(Image credit: Bang & Olufsen)

The audiophiles at Bang & Olufsen are celebrating a century of sound with the most extraordinary and exclusive speaker in their hundred-year history.

The Beolab 90 Titan Edition takes the iconic flagship speaker that marked the firm's 90th anniversary and strips it down to its bare essentials, removing the acoustic veils to expose its raw, hand-finished aluminium and adding delicate but significant engraved details.

This is the first of five Atelier creations that Bang & Olufsen will reveal during its centenary year. The next four are currently under wraps, but the brand promises that each one will reflect its commitment to timeless design and exceptional craftsmanship.

(Image credit: Bang & Olufsen)

The Beolab 90 is still an otherworldly-looking thing ten years after it first made jaws drop, and this new version manages to somehow look more like a speaker and less like anything on Earth at the same time. The removed veils make it clear you're looking at a speaker, but demonstrate that it's a really strange-looking speaker.

It looks like the final boss of a sci-fi battle rather than something you'd put in your front room. But perhaps that's appropriate, because the homes these ultra-luxe speakers will end up inhabiting are from a very different world to mine.

Bang & Olufsen Beolab 90 Titan Edition: key features

Let's start with the price – if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

The Titan is even more exclusive than the Beolab 90 (currently £141,000 / €167,200 / AU$320,585 / about $185,000 per set), and with each one built to order, its ticket will be based on each individual customer's exact requirements.

The core of the Beolab 90 Titan Edition is its bespoke, 65kg aluminium cabinet. That's been sandblasted with fine particles from crushed volcanic rock, giving it a raw finish that's a nice contrast to the highly polished base panels.

Every single detail has been "obsessively refined" to highlight the contrast between matte and polished areas. (Image credit: Bang & Olufsen)

Bang & Olufsen says that every single detail from the fittings to the woofer surrounds has been "obsessively refined" to emphasise the contrast between matte and polished finishes. And the face mask on top of the speaker is machined from a single block of solid aluminium in a process that takes 12 hours.

Each speaker is surrounded by ultra-fine machined grooves that are intended to evoke the glow of a lighthouse, and the front knots feature apertures that add "visual intrigue when illuminated".

I'd love to hear these, because the Beolab 90's 18 hand-made speaker drivers and dedicated amplification with Hi-Res Audio produce something very special.

One can only dream.