To paraphrase an artist who’s sold a lot of music on the compact disc format: don’t call the CD revival a comeback; CDs have been here for years. What’s the latest evidence of this? Danish electronics company and audiophile magnet Bang & Olufsen recently announced the return of its Beosound 9000 CD player — a high-end six-disc changer that first debuted in 1996.
This isn’t quite a simple revival of a ’90s classic, however. Instead, Bang & Olufsen found and refurbished 200 Beosound 9000s, then paired them with a set of Beolab 28 speakers. The combination of the two is known as the Beosystem 9000c, and if that designation looks familiar, it’s because Bang & Olufsen did something similar in 2020 with a turntable, resulting in the 4000c.
In announcing the Beosystem 9000c, Bang & Olufsen also made an argument in favor of technology with a long lifespan. “We want to demonstrate that a second-life product can be just as attractive as a new product and that a high-quality item such as the Beosound 9000 doesn’t need to have an end-date,” said the company’s Head of Product Circularity & Portfolio Planning, Mads Kogsgaard Hansen, in a statement.
If this news warms your physical media-loving heart, it’s also worth noting that the Beosystem 9000c retails for $55,000 on Bang & Olufsen’s website.
Lessons From a ’90s CD Collection
What one man learned from revisiting his old CDs decades later“Vinyls and CDs have returned to being something special, where people invest time and energy to connect with the music and artists they love,” Hansen said. “Longevity in design and the passion for music listening are essentially what we are celebrating with the launch of Beosystem 9000c.”
And while plenty of music fans continue to embrace streaming, the last few years have seen both CDs and vinyl showing plenty of signs of durability. A Deadline article from March hailed the “remarkable comeback” of both formats, noting that sales of both formats had increased from 2022 to 2023. So if you’ve been on the lookout for a high-end system to immerse yourself in your CD collection, your search may well be over.
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