturbed by the downsides of digital frames, Netgear has historically more or less owned the space with their Meural Canvas line, which runs from $300 to $700.
Vieunite, however, a new player in Birmingham, England—previously into store signage—is a worthwhile competitor and comes in slightly cheaper. The screen quality is possibly better than Meural’s, and the size, at 28 by 18 inches, is equivalent to that of the largest Netgear offering.
The usefulness of these frames often rests on the quality of the phone app from which you select the art to be displayed. The Meural app has been around longer and is excellent, whereas the Vieunite app is currently not great. It will no doubt improve. However, Vieunite already offers a better range of free art, including multiple works from the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Galleries of Scotland, and others. There’s also no need to take out a subscription with Vieunite.
You need to pay for Vieunite in British pounds sterling, but it ships free and comes with a U.S. plug.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer at the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology
