As you might expect, Bang & Olufsen's take on the one-stop-shop wireless music system for the living room is both stylish and expensive. The two part BeoSound Moment system comprises a hub that's compatible with B&O's entire range of wired and wireless speakers, including those boasting the company's Immaculate Wireless Sound technology, and a tablet-like wireless touch interface. When used together, they integrate digital music collections and streaming services into one unit that can match tunes to a listener's mood.
The BeoSound Moment system has overall dimensions of 273 x 150 x 199 mm (11 x 6 x 8 in) and a combined weight of 2.4 kg (5.3 lb). The hub includes an Ethernet port, RCA line-in and two Power Link sockets for cabled connectivity to a router, speakers and TV systems and built-in Wi-Fi technology for getting online via a home router.
When docked in the hub, the interface slate, which has a 7-inch, 1280 x 800 IPS touch display surrounded by cool aluminum on one face and a touch-sensitive wood interface on the other, is angled for operation comfort. When removed from the hub, thanks to its built-in 3,500 mAh Li-Pol battery and wireless connection to the hub, it can be passed around friends or family members to share the listening experience.
Using the touchscreen display and milled touch wheel, listeners can browse playlists, tune in to more than 70,000 internet radio stations or access online music libraries, including more than 35 million tracks supplied by music streaming service Deezer. Something called the MoodWheel has also been included, where a user can express a mood using the multi-colored interface and have the Moment find a track to match it.
The mood music is defined by the user's finger position on the MoodWheel. A listener can glide through melancholic blue to passionate red or energetic yellow and music will be selected to suit. The closer to the center, the more likely the unit will chose something familiar. The further out and the Moment "tempts the listener with musical adventures of associated music from the vast online catalog of songs."
The oak panel on the flip side can also tailor music to match a mood. The embossed wooden wheel is used for simple device operation or with the PatternPlay feature, an intelligent algorithm that's said to adapt to a user's listening patterns and musical tastes, and suggests tunes or radio shows that best fit with the day of the week and time of day. The feature tracks what's being played through the Moment over time and uses this data to make predictions on what the user wants to hear.
The BeoSound Moment sound processor is reported to offer high quality 2.1 stereo performance, supporting lossless FLAC and ALAC file formats as well as high resolution MP3, WMA and AAC formats, and its built-in bass management automatically filters low frequency content to the best thunder thrower detected in a speaker setup.
The system is DLNA-compliant, which allows access to music stored on a NAS or PC/Mac, and an integrated Bluetooth receiver caters for streamed content from a BT-enabled smartphone or tablet (though there is an aux line-in port for feeding in tunes from a non-wireless music source).
The new B&O music system goes on sale at the end of this month for US$2,795 (which includes 12 months access to Deezer's Premium+ service).
Have a look at the short introduction video below.
Product page: BeoSound Moment
