It’s reasonable to assume that the average Bugatti owner’s home hi-fi kit doesn’t amount to a £40 Bush radio bought from Argos a decade ago.
But even the biggest audiophile might be shocked at the price of this pair of home hi-fi speakers, the result of a tie up between Tidal and Bugatti.
That’s Tidal, as in the German audio equipment manufacturer, not Jay-Z’s music streaming company of the same name, though it might be cheaper to get Jaz-Z to perform a set in your front room: prices starts at around £236,000 and stretch to over £450,000 if you get excited with the options.
Called Royale, after a famously opulent Bugatti limousine of the 1920s and ‘30s, the speakers are initially limited to two special editions. There’s an all-white pair, the Edition Blanc, and an all-black pair, called, you guessed it, Edition Noir.
Only 30 pairs of the special edition speakers will be made, but after that customers will be able to order sets painted to colours of their own choosing. According to Bugatti each Royale loudspeaker pair can be customised with carbon fibre, fabrics, leather, polished stainless steel, dark aluminium or precious metal surfaces.
Each speaker cabinet is made from Tidal’s proprietary Tiralit material, stands 1.4m tall and weighs a massive 160kg. Inside is a 30mm diamond tweeter like the one found in the Chiron hypercar, a 127mm ceramic midrange driver or diamond midrange woofer, two 170mm front woofers and four long-throw subwoofers.
The Royales are active speakers, meaning they have amplifiers inside the cabinets, but a Bugatti-branded music controller lets you connect other devices, including your (presumably gigantic) TV.
Would you spend supercar money on a sound system? Tidal and Bugatti are clearly hoping people will shell out for the Bugatti of home hi-fi, and probably also hoping the Royale name doesn’t come back to haunt them. The original Royale car was designed to be the biggest, priciest and most luxurious car in the world, but what was already a niche product became unsellable in the 1930s depression and only three examples were ever bought.
Keyword: Sounds expensive: £455k Bugatti speakers are the hypercars of home audio