Bang and Olufsen was, until perhaps the 1980s, the audio equipment manufacturer with the greatest focus on high-end design. (Braun, for example, manufactured mainly smaller radios and a few other related audio items). Indeed, B&O were unique in the business for their focus on design and build quality, inhabiting the upper end of the audio market. Their house style was very much part of Scandinavian modernism, with clean lines, excellent graphic design (not a hallmark of competitors), nearly always a touch (or more) of wood and a resistance (at least until the 1980s) to the Japanese and American trend to create separate stereo components and to stack them vertically. Their house style was largely the work of Jacob Jensen who worked for B&O from 1964/5 until 1991, much of that time (until 1985) as Chief Designer.

The Beocenter 1400 dates from a period when Jensen produced his most emblematic and successful B&O designs. It was their first product to successfully combine a cassette recorder and amplifier within a reasonably sized housing. This was made possible by the development of the compact cassette, which allowed for the integration of a smaller cassette unit. Characteristic of Jensen’s work is the combination of the components (receiver, amplifier and cassette player) into a single unit, the emphatically horizontal and very low design of the unit, the rectilinearity of all its elements, the sliding controls, the sparing use of a very limited colour palette and the product’s literal solidity. B&O items of this period seemingly avoided calling attention to themselves (compared to stereo design influenced by the recording studio) through their pared down shape. Yet that same minimalist shape, and the use of warm and elegant rosewood or teak veneer, also proclaimed their difference from the rest of the market and an exclusivity reflected in their price.