Practice does indeed makes perfect – and here we have a successful cast exactly as it came out of the mould.  Later, at the factory, the mould is sprayed with the coating which gives it a dull satin grey effect, as mentioned. This one, however, is ‘naked’ aluminium - apart from its hat to preserve modesty!

The immediate thing which strikes you about the BeoLab 90 is the size. Whilst not being an absolute Colossus it has huge presence. Standing a fraction over 125cm (that’s 49.3 inches, or just over four feet tall) you certainly know you’re looking at something special, and it’ll be the focal point of the room, for sure – but it doesn’t look aggressive or imposing thanks to the styling (and in my personal opinion the abundance of soft fabric instead of wood grain or shiny lacquered MDF helps..)  It looks more intriguing than anything as I’ve never seen a design like it in a loudspeaker.

One misconception I had was that the wooden panels were at the front and rear of the speaker. This isn’t the case – they’re one on each side, so you have two fabric diamonds at the front and the ‘open beak’ look to the sides. Once I had this straight in my head I stopped with the hungry blackbird internal monologue I was having with myself.  

Here’s an image of the speaker, from the front, with Geoff Martin in the background doing a rather decent job of being our resident DJ as all requests were honoured in addition to his own carefully chosen ‘Martin-Mega-Mix’….

You’ll see (if you look closely) the Bang & Olufsen logo lit up in the very centre of the speaker. This is one small piece of black anodised aluminium around (8cm at a guess) wide, which is fed into a special machine to have the BANG & OLUFSEN font laser etched from the rear. A small amount of clear gel is then applied which then allows the light from a small light diode behind to illuminate the logo.  I overheard someone say there is a light sensor on the speaker which activates the lighting for the logo, but I didn’t have this confirmed.

We're jumping ahead here though, so let's get back on track with assembly now we're clear which are the sides and which is the front!

Once the cast is made and coated it’s time for it to be built. Here we go to the Factory (it’s 4 or 5, I can’t remember – I think it’s 5) where the B&O Televisions used to be assembled. There are two very large factory floors which are now empty, one half of one floor has been given to the assembly of the BeoLab 90 – and the rest is earmarked for expansion of the Automotive section of the business at the moment. (All TV production is now in the Czech Republic factory as it was considered cost-efficient to have all TV production in one place).

In one section the tops of the speakers are assembled. The BeoLab 90 uses very high-end ‘Scan-Speak’ drivers, made in Denmark (here’s proof!) of which these are clearly destined for the Australian market as they’re upside down.

Here’s a close-up of the front of one of the Scan-Speak midrange drivers.  I did question Geoff Martin wether that was just a logo or it had some kind of effect on the driver but he wasn’t sure. What he did say though was that this design was exactly the same on the rear of the driver, but offset perfectly. This to me means it was deliberate, but if Geoff couldn’t see an obvious reason I’m not even going to start guessing.

I was handed, in the listening room, one of these drivers. I’m no expert but I can tell you the quality was Rolls-Royce like. Geoff drew me a detailed diagram and gave me a full explanation of just how good these drivers were, and why. I’d love to hand you one right now to inspect, like Geoff kindly did for me - but all I can do is assure you that after seeing many drivers in my life, this one was a work of art!

So, to the top sections (I’m sure they have a name like ‘heads’ or more correctly ‘midrange and tweeter housings’ but I’m not sure).

What you can see are three top sections on a trolley, and for those with keen eyesight you’ll see that two have green markers below them, whilst one has a red marker. The red marker denotes it’s for the ‘Master’ and the Green marker denotes it's for the ‘Slave’.

I asked Geoff what the logic to this was and he explained that for full functionality is was deemed best that there is a master and a slave as having two masters would interfere with the protection mode, and two speakers will always communicate better if one is ‘in charge’ so to speak. I'm sure Geoff could go into further technical detail if required, but the explanation I was given made sense to me.

It’s worth bearing on mind that for full functionality they are connected directly together with DPL (Digital PowerLink). They can connect with WISA independently but you will lose quite a bit of functionality.. It's always best to connect directly to the source, with DPL connecting the Master to the Slave.

As mentioned, DPL is the new ‘Digital PowerLink’ – more of which I’m sure we’ll hear of, but I’m sure you’re all wondering what the connection panel of the ‘Master’ speaker looks like (the slave lacks about half of these connections as it doesn’t need them).

So, without further ado – here’s the ‘Business End’ for your inspection!

Back to the factory floor though, and the making of the speaker (I jumped around there, sorry…) and here we can see the three aluminium sections which I’d almost say were ‘trim pieces’ but they’re really more than that.

They start life as a single, long block of aluminium and are then milled out into a long shape, attached to a special machine, then bent into a (crude explanation coming up) ‘zig zag’ shape called the ‘Crown’ – aptly named because of the shape.

Here’s a special hanging display of the three crowns as they would sit on the speaker. In true B&O fashion, rather than make it easy they are all unique in the fact they are different thicknesses – the thickest being at the bottom end...

So, now you’ve seen the ‘Crowns’ you’re ready to see the two special robots which polish them. Each crown takes a full 25 minutes to polish, and as mentioned there are three per speaker..  

Here are the robots in action. Please turn up the volume and listen to the commentary!

So, the ‘crowns’ are polished, the ‘heads’ are finished, the components are all in place, and the BeoLab 90 is on the factory floor. Then begins the assembly process for the main lower section..

First is the wiring, then the boards, and here we have a B&O technician pre-wiring ready to install the amplifier. The section you can see being fitted has the cooling panels with the external fins underneath..  It looks more like an angry blackbird demanding its circuitry!!