The Cult Of Bang & Olufsen

摘要

Ted Wright has very specific taste in music. The founder and CEO of a marketing agency in Atlanta adores bands like Pylon and R.E.M., an alt-rock sound that took shape in Athens, Georgia, in the 1980s (he bought the latest R.EM on CD the day it was released). And he prefers to listen to his music on products designed by the Danish consumer electronics company Bang & Olufsen. The centerpiece of Wright's B&O collection is a BeoSound 9000 CD player—"the classic," Wright calls it. This device isn't like any other CD player you've seen: Mounted on a wall, it's a glittering strip of metaland smoked glass about a yard long (or tall, depending on how you orient it). It holds a half-dozen compact discs in such a way that their labels face outward, visible through the pane of glass. The unit's "CD clamper" slides back and forth to whichever disc you select. Wright has had it since around the time it debuted in 1996, and B&O sold it until August of this year—the company's site describes it as a "kinetic sculpture."