Bang & Olufsen Releases DIY Module to Add Wireless Capability to Legacy Speakers

Bang & Olufsen teamed with HiFiBerry to launch an open-source do-it-yourself product that will add wireless capability to traditional passive loudspeakers, it said Thursday. The $189 Beocreate 4 four-channel amplifier, created with HiFiBerry, has a digital-to-analog converter and digital signal processor (DSP) with up to 180 watts of output power. A YouTube video shows a young woman removing the back from a Bang & Olufsen speaker and plugging the module onto a circuit board. A Raspberry Pi computer, which can also be plugged into a speaker’s Beocreate board, is required for programming the DSP, said B&O. Anders Buchmann, B&O chief intrapreneur, said a lot of vintage speakers are stored away, not used, or discarded and the company “wanted to change that.” The effort with HiFiBerry is about “empowering our customers to bring those products back to life themselves with modern-day features.”