Tag Archives: Audio

JBL Pulse 6 portable speaker is also an ambient lamp designed to set the mood anywhere, anytime

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A Bluetooth speaker usually asks you to choose between sound and atmosphere. JBL’s new Pulse 6 is designed to make that choice feel unnecessary. Wrapped in a transparent cylindrical body, it turns music into a moving field of light, while a newly illuminated handle adds another glowing element to the object.

Launched today, the Pulse 6 portable speaker builds on JBL’s signature see-through aesthetic, surrounding its audio hardware with a 360-degree lighting system that responds to whatever is playing. Sixteen lighting patterns are available through the JBL One app, where the visual experience can be adjusted alongside basic EQ controls. When the music stops, the speaker can still remain a focal point of the room. A double-tap activates its ambient light, while the volume control doubles as a convenience to adjust brightness.

Designer: JBL

That idea of the speaker as an environmental object extends into Sunset Mode. Rather than simply switching off, the Pulse 6 can gradually fade its illumination and stop playback after a timer of up to 60 minutes, making it particularly suited to winding down at night. There is substance beneath all that glow. The 40W system combines a 30W RMS woofer with a 10W RMS tweeter, covering a 42Hz–20kHz frequency range. JBL’s AI Sound Boost continuously analyzes the audio and adjusts the output to help keep distortion under control as the volume climbs. For wired listening, a built-in DAC enables lossless audio through USB-C when connected to a Mac or Windows PC.

The wireless side is equally current, with Bluetooth 6.0 and support for SBC, AAC, and LC3 codecs. Auracast allows compatible JBL speakers to be connected for a larger synchronized listening setup, turning several individual glowing objects into one shared light-and-sound environment. Despite its sculptural appearance, the Pulse 6 is meant to leave the living room. The IP68 rating makes it dustproof and capable of surviving submersion in water, while the 34Wh battery delivers up to 12 hours of playback. Playtime Boost can extend that by another two hours, although USB-C charging at 15W takes around 4.5 hours for a full recharge. At 1.49kg and 131.7 x 264.1 x 106.4mm, it remains portable enough to carry from one setting to another.

JBL is initially launching the Pulse 6 in China for 2,499 yuan (roughly $370), with availability expected to expand gradually to other regions. The dual functionality and the striking aesthetics have sold me on the portable speaker, as it stands out from any other option on the market.

 

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Someone Built a LEGO Bedside Radio With 1,400 Bricks And Inner Circuitry

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Remember when clock radios had personality? Before phones ate every function a bedside table used to need, you had this chunky little box with dials that clicked, buttons that thunked, and a display that glowed just enough to bug you at 3am. That exact vibe is what 91-Brickdesigns set out to capture with the Legosonic BSR-12, a LEGO Ideas build modeled on the radio alarm clocks that ruled nightstands in the late 70s and early 80s. And they didn’t just nail the look, they nailed the fidgetiness of the thing too.

Around 1400 pieces went into this build, and a big chunk of that count is doing unnecessary, delightful work. The toggle switches have actual spring mechanisms so they click when you flip them. The sliders drive a gear underneath just so they feel smoother in your hand, despite doing literally nothing. Even the snooze button is a running joke, since pressing it accomplishes exactly zero. It’s the kind of overbuilt charm we loved in the LEGO Classics Computer a while back, cranked up another notch.

Designer: 91-Brickdesigns

The front panel alone is a lot to take in. You’ve got three round dials up top that turn but don’t actually control anything, a row of colored indicator lights, and a genuinely functional time-set system where you spin the big dial and lock it in with a couple of chrome buttons. Next to that sits a flip clock style display frozen at 20:58, glowing like it just woke up from a nap, and a tuning window with a red needle you can slide across a fake FM and AM band using a little wheel on the side. None of it plays actual music, but every piece of it looks like it should.

Pop the top cover and there’s a full circuit board hiding under there, with brick built resistors color coded the way real resistors are, a couple of capacitors, and a chip sitting exactly where you’d expect one on an actual PCB. Slide the ventilation grille open and there’s a speaker cone waiting behind it. Flip the whole thing around and the back has a proper spec plate, an AC input, and an on off switch that wouldn’t look out of place on a real appliance from a Best Buy circa 1983. My favorite detail might be the plate itself, which reads “Made in Two Tiles, Legany,” because apparently even fictional radio manufacturers deserve a pun.

This isn’t the first time we’ve watched builders chase this exact strain of nostalgia. The JVC pyramid TV that hit LEGO Ideas earlier this year leaned on the same appeal, and LEGO’s own Icons Retro Radio proved there’s real demand for gadgets that remind adults of a time when electronics had weight and character instead of just a glass slab and a charging port. The Legosonic BSR-12 fits right into that lineage, except it goes further than most by building the guts as carefully as the shell.

The build currently sits at Staff Pick status with 589 days left to hit its 5,000 supporter mark, on the way to the 10,000 votes needed for LEGO’s official review. If you’re the kind of person who misses a nightstand that made noise when you touched it, head over to LEGO Ideas and give it a vote.

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The Concrete Canvas Speaker That Refuses to Hide Its Wires

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Most audio equipment is designed around the premise of concealment. The drivers are hidden, the wiring is tucked away, the internal mechanics are sealed behind pristine panels of wood or brushed aluminum, and you’re meant to forget that any of it exists. You just press play and trust the box. Hagar Guri, an industrial designer, has a different idea entirely.

A-PQ 31.37 is a suspended open-baffle loudspeaker system that does the opposite of hiding. Built from concrete canvas, a flexible, fabric-reinforced material that stiffens into a rigid, curved shell when hydrated, the speaker hangs from steel cables and puts everything on display. The driver is exposed. The wiring is visible. The rear radiation surface, the structural elements, the mechanical connections: all of it is part of the visual experience, not an afterthought buried behind a grille.

Designer: Hagar Guri

The material choice alone is worth pausing on. Concrete canvas is not a typical choice for audio equipment. It is the kind of material you would expect to see in emergency shelters or civil engineering projects, not hanging in a listening room. But that is precisely what makes it interesting here. It is dense, rigid, and visually raw in a way that synthetic plastics and MDF simply are not. The curved form it takes in A-PQ 31.37 manages to look both industrial and surprisingly refined, which is not an easy balance to strike.

Open-baffle speaker design has existed for decades in audiophile circles, and the community tends to be evangelical about it. The principle is straightforward: without a closed enclosure, sound radiates both forward and backward, creating a more open and spacious listening experience that many describe as more natural. The trade-off is usually in low-frequency performance, which requires careful driver selection and signal processing to compensate. Guri addresses this through a custom control unit built into the system, incorporating digital signal processing, preamplification, and analogue controls. It is a complete system, not just a sculptural object with wires attached.

And yet, calling it a sculptural object is not wrong. The speakers are suspended from steel cables and appear almost detached from the floor, interacting with the surrounding architecture rather than sitting against it. It changes the relationship between the listener and the object. You are not looking at a box tucked into a corner. You are looking at something that occupies the room intentionally, that asks to be seen.

Exposed fasteners and typographic elements extend the material language across the system, which tells me Guri was not just thinking about the sound or the form in isolation. The details are consistent. The control unit belongs to the same visual world as the speakers. That kind of coherence at the system level is harder to achieve than it looks, and it is one of the reasons A-PQ 31.37 feels like a fully resolved idea rather than a student experiment that went interestingly sideways.

The broader conversation A-PQ 31.37 is pushing into is one the design world has been circling for a while: what does it mean to make technology honest? So much of our electronics culture is built around the aesthetics of smooth surfaces and hidden complexity. The sleeker and more seamless a product looks, the more sophisticated it is supposed to seem. Guri is suggesting the inverse: that visibility, the kind that shows you exactly how something is built and why it sounds the way it does, can be its own form of refinement.

Whether or not this becomes an influence on mainstream speaker design is genuinely hard to say. Audio equipment is a conservative category. Audiophiles are notoriously attached to conventions that go back generations. But for anyone following the intersection of material research, acoustics, and spatial design, A-PQ 31.37 is exactly the kind of project that makes you reconsider what a speaker is supposed to be. Not just something you listen to. Something you actually look at, and think about, too.

The post The Concrete Canvas Speaker That Refuses to Hide Its Wires first appeared on Yanko Design.

If the iPod Nano and Game Boy had a baby, you’d get this $85 Hi-Fi Audio Player

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The dedicated music player had a solid twenty-year run: Walkmans, MiniDiscs, the Rio PMP300 (look it up), the iPod in all its generations, and the Zune if you were feeling brave. Streaming services and the smartphone ate all of it, and what survived was a niche audiophile DAP market that mostly traded in expensive, sensible-looking black rectangles with impressive chip specs and absolutely zero personality. That category is fine if you want to spend $300 on a slab, but it left a gap for a well-engineered, genuinely fun music player you’d want to show off rather than bury. Hidizs, a Hong Kong audio brand, decided to fill that gap with the AP30 Music Boy. They designed it to look like a Game Boy, snap to your phone, hang from your neck, and decode DSD256, all at once.

The AP30 is built around a Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC chip, the kind that typically shows up in players costing $200 or more, paired with an RT6863 amplifier and RKNANOD master chip for a signal chain that produces 137mW per channel balanced and an SNR of 127dB. The 68x53x17mm body comes in a lightweight plastic edition at 56 grams and a CNC aluminum edition at 80 grams, running Hidizs’s own purpose-built HidizsOS rather than a general Android build. It supports DSD256 native decoding, PCM 192kHz/24bit, and lossless formats including FLAC, APE, WMA, WAV, ALAC, Apple Lossless, and DSDIFF, plus Bluetooth 5.3, USB DAC mode via Type-C, dual wired outputs, and a microSD slot accepting cards up to 256GB. There is also a built-in Retro Block Puzzle Game, which tells you exactly what kind of product this is. Hidizs designed the whole thing to be worn rather than pocketed, and that premise shapes every decision in the hardware.

Designer: Hidizs

Click Here to Buy Now: $85 $119 (23$ off) Hurry! Only 16 of 480 units left.

Every device you own right now is either trying to get your attention or listening for a chance to sell you something. Your phone buzzes, your watch taps your wrist, your earbuds announce that someone liked your post, and AI glasses are arriving to overlay all of it directly onto your vision. The AP30 runs on HidizsOS, a system crafted for high-fidelity audio, and that is genuinely the full scope of its ambitions. It plays music, adjusts volume through a physical wheel, and the agenda ends there. A piece of technology in 2026 that takes one job seriously and refuses to negotiate with the attention economy is a genuinely radical object, and the AP30 earns that description through hardware and software decisions that are all, unanimously, in service of sound.

The 2.0-inch (296×240) HD IPS screen ensures that browsing your music library, navigating menus, and playing games is a seamless and clear experience, and it is a non-touchscreen display, which means physical controls handle everything. The volume control is a Japanese ALPS wheel, chosen for tactile precision over digital convenience, delivering the kind of satisfying resistance that sliders on glass can never replicate. The backplate carries an engraved whale motif that symbolizes the ocean’s freedom and majesty, tied to Hidizs’s ongoing collaboration with WDC (Whale and Dolphin Conservation), bringing awareness to the beauty and importance of marine life. The aluminum edition is CNC-machined in Pixel Purple and Arcade Black, while the plastic version spans Crystal Ocean Blue, Shadow Black, and Classic White. Both editions share identical internals and the same sharp retro energy.

The 3.5mm single-ended output supports everyday headphones, while the 4.4mm balanced output satisfies audiophiles using high-impedance in-ear or over-ear monitors. Specifically, single-ended delivers 61mW+61mW at 32Ω with THD+N of 0.0008% and SNR of 120dB, while balanced pushes 137mW+137mW at 32Ω with SNR of 127dB and frequency response spanning 20Hz to 90kHz at ±0.03dB. HidizsOS gives you six EQ presets or a custom build, high/low gain adjustment to match headphone impedance, four playback modes, and digital anti-aliasing filters alongside DoP (DSD over PCM) for professional listeners. Even headphones with built-in microphones are fully compatible, making the AP30 a versatile companion for any audio setup. Certified by Hi-Res Audio, the AP30 Music Boy meets the highest standards in sound reproduction, which means the numbers back the claim rather than decorate the packaging.

Hidizs built three distinct ways to carry the AP30: neck strap, bag clip, or magnetic phone attachment. The neck strap turns it into a pendant, small enough to forget you are wearing it, distinctive enough that people ask. A bag clip hooks onto any strap and streams audio wirelessly to earbuds. Slide the AP30 into its magnetic case and it snaps to the back of your phone with a satisfying clack, no extra adapters, no Bluetooth pairing dance, just a clean magnetic connection that turns your phone into a Hi-Res rig. USB DAC mode works over Type-C to any Windows, MacOS, or OTG-supported device, with the AP30 running on its own battery during operation to reduce noise interference from the host device and preserve its battery life.

With support for a 256GB microSD card, the AP30 can store over 8,500 Hi-Res lossless tracks for offline listening, no buffering, no streaming interruptions, whether commuting, traveling, or relaxing at home. Bluetooth 5.3 ensures fast, low-latency, stable connections, and the AP30 permanently remembers paired devices, covering headphones, speakers, and car audio without fuss. The 1200mAh battery charges in about one hour and keeps the AP30 ready when you need it, delivering 10 to 12 hours of single-ended wired playback, 8 to 10 hours balanced, or 6 to 8 hours wirelessly, with a 60-day standby. The AP30 also supports loading eBooks on a microSD card for reading on its HD screen, transforming commutes and waiting periods into enjoyable, productive moments without sacrificing portability. And then there is the Retro Block Puzzle Game, which is exactly what it sounds like, costs nothing extra, and is honestly the reason at least some people will choose this over a more austere-looking DAP.

The AP30 Music Boy comes in two editions: the Lightweight Plastic at a discounted $85 in Crystal Ocean Blue, Shadow Black, or Classic White, and the CNC Aluminum at $99 in Pixel Purple or Arcade Black. Every unit ships with the player, the magnetic protective case, a Type-C charging cable, a Type-C to Type-C OTG data cable, two screen protectors, a user manual, and a warranty and QC card, with a one-year warranty against factory defects covering the device. Shipping begins in early October 2026 (free globally), with retail distribution following in November 2026.

Click Here to Buy Now: $85 $119 (23$ off) Hurry! Only 16 of 480 units left.

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The $50 Tiny Turntable That Makes Vinyl Collecting Fun Again

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Tiny Vinyl has been building something quietly clever since 2023. What started as a Nashville-based company pressing 4-inch records (yes, actual playable vinyl, just smaller) has grown into its own little music ecosystem, and the latest addition might be the piece that pulls it all together: the Tiny Vinyl Player, a miniature turntable that finally gives those tiny records their own dedicated home.

I’ll admit, when I first heard about 4-inch vinyl records, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of them. They play a single song per side on most standard turntables, they’re fully pressed the traditional way, and they’ve quietly accumulated a catalog that includes BTS, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, The Rolling Stones, and Black Sabbath. Over a million records have been pressed and sold through Target since the company partnered with the retailer last fall. That’s not a novelty. That’s a format. And now the format has its own player.

Designer: Tiny Vinyl

The Tiny Vinyl Player is wrapped in a black leatherette finish and designed like a miniature suitcase. Open it up and you get a belt-drive platter spinning at 33.3 RPM, a tonearm, built-in dual stereo speakers, and enough charm to make you understand why the toy industry and the music world would be natural co-conspirators. Co-founder Neil Kohler comes from the toy business, and co-founder Jesse Mann produced music festivals, and somehow that combination produced a product that straddles both worlds with a lot of grace.

The physics alone were apparently a challenge worth noting. Kohler once said that making vinyl playable at that scale was “not trivial to overcome,” and I believe it. Getting a needle to track a groove on a 4-inch record at the right speed and pressure is genuinely tricky engineering territory, regardless of how cute the end result looks. The fact that it works at all is the actual story here.

At $49.99, the Tiny Vinyl Player sits in an interesting price territory. Available exclusively at Target, it measures roughly 10 by 5.5 by 6.5 inches and weighs about 3.88 lbs. For connectivity, it supports Bluetooth output to external speakers or headphones, and there’s a standard headphone jack for wired listening. One thing worth knowing upfront: it runs on AC power with no battery option, so this is not a take-it-to-the-park situation. It’s a display object first and a listening device second, and that’s probably fine. The leatherette suitcase clamshell design was clearly made to sit on a shelf and look good doing it.

The built-in speakers are predictably modest, running a little tinny and distorted at this price, which is fair for a $50 device with speakers this compact. The Bluetooth option, though, changes the equation considerably. Pair it with a decent external speaker and you’ve got something that’s genuinely fun to use and a lot more presentable than the built-in audio might suggest.

What makes the Tiny Vinyl Player more interesting than a gadget, though, is what it’s building toward. The company has also released a small Crate for storing records and a 2×2 Frame for displaying favorites, which means this is starting to feel less like a product launch and more like the architecture of a collecting hobby. You don’t just buy a record. You build a collection, you frame the ones you love, and you store the rest. The player is the centerpiece of that whole experience.

Collecting culture has always operated on the idea that the object matters as much as the content, which is exactly why vinyl survived streaming and why physical media keeps finding new audiences. Tiny Vinyl is tapping into that instinct, but it’s doing it at a scale that lowers the barrier considerably. No expensive turntable setup. No dedicated shelf space. Just a $49.99 player, a growing catalog, and the tactile satisfaction of dropping a needle on something real. Whether the audio quality is the point is almost beside the point. The ritual is.

The post The $50 Tiny Turntable That Makes Vinyl Collecting Fun Again first appeared on Yanko Design.

CMF Clip Pro open-ear buds come with a charging case dial to take calls

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Clip-on-style earbuds are the new trend, and the fever is catching on fast across mainstream brands. While Nothing has already impressed with the Ear (open) buds released a couple of years ago, the budget sub-brand CMF has not had one in its line-up till now. That changes now as they’ve launched the first-ever clip-on earbuds, and they look impressive.

Like most open-ear earbuds, the CMF Clip Pro targets budget-conscious users who want to experience open-ear listening without spending too much. With offerings like Bose Ultra Open, Sony LinkBuds Clip, Anker Soundcore AeroFit 2, and Shokz OpenDots One, Huawei Freebuds 6 gives plenty of options for music lovers who don’t mind the steep price tag; the CMF’s offering fills in the gap for users constrained by the price tag. Priced at $99, they directly pit against the likes of Moondrop Pill.

Designer: CMF

Comfort and long-term wearability are the USP of these IP54-rated earbuds as they cling to the ears with the 3-point Clip Design, which distributes the pressure during extended listening sessions. This reduces the pinching sensation attributed to some of the existing options on the market. On the inside, the elastic titanium wire structure keeps the structural bridge made out of skin-friendly material connected, resulting in a flexible fit that adapts to the individual’s unique ear shape. Weighing just 5.9 grams, each of the buds is designed to disappear in the ear.

CMF wants to polish out one quirk common with this style of earbuds: a very lean and dull low-end. The 10.8 mm dual-magnet dynamic driver tuned with Ultra Bass Technology (low-end enhancing) feature tweaks the sound signature to iron out the treble distortion and also refine the low end to a level that clip-on style earbuds hardly manage to achieve. I just hope the bass is not synthetic and masks all the other frequencies for a very bland audio output that audiophiles hate. The Hi-Res Audio certified LDAC codec should mean otherwise, but you never know with software-level tweaks of the audio signal. Other supported codecs include AAC and SBC.

What intrigued me about these open-ear buds is the inclusion of a Smart Dial on the charging case, which adjusts the volume, controls the playback, or can even answer calls. The dual device Bluetooth 5.4 support means you can connect to two devices simultaneously. Battery life on the earbuds is going to be around 10 hours, with a total of 32.5 hours with the case, weighing 38.81 grams. A fast charge of 10 minutes should juice up the buds for 4 hours of playback if you are on the go more often than not.

CMF will offer the Clip Pro open-ear buds in colors including gray, dark gray, and coral. The audio accessory is set to be available in the US, UK, and Japan from 15 August for $99 via the official website and retail partners. In Europe and other parts of the world, the buds will be available from 15 September.

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Ross Lovegrove’s Hi-Fi Speakers Look Like River Pebbles, Stream 384 kHz Audio

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Ross Lovegrove has spent his whole career convinced that nature already nailed industrial design and humans are just slow to catch up. His portfolio backs it up fast. The Ty Nant water bottle looks like a puddle caught mid freeze. The DNA Staircase he built for the Belgian Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 spirals like an actual double helix. His Go Chair for Bernhardt Design curves like it was grown in a lab rather than welded together in a factory. Give the guy a chair, a bottle, a staircase, anything, and he finds the organic shape hiding inside it. Speakers are trickier though, since somewhere inside all that flowing curvature you still need drivers, amplifiers, and wiring that behaves itself.

KEF’s new LS LUXE is Lovegrove’s answer, and it is a genuinely convincing one. Picture two smooth pebbles sitting on your shelf, the kind you would find polished at the bottom of a river, except one of them has a gold driver staring back at you like a tiny mechanical flower. The cabinet skips every straight edge in favor of that rounded, water worn shape, finished in shades like Mineral White and Eclipse Black. Spec wise, you get 380 watts of amplification and network streaming up to 384 kHz, all packed into a form that reads more like sculpture than stereo gear. It launched in Asia Pacific at 4,910 US dollars a pair, with US availability and pricing still to come.

Designer: Ross Lovegrove for KEF

Inside that pebble shaped shell sits KEF’s 12th generation Uni-Q driver array, a 165 mm aluminium cone wrapped around a 25 mm dome tweeter that fires from the exact same point in space. That single point origin is why Uni-Q speakers spread sound evenly instead of beaming it at whoever grabbed the best seat. Behind the driver, KEF’s Metamaterial Absorption Technology claims to soak up 99 percent of unwanted rear sound, the same maze like structure found in flagship lines like the Blade. Two amplifiers split the work, 280 watts for the lows and mids, 100 watts for the highs. That is serious firepower for something the size of a grapefruit.

The rear ripples with vertical ribbing like sand under shallow water, broken only by an oval bass port and a connections panel etched with Lovegrove’s own signature. That same engineering ambition carries over to VECO, KEF’s new Velocity Control Technology, debuting here in a wireless speaker for the first time. VECO uses motion sensing feedback to catch distortion and power compression before they turn audible, letting the speaker correct itself in real time rather than waiting for you to notice something is off. Network streaming tops out at 384 kHz, with AirPlay, Chromecast, Bluetooth, and Tidal, Qobuz, and Spotify Connect built in. Roon support is coming too, just not until 2027.

Dusk Titanium, Eclipse Black, and Mineral White are the three finishes on offer, and KEF ties each one back to cymatics, the way sound visibly ripples across a surface, which is a bit much on paper but looks genuinely premium in person. A pair runs 6,299 Singapore dollars, about 4,910 US dollars, with the launch limited to Asia Pacific for now. The US page is live for early access through myKEF membership, though American pricing has not landed yet. Twenty kilos a pair also means double checking that shelf before committing. KEF is betting people will pay a premium for a speaker that looks like it belongs in a gallery instead of a media console.

KEF tried this design forward approach before with the LS50 Wireless II, and the LS LUXE feels like that idea with the leash finally taken off. Where the LS50 stayed rounded but fairly conventional, Lovegrove pushed KEF into a shape that competes with furniture for shelf space instead of hiding next to it. The real test is whether that sculptural ambition holds up once these sit in an actual living room instead of a studio render, since renders always flatter reality. At 4,910 dollars a pair, this is priced for people who already care about hi-fi and design in equal measure, not newcomers to either. Lovegrove has spent a career getting objects into museums. Whether the LS LUXE joins them or just earns a very nice shelf, KEF has made sure nobody mistakes it for furniture nobody asked for.

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A BB Pod-Shaped CD Player Straight Out of Death Stranding

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When Kojima Productions does something, it rarely feels like a simple product release. It feels like a statement. The new Instant Disc Audio Cp1 DEATH STRANDING 2 Model, a limited-edition wireless CD player made in official collaboration with Japanese audio brand km5, is proof of exactly that. It dropped on August 1, 2026, and it may be the most thoughtfully designed piece of gaming merchandise I’ve seen in years.

If you’ve played Death Stranding, you already know what a BB Pod is. If you haven’t, here’s the short version. BB stands for Bridge Baby, a term for an unborn infant kept alive inside a transparent life-support unit called a Pod, which serves as a supernatural navigation tool in the game’s hauntingly quiet, post-apocalyptic world. The Pod is one of Death Stranding’s most memorable visual symbols: eerie, delicate, and somehow deeply moving, a small glowing capsule that you cradle, protect, and come to care about over the course of the game. Turning that object into a CD player is either a stroke of genius or complete madness. I’m going with genius.

Designer: Kojima Productions x km5

The design is where this whole thing earns its price tag. The Cp1 features a translucent orange shell, and that’s not just for aesthetics. It lets you actually watch the disc spin and the internal mechanics move in real time. As someone who grew up watching cassette tapes wind through their spools, that level of visible mechanical action hits a very specific nostalgic nerve. The translucency echoes the BB Pod’s gel-filled, see-through casing, and it works so well that it almost feels like the CD player was always meant to look this way. It didn’t need Death Stranding to be beautiful, but the collaboration gave it a context that makes it feel intentional rather than just decorative.

The base Cp1 by km5 isn’t a new product. It’s been around for a while as a compact, Bluetooth-enabled CD player with a Nixie tube-style LED display and a wall-mount option that honestly makes it look more like modern furniture than consumer electronics. The Death Stranding 2 model takes that foundation and pushes it into collector territory. Priced at 25,300 yen, around $160, it connects via Bluetooth 5.3, runs for approximately 7 to 8 hours on a single charge, and notably doesn’t come with a built-in speaker. You’re meant to pair it with your own headphones or external audio setup, which keeps the device compact, sculptural, and true to its aesthetic. It’s not trying to be a Bluetooth boombox. It’s something much quieter and more considered than that.

The fact that this exists at all says something interesting about where we are with physical media right now. CD sales have been quietly climbing again, especially among younger audiences who want a more intentional, tactile way to listen to music. Vinyl gets most of the headlines, but CDs are genuinely having their own moment, and a device like this taps right into that energy. It gives you a reason to care about the format all over again, not just as a nostalgia trip, but as an object worth owning and displaying on a shelf next to your records.

The timing works in its favor, too. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launched earlier this year and carries forward everything the first game did best: gorgeous world-building, deeply strange storytelling, and a visual identity unlike anything else in gaming. Releasing this CD player alongside that cultural wave makes it feel like part of something larger, not a cash grab bolted onto a recognizable franchise. km5 and Kojima Productions clearly put thought into this, and the result reflects that. This isn’t just a piece of merch. It’s a collaboration that understood its source material well enough to let the design carry the story.

The Instant Disc Audio Cp1 DEATH STRANDING 2 Model is available directly through km5’s official website and at the KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS × PARCO GAMES STRAND STORE in Shibuya PARCO. Stock is limited, and if history tells us anything about Kojima collaborations, waiting around is usually the fastest way to miss out entirely.

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Khadas Just Made a $199 Amp That Snaps to Your iPhone Like a Wallet

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Portable audio has long been a game of compromise. DAC dongles give you a modest step up from your phone’s built-in output, but connect anything more demanding than a pair of featherweight earbuds, and they start to run out of steam. Desktop amplifiers solve the power problem but chain you to a desk, a power outlet, and a bag heavy enough to make you think twice about bringing them anywhere.

The Khadas Tea Pro sits firmly in the space between those two options, offering enough amplification for serious headphones without the bulk or the cable tangle. At 7.85 mm thin and 96 grams, it genuinely disappears into a pocket, and its magnetic back panel snaps directly onto any iPhone 12 or later, turning your phone and DAC into a single, tidy unit that doesn’t need a pouch of its own.

Designer: Khadas

The connection is handled by 19 N56SH magnets, holding the Tea Pro against the back of the phone without straps or brackets. Android users and those with older iPhones can attach a magnetic ring to their case and get the same result. A premium wear-resistant leather panel covers the back, giving the device a tactile quality that’s a step removed from the usual plastic-and-aluminum DAC dongle aesthetic.

Inside, an ESS ES9039Q2M DAC chip works alongside an XMOS XU316 USB bridge for wired playback, delivering PCM up to 768kHz at 32-bit and DSD up to 512 native. The signal chain runs through TI OPA1612 op-amps and Ricore RT6863 amplifier chips, achieving a total harmonic distortion of -118 dB, a specification more at home in a studio rack than a 96-gram device that slips into a shirt pocket.

Both a 4.4mm balanced and a 3.5mm unbalanced output are on board, with the balanced jack putting out 165mW into 33 ohms and the unbalanced delivering 120mW. The Tea Pro also manages 41.67mW into 600 ohms, meaning even demanding full-size headphones with high impedance get a fully powered signal rather than an underpowered afterthought by a device that’s trying too hard to be small.

Wireless connectivity comes via a Qualcomm QCC5181 Bluetooth 5.4 chip that covers SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, and LDAC, keeping the Tea Pro compatible with virtually any device. The Khadas app adds a feature-rich equalizer that works over Bluetooth, letting you shape the sound to your taste without touching the hardware. There’s also a built-in microphone, so taking a call doesn’t require unplugging anything.

A 2100mAh battery supports up to 11 hours of wireless playback or just over eight hours wired, enough to outlast a full day of commuting without reaching for a charger. A 0.95-inch AMOLED color display on the front keeps output format, volume, and battery status visible at a glance, while independent power management keeps the battery from draining your phone when you aren’t connected to a power source.

Volume control runs through a dedicated analog chip rather than a software slider, keeping noise out of the signal path. The Tea Pro is priced at $199, which puts it well above the typical dongle but far below a battery-powered desktop DAC/amp that requires its own carrying case. For a device that fits in a jacket pocket and holds itself to the back of your phone, that’s a narrowing of the gap that’s hard to argue with.

The post Khadas Just Made a $199 Amp That Snaps to Your iPhone Like a Wallet first appeared on Yanko Design.

Tablets Sound Bad, So Motorola Just Put 9 JBL Speakers in One

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Entertainment tablets have come a long way in terms of screen quality, but audio often tells a different story. Most of them ship with a pair of speakers that merely get the job done, leaving users reaching for headphones or a separate Bluetooth speaker the moment things need to get louder. The gap between how tablets look and how they actually sound has never been more apparent.

The Motorola Moto Pad 70 Groove is built around a premise that most tablets don’t dare fully commit to: making audio the centerpiece, not an afterthought. It arrives loaded with a nine-unit JBL Pro speaker system, a 12.1-inch 2.5K display, and a 360-degree built-in kickstand, addressing the kind of everyday entertainment scenarios where a standard tablet simply wouldn’t be enough.

Designer: Motorola

The display is well suited for this audio-first identity. The 12.1-inch IPS LCD panel runs at 120 Hz with a 2560×1600 resolution, HDR10 and Dolby Vision certification, and a peak brightness of 800 nits. It’s a smooth, vivid canvas for streaming content, though the real draw is what’s happening on the edges of that screen, where all those speakers live.

Nine speakers sound like a gimmick until you see what they’re actually made of: four tweeters, three woofers, and two passive radiators, all tuned by JBL and backed by Dolby Atmos. Together, they’re rated to push up to 48W of audio output, which is a lot to ask from a tablet-sized device. It’s the kind of setup that makes you rethink whether you actually need a separate soundbar.

What makes the audio system more interesting is the built-in Bluetooth speaker mode, which turns the Groove into a standalone speaker your phone can control wirelessly. It’s a clever trick for situations where you want music filling a kitchen or a living room during a gathering, without having to keep the tablet actively streaming the content. Dolby Audio further adds Dynamic, Movie, and Music modes for more tailored listening.

The 360° Kickstand 2.0 adds another layer of flexibility. It supports four positions named Lean, Stand, Theatre, and Hanging, each suited for a different viewing situation. Prop it up on a desk for a video call, tilt it back for a movie in bed, or hang it from a hook when counter space runs out. It’s a practical piece of engineering that doesn’t feel like an afterthought.

Under the hood, a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 chip handles daily tasks alongside 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The 10,200mAh battery keeps extended streaming sessions going, and the 45W TurboPower charging keeps downtime short. The all-metal body in Pantone Blue Surf measures 6.8 mm at its thinnest, though the speaker array at the back raises that to 22.7 mm, creating a distinctive ridge. The Groove ships with Android 16 and Google Gemini out of the box, with Motorola committing to updates through Android 18 and security patches through 2030.

The post Tablets Sound Bad, So Motorola Just Put 9 JBL Speakers in One first appeared on Yanko Design.