BANG & OLUFSEN AS

Their core work

Bang & Olufsen is a Danish premium electronics manufacturer with over a century of expertise in high-fidelity audio and visual products, renowned for combining acoustic engineering with industrial design. In H2020, they participate as an industry partner in Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks, hosting and co-supervising doctoral researchers working on next-generation perceptual audio-visual technologies. Their technical contributions span perceptual quality of high-dynamic-range and light-field imaging (RealVision) and networked spatial audio systems with intelligent microphone and loudspeaker arrays (SOUNDS). They bring rare industrial grounding to academic research: real product constraints, listening room expertise, and decades of psychoacoustic know-how.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the earlier project (RealVision, 2018), B&O's H2020 engagement centered on the visual side of perceptual quality — HDR rendering, light field imaging, and how humans experience hyperrealistic displays. By 2021, with SOUNDS, the focus shifted decisively toward audio: spatial sound, microphone and loudspeaker array design, wireless audio networks, and human-machine audio communication. The shift likely reflects both the maturation of their visual research interests and growing strategic priority of connected, networked audio in the smart home and premium streaming markets.

B&O is moving toward intelligent, network-connected audio — microphone arrays, wireless sensors, IoT integration — suggesting future collaboration potential sits at the intersection of acoustic engineering, embedded signal processing, and smart home audio.

How they like to work

Bang & Olufsen participates exclusively as an industry partner in MSCA Innovative Training Networks — they never lead consortia but contribute industry mentorship, product context, and applied validation to academic-led training programmes. With 29 unique partners across 7 countries from just 2 projects, they are embedded in broad, multi-institutional consortia typical of ITN structures rather than bilateral arrangements. Working with them means gaining access to a respected industry voice in audio-visual quality research, with the expectation that B&O shapes research questions through real product requirements rather than through administrative leadership.

B&O has connected with 29 distinct consortium partners across 7 countries through just 2 projects — a wide network relative to their small H2020 footprint, a direct result of the large, multi-partner ITN format. Their network is European in scope with no indication of geographic concentration.

What sets them apart

Bang & Olufsen is one of the very few luxury consumer electronics companies participating directly in EU research training networks, which makes them unusual in a landscape dominated by universities and SMEs. They offer something most academic partners cannot: a decades-long, product-validated understanding of how consumers perceive audio and visual quality at the high end of the market. For consortium builders, they are a credible industry anchor that lends real-world commercial relevance to perceptual audio-visual research.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SOUNDS
  The larger of the two projects (EUR 297,522) and the most recent (2021–2025), covering the full stack from microphone arrays and wireless sensor networks to auditory perception and IoT — directly mapping to B&O's connected speaker product strategy.
• RealVision
  B&O's entry into H2020 research, focused on hyperrealistic imaging and HDR — an unusual topic for an audio brand, revealing a broader perceptual quality research agenda that extends beyond sound.