Bang & Olufsen's new BeoSound Moment system matches playback to the way you feel

Andrew Everard
Thursday, January 8, 2015

New £1795 system with innovative touch-sensitive wood interface is designed to give an ‘intelligent and playful’ way to access music

BeoSound Moment's colourful MoodWheel
BeoSound Moment's colourful MoodWheel

With so much music now available, either stored on a home network or ‘on tap’ for instant streaming, is it hard to work out exactly what you want to hear? Bang & Olufsen clearly think so – which is why their new BeoSound Moment wireless music system endeavours to make the choice for you, using intelligent features to suggest music or radio stations to suit the day of the week and time of day.

Using a system called Intelligent PatternPlay, the £1795 BeoSound Moment analyses users’ listening patterns, memorises them, and uses this information to create a listening experience ‘both familiar and explorative’.

The company says that ‘Over time, BeoSound Moment will gradually start to know your taste in music, and be able to play what you most likely want to hear, without you even having to ask. Just like friendship, it only gets better with time.’

The music is drawn from your own locally-stored music collection and the online streaming service provided by Deezer, with access to more than 35 million tracks, and is controlled by a novel two-sided removable control panel/remote control, combining a MoodWheel selector and an innovative touch-sensitive oak panel.

The MoodWheel uses a colour gamut display ranging from blue (selecting a melancholic mood) through ‘passionate’ red to ‘energetic’ yellow. Touch the centre of the wheel and you get familiar music; move out toward one of the colour extremes and the system’s algorithms will select increasingly adventurous music suggestions.

On the wood side of the panel you get access to the automatic PatternPlay selections, Bang & Olufsen saying this is ‘designed for one-touch access to exactly the sound experience that fits your daily rhythm.

‘The beautiful panel of touch-sensitive oak allows you to have your favourite music flowing from your speakers with just one touch on the wooden wheel.’

On sale at the end of this month in countries where the Deezer service is available, the BeoSound Moment’s price includes a 12-month Deezer Premium+ subscription. It can be used with any of Bang & Olufsen’s wired or wireless active speaker systems.

The Bang & Olufsen system is a natural extension of the listening options now being offered by a number of streaming music services, as part of a move away from just presenting a simple ‘linear’ listening experience into one based around ‘curated’ playlists and suggesting to users ‘if you liked that, why not try…?’ options.

It’s something the Danish company first explored with its BeoSound 5 system, launched in 2008, and using a system called MOTS: this allowed users to select a track, and then have the system deliver ‘more of the same’ from their music collection. That initial system was £3500, with the BeoSound 5 Encore arriving three years later at a slightly more affordable £2900.

The new system updates the technology with its cloud-based music access, and will be in Bang & Olufsen shops at the end of January.

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