Tag Archives: speaker

Bluetooth speaker concept moves a tiny gondola lift while your music plays

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Wireless speakers are a dime a dozen these days, and they come in a wide variety of forms, ranging from rugged tubes to glamorous art objects. The ones that are meant to stay indoors often hide their physical controls or do away with them completely in order to blend in with the rest of the room’s decor. Many don’t even have displays so you can’t view information at a glance without having to pick up your phone and unlock it. It doesn’t have to be an “either-or” situation, however, and you can maintain a speaker’s analog simplicity and beauty while still providing a useful visual, as this concept design for a travel-inspired Bluetooth speaker demonstrates.

Designer: Sungmin Hwang

Truth be told, a gondola lift is probably the last thing you’d associate with music. Also known as cable cars, these compact boxes carry a small group of passengers from one height to another, allowing them to see the journey from a completely different perspective. It adds a sense of wonder and awe, and maybe even a bit of thrill, as you slowly make your way to your destination, which is often on the top of a mountain or tower.

That’s the association that the Gondola Bluetooth speaker design concept makes between playing music and the journey, both of which take you into exciting new worlds that feel different from your current situation. The speaker’s design is specifically inspired by the cable car system that goes to and from Korea’s famous Namsan Tower, a magical journey even for frequent visitors. The two ends of the speaker house cones, one of which is significantly taller and represents Mount Namsan where the tower stands. This cone is actually the speaker, which diverges from the conventional cylindrical form of Bluetooth speakers

Connecting these two points are two fishing lines representing the cables of the gondola lift. Two tiny modules move back and forth between these lines, which represents the speaker’s main gimmick. The movement of these miniature gondolas syncs with the playback time of the current track playing on the speaker, giving a visual representation of the digital progress bar found in most music apps. This mechanism allows the user to see how far along the music is even without looking at their phones. Admittedly, not many people probably do that anyway, but the movement of gondolas still creates an almost magical atmosphere that could surface joyful memories of travels and adventures.

The Gondola speaker concept pays tribute to the Namsan Tower in another way. The small conical stub on top of the speaker has an LED light that changes color depending on the state of the speaker, signifying things like pairing, playing, battery level, and the like. It’s definitely an interesting idea that shows relevant information without relying on screens, integrating such controls into the theme of the design in a seamless and beautiful manner.

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Nocs Monolith Aluminium is a minimalistic yet classy wireless speaker for purists

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Nocs Design is known for its intricately crafted audio accessories that hone minimalism. Purely focused on the acoustic signature and the build quality, the Sweden-based studio has revealed its new wireless speaker as a follow-up to the popular hand-crafted Monolith speaker.

This is the Nocs Monolith Aluminium speaker designed for audiophiles who give high weightage to minimalism in their lifestyle. The material choice for this wireless speaker is a deep research exercise for eliminating recycled plastics. According to Founder Daniel Alms, the result is a single block of aluminum CNC machined to achieve a classy look. Most of all the speaker is fully recyclable, making it the ideal choice when it comes to sustainability that the brand is highly conscious of.

Designer: Nocs Design

According to Daniel, a lot of time and effort was put into crafting the perfect symmetry for driver positioning inside the anodized aluminum housing. Unlike any other product design, minimalism isn’t just a fancy word here. Nocs refrains from using any logos, highlighting the sleek appearance of the solid aluminum form. This speaker is well positioned in the lineup, right between the Mini and the Monolith. To top it all, the ‘cradle-to-cradle consumer product’ is fully repairable and boasts easily replaceable parts.

Those grilles lie just above the five drivers are precisely positioned to deliver a rich and wide sound in any room. Alm has tuned the sound signature in collaboration with musicians and DJs which speaks highly about the speaker’s capability when it comes to satisfying audiophiles. The idea behind this distinction is to foster a “deep connection between the artist and the audience.”

Nocs Monolith Aluminium speaker is all set to be delivered to interested buyers in November 2024. Along with the classic aluminum option, you can also choose the more muted yet classy matte black finish. The price tag of $1,000 is on the steeper side but it’s all worth for purists who known what Nocs stands for.

 

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This Bluetooth speaker with rotating bar in the center assures three-dimensional experience

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Wireless speakers are ubiquitous thanks to multiple reasons playing in their favor: size, portability, and looks. Despite their size, portable Bluetooth speakers are now capable of reproducing sound that’s as accurate as those bulky and space-consuming ones in the past. These speakers are narrower, smaller, and slimmer, and many companies/designers are making them more versatile by toiling with their utility.

A case in point is the WhirlWave, a Bluetooth speaker designed to let the user control produced sound direction by rotating the speaker bar in the center. Made for those who crave a truly immersive experience not possible with the speakers configured to produce sound one-way, the WhirlWave can allow the user(s) to enjoy an acoustically complete three-dimensional experience.

Designer: Semin Park

Like most of the other speakers designed for one-way sound, Park thought of working on a speaker that would not limit the delivery of sound because of the design. The WhirlWave born from this ideology allows the user to have full control over the direction of the sound. The rotating speaker arm in the center can swivel like the hands of a clock from a cross orientation to 12 o’clock position.

When the speaker system is aligned as a cross, the three speakers – two on each end of the horizontal bar, and one at the bottom of the vertical support bar – spread the sound around for an immersive surround sound experience. As soon as you align the speaker’s horizontal bar vertically to the already existing support bar, you get the three speakers firing in a straight line for a more personalized sound experience.

The WhirlWave speaker features Bluetooth and power buttons on the back. Just below lies the USB-C Type charging slot, which allows juicing up the speaker using fast charging. What you can play with this Bluetooth speaker is not limited to what you play on a connected mobile device. Interestingly, the speaker is integrated with support for Apple Music, Spotify and other streaming apps. The top panel display of the speaker displays the streaming service currently playing. The display can also double as a digital clock for the bedside.

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Pulloof smartphone concept will live on as hanging speaker even when other phones are thrown away

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Concept phones are designed to showcase the working possibilities of what the upcoming version of an exciting lineup or an altogether a different smartphone would look and feel when launched. Deviating from this notion is this concept phone that rethinks the way mobile phones are used and disposed of the afterlife. This conceptual design draws some uncanny references to be more than a phone, a device that would survive – be useful – after the user chooses to upgrade, and doesn’t want to use the old phone anymore.

Designed keeping in mind the idea of integrating human behavior and sustainable design, the Pulloof: Smart Phone Concept is meant to survive after its lifetime, not just in memory, but as a device that is still fresh to the touch and use, besides its smartphone functionality.

Designer: Gisung Han

When presented with the question what happens when “the display disappears from a smartphone,” what would people use it for? Gisung Han long before clamshell phones took off because of their display real estate had visioned the Pulloof – inspired by a vintage B&Q radio – as a phone delivering on people’s music consumption through phone. He designed “a sustainable speaker by emphasizing the speaker” functionality of the smartphone.

The Pulloof as a sustainable solution is a dream object that remains valuable after its use as a smartphone as “something that people will keep wanting to touch.” This would be an environmentally safer option since people would stick on to their device even when upgrading to a new phone ensuring lesser electronic waste. People wouldn’t want to throw away a smartphone just because they are upgrading to a bigger screen.

Pulloof thus has a different design approach than a usual smartphone. It is a combination of pull and loop, a phone that features a hidden speaker accessible by pulling out from a round surface using a loop on the phone. With its properties and design, the designer believes, “Even if other phones are thrown away, ‘Pulloof’ will not be thrown away.” This phone will survive anywhere as a hanging speaker (from the loop), so it is usable in the bathroom or in the outdoors to keep you entertained.

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Mapu Speakers bring technology and craftsmanship together

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There are people that love to pit technology against art or craftsmanship but those of us who know better know that the two can actually complement each other. There are products and designers out there who seek to fuse the two together and even bring innovation and improvements to the two worlds. One such product is a speaker that uses natural materials and is created by traditional craftspeople.

Designer: Mapu

The Mapu Speakers is a line of speakers that are made from natural materials like clay, wood, cork, and wool and handcrafted by traditional craftsmen in Chile and Portugal The goal is to create a new generation of craftspeople, “building a bridge between ancestral knowledge and technology”. Aside from having quality speakers so you can listen to your music, audiobooks, and podcasts, you also get a piece of art that you can display in your space.

The wooden cones and caps that are in the center of the driveractually optimize the high frequencies so you get a “vivid, spatial, and engaging sound”. The wool is used for the internal acoustic insulation while the leather and cork are also ideal for insulation due to their high tensile strength and heat resistance. The spherical shape of the vessel also adds to the sound quality that you get so you know that it’s not just beautiful but you get a pretty good speaker.

The Mapu Speakers are also 80% biodegradable so that’s another bonus for those who are looking for something pretty different for their speakers. The Mapuguaquén is already sold out on their website but the Mapu Preto and the Mapu Soenga, available in mono and stereo versions. The vessel-like shapes of the speaker line make it pretty attractive even if you don’t know yet the handicraft story behind it.

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Chinese Lantern-inspired Speaker Takes The HomePod Texture To New Cultural Heights

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I’m sure that there’s a non-zero percentage of people who saw the first HomePod and were reminded of the paper lanterns that decorate each house during Chinese festivals. These lanterns use a thin crepe paper, joined at intervals to create a diamond-shaped honeycomb pattern not too different from the one seen on Apple’s HomePod, albeit at a much smaller scale. Designer Shengtao Ma saw this as an opportunity to more deliberately design a speaker that pays a hat-tip to tradition. The Sirocco Speaker is a slim audio unit with a decorative cover that tributes the lanterns seen in Chinese culture. The speaker’s cover folds open and close just like the lantern, attaching around the speaker’s slender stem-shaped design. The result is something that’s sculptural yet functional, with a cover that can be changed on demand, and a tactile knob on the bottom for controlling the speaker’s volume.

Designer: Shengtao Ma

The Sirocco Speaker comes in multiple shapes and sizes, resembling the traditional lantern seen in Chinese and other Asian cultures

Shengtao Ma makes a case that the speaker’s foldable outer structure plays a role in amplifying the sound. The speaker itself is a slim, vertical number, but the different diamond-shaped elements act as acoustic chambers, helping channel and amplify the audio much like cupping your hands around your mouth. Whether this theory works in reality is yet to be determined, but the concept secured an A’ Design Award this year.

“This speaker further conducts and diffuses sound through its unique honeycomb structure design, thereby further enhancing the user’s experience and music quality. This speaker is foldable. The speaker’s shell is stowable and modular, and comes with a variety of shell shapes that can be replaced at any time according to the user’s mood and home environment,” Shengtao says. “The foldable honeycomb structure at the upper end can be assembled and disassembled by rotation, making it easy to replace, store, and clean.”

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Space-saving bookends double as a modular wireless speaker system

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We seem to always be running out of space on our desks. Any free area that we get often quickly becomes occupied by a new thing, a tool, or a book, that we can always justify as necessary. And then there are purely decorative items that, while not serving any practical function, serve to put us in a good mood. Sadly, those reasons don’t remove the fact that they still take up precious space that could have been used for other things. Cutting down on the amount of “stuff” on your desk is one possible solution to this conundrum, but another is to use multi-functional products that serve more than one purpose, like these rather aesthetic bookends that are actually speakers in disguise.

Designer: Liam de la Bedoyere

If there are two things that are standard on a modern desk, it would be books and speakers. The former is often essential for work, even if just for appearance’s sake, while the latter is necessary to keep our minds sane with our favorite music and podcasts. They might even be necessary for the video meetings that are becoming more common these days. Naturally, these things will need some space on your desk, so why not combine them in a way that still retains each product’s identity while also bringing a fresh twist to their designs?

The Beat Bookends concept does exactly that by transforming bookends into two parts of a speaker system. Specifically, the triangular shapes that sit on either end of a row of books act not only as stable structures to keep your reading materials upright but also serve as front-firing speakers. Although it probably would have been enough to just have two wireless speakers performing this function, the design concept actually includes one or two more speakers for an even better audio experience.

The bookend speakers are actually just the “satellite” speakers, and a rectangular block serves as the main unit you connect to. This piece can stand in the middle of your row of books to add a bit of variety to the composition, or it can even be placed anywhere else to set up a spatial audio arrangement of sorts. Another rectangular speaker block can even be added to the mix for an even louder and more distributed audio output.

What’s interesting about the Beat Bookends concept is that it isn’t limited to actually being used as bookends only. With a flexible building block concept, you can mix and match pieces and arrange the speakers in different ways, even if you don’t have books to stand on your desk or shelf. You can combine the speakers in more interesting arrangements to provide not only audio but also a bit of decoration on your desk, hitting two birds with a single stone.

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Phone-powered smart speaker concept reads your mood to play the right music for work

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Not everyone likes listening to music, but even those will perhaps begrudgingly agree that certain kinds of music can have different effects on one’s mood or mental state. Next to entertainment or the sheer joy of listening to favorite tunes, the most common use of music is to set the right mood, whether it’s to relax, to get pumped, or to be more productive. That said, musical tastes can be quite subjective, and even the kind of harmonies that you like could be affected by your mood at any given time. It can be quite taxing to change playlists or tracks every time, so rather than relying on your fingers and your own mind, why not let your phone do the work for you? This desk speaker concept does exactly that, analyzing your mood and picking the right music to help you finish your work, studies, or any other task you need to get done.

Designer: Junyoung Lee

People who love playing music while they work most likely have a library of tunes selected to help massage their grey matter, especially during slow hours. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of music can be thwarted by moods, emotions, and physical conditions. Sometimes we’re just stuck in a slump and manually picking out a more appropriate playlist only adds to the stress and traps you in a vicious mental cycle.

MIX:X is a smart speaker system that uses the power of your smartphone and machine learning to automate that process so you won’t have to lift a finger when your brain or heart is just too tired to care. You simply dock the phone in front of the tall, boxy speaker to start the process. The large camera at the bottom keeps a constant watch on the person’s face in front of it, particularly their facial expressions, and using computer vision, machine learning, and algorithms, it tries to identify the mood that the person is in. Depending on what mood that is, it will switch to a different playlist that will help get you into a more productive working state.

Part of the MIX:X speaker’s solution is actually not the device itself but the app that comes with it. Here you select the songs that you like and associate them with certain moods. The app’s AI analyzes the music selection and uses that as a pool to choose from when your mood shifts one way or another. It doesn’t simply get music out of thin air (or the Internet), giving you some amount of control to limit the choices to your preferences.

In that sense, the MIX:X speaker is simply a box with speakers facing sideways and a camera, though it definitely has an interesting aesthetic. It has transparent panels for its sides and back, putting the sophisticated electronics inside on display. The rest of the device’s design is pretty minimal, with a single dial for the volume. If there’s one glaring flaw in its design, it’s the fact that it seems to support only a specific model or size of a specific phone, namely an iPhone, which severely limits how much this concept can be used outside of that single device.

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Towering speaker gets the party started with 360-degree lights and powerful bass

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The majority of new home speakers coming out these days embrace more minimalist and discreet designs that make them blend with the rest of the room. After all, it’s really their sound that counts more than their appearance, though aesthetics also play an important role when it comes to integrating such devices into your overall interior decor. Of course, there will always be exceptions, including speaker designs that are meant to be seen with their more artistic and elegant appearances. This large and tall speaker, however, is none of those but unabashedly makes its presence known with psychedelic lighting and overwhelming audio output, making it better suited for home parties than a mellow movie night.

Designer: Sony

There’s no escaping how speakers need to be large in order to be really loud, though there are designs that try to get around this physical limitation through tricks and sleights of hand. The new Sony ULT Tower 10 speaker, however, makes no excuses for its size. In fact, it uses its hulking form to its advantage, making sure that partygoers not only feel but also see the power that it holds inside its towering form.

As part of Sony’s new ULT POWER SOUND series, the ULT Tower 10 bears two specially marked buttons that activate bass-related features. One enables deeper, low-frequency bass while the other turns on powerful, punch bass, presuming you can differentiate between these two distinct modes. Either way, the omnidirectional audio coming from this large speaker is more than enough to fill a whole room, ensuring all your guests hear the rumbling music as they dance to the beat.

The Sony ULT Tower 10 is made for parties in more ways than just its powerful output. With 34 different LED light zones, the tall speaker also boasts 360-degree light shows that can synchronize with the music. And given how many people love belting out songs during these parties, the speaker actually comes with a wireless microphone in addition to two other mic inputs. And though it was designed for such music-filled gatherings, the speaker can also connect wirelessly to other sound systems and TVs for an immersive movie-watching experience.

Given its size and power, not to mention its 29kg weight, it’s no surprise that the Sony ULT Tower 10 speaker isn’t something you’ll want to move around a lot, unlike its more portable ULT speaker siblings. It also needs to be plugged in, which limits its outdoor use. Besides, only its top, which houses the physical controls, is splashproof, which is meant to protect it more from accidental beverage spills than a rain shower. Admittedly, this speaker seems to target a very specific and niche market, one that will be willing to spend $1,199.99 for a speaker that’s clearly made to party.

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This modular LP player with detachable controller is modernized digital player for your vinyl collection

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Consuming music in digital format is as easy as compressing thousands of MP3 files into your phone storage and playing it with just a few taps on the screen. This is not the case with long play discs that ensure the unmatched sensory experience of sliding a record from the sleeve – featuring an artful cover design, – placing it on the turntable, adjusting the needle on the groove, and then enjoying the clean, clear music watching the disc rotate in visual ecstasy.

With vinyl disc players, you are treated to analog music where sound revibrates unlike any other medium. This fascination in the otherwise digitalized world has triggered a resurgence of record players in the last decades. Now, with the booming sales of vinyl, designers are willing to take the dive, presenting digital ways to playback LP’s and make them time-relevant without compromising the rich sound quality.

Designer: found/Founded

Case in point the Vibrary Digital LP Player that is more than its vibrant orange color and pleasant design. It is a modernized high-quality player for your vinyl collection that features a modular design you can customize with colors and materials of choice to match the artist’s official color and more. Of course, it’s not the most fascinating collector’s item still, but if you’re someone who is generally on the move and wants to carry their love for LPs along, the Vibrary Digital is a remarkable option.

While turntables offer a warm vinyl sound; this new design offers a tangible click-through operation for ease of use, and promises to match the sound experience through its long speaker body that houses the record.  The new Vibrary Digital concept digital album player, as it is referred to, is designed to enjoy your favorite records whenever and wherever you want.

It is envisioned with a detachable – cylindrical – wireless controller stationed next to the speaker (also with onboard controls), which would allow you to play music from the slotted record from a distance. Digitalizing the idea of a record player is not limited to size and altered vertical design, it is presented with state-of-the-art listening modes including spatial sound mode and a voice-specific mode that would allow you to customize sound according to the artist’s content.

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