Tag Archives: audio player

This Square Player Refuses to Stream Music, and That’s the Point

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Streaming services turned album covers into tiny squares you scroll past on your way to something else. Phones made music convenient, but also turned it into background noise competing with notifications, emails, and every app demanding attention at once. You used to hold a record sleeve and feel like you owned something specific. Now your entire library is just files in a folder somewhere, and nothing about that experience feels remotely special or worth paying attention to.

Sleevenote is musician Tom Vek’s attempt to give digital albums their own object again. It’s a square music player with a 4-inch screen that matches the shape of album artwork, designed to show covers, back sleeves, and booklet pages without any other interface getting in the way. The device only plays music you actually buy and download from places like Bandcamp, deliberately skipping Spotify and Apple Music to keep ownership separate from the endless scroll.

Designers: Tom Vek, Chris Hipgrave (Sleevenote)

The hardware is a black square that’s mostly screen from the front, with a thick body and rounded edges that make it feel more like a handheld picture frame than a phone. Physical playback buttons sit along one side so you can skip tracks without touching the screen. When you hold it, the weight and thickness are noticeable. This isn’t trying to slip into a pocket; it’s trying to sit on your desk or rest in your hand like a miniature album sleeve.

The screen shows high-resolution artwork, back covers, lyrics, and credits supplied through the Sleevenote platform. You swipe through booklet pages while listening, and the interface stays out of the way so the album art fills the entire square without overlays or buttons. The whole point is that the device becomes the album cover while music plays, which works better in practice than it sounds on paper when you describe it.

Sleevenote won’t let you stream anything. It encourages you to “audition” music on your phone and only put albums you truly love on the player, treating it more like a curated shelf than a jukebox with everything. This sounds good in theory, but means carrying a second device that can’t do anything except play the files you’ve already bought, which feels like a lot of friction for album art, no matter how nice the screen looks.

Sleevenote works as a small act of resistance against music as disposable content. For people who miss having a physical relationship with albums, a square player that only does one thing might feel like a shrine worth keeping. Whether that’s worth the price for a device with a screen barely bigger than your phone is a different question, but the idea that digital music deserves its own object makes more sense than cramming everything into the same distracted rectangle.

The post This Square Player Refuses to Stream Music, and That’s the Point first appeared on Yanko Design.

This ultra-thin portable music player redefines music listening experience

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Portable music players have for long been the staple of audiophiles who cannot compromise on the audio quality of the tracks they listen to. Astell&Kern, FiiO and Sony have dominated this space for a long with their consistency.

Now Steelworks Studio wants these big names to level up their game with the SW-1 music player, which a proposed concept for a DAP that embodies functionality with visually pleasing aesthetics for a unified listening experience.

Designer: Steelworks Studio

A bezeless responsive touchscreen that is encapsulated by the durable aluminum body frame without subduing the retro charm signifies this design leap. The minimalist aesthetic is complemented by the stunning OLED display that fits the vibe of modern audio listeners. This concept chooses the trending silver finish for the frame that has a beautiful volume knob in the bottom center to induce a tactical feel.

The user can listen to their music on the 360-degree surround sound speakers as well as the gadget can be placed in the horizontal orientation. Yes, it’s got an equally robust kickstand for placing the device on a flat surface in landscape mode. So, you’re not just limited to music, but can also enjoy immersive binge-watching on the player.

The SW-1 music player has a very sleek and ergonomic footprint so that it can be carried easily in your daily commute to work. While the form factor is slightly taller than your usual Hi-res music player, the gadget is far thinner than other DAPs out there. Honestly, the height could have been a little less considering the display only occupies around 1/4th of the screen real estate. Anyways, the skim form fits like a charm in hand and that volume knob adds spice to your music listening experience.

 

 

 

The post This ultra-thin portable music player redefines music listening experience first appeared on Yanko Design.

Hi-fi Audio Player inspired by Teenage Engineering and Sony refreshes an age-old design

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Purist audiophiles always come back to the DAPs and high-resolution audio players to enjoy their favorite music collection in high definition. Sony has a foothold in the hi-res audio game for as long as memory goes back, and they continue to offer some of the best players for music listening. Walkman MW-A306 released last year is a favorite one for music lovers.

Teenage Engineering resonates the same value for its consumers with a broader portfolio of innovative and unconventional audio gadgets. Both Sony and TE have things like modern design, Gen-Z targeting and sublime quality at their helm to attract a niche set of audio lovers. We certainly love TE and so does the community of designers who have been mustering up cool concepts inspired by the Stockholm-based electronics company.

Designer: Evgeniy Vakulich

This cool concept of collaborating together the two loved brands is surely going to bring the heat to the likes of Astell&Kern, Fiio, iBasso and Shanling. Interestingly called the Pony Project, the DAP has the design DNA and color theme of Teenage Engineering. It gets a digital display to show the currently playing music and library elements to search for tracks. All the other buttons for toggling the elements like the tempo, loop, mode or FX. The tactile input for the L-Shift, R-Shift, Mic, Select and Start is heavily inspired by the Teenage Engineering aesthetics.

The top of the gadget has the volume rockers, bass and treble, power and stop buttons. A lot of mind has been put into the design and conceptualization of the music player by Evgeniy. The popular color theme of the TE products is so good to see in a DAP which usually comes in contemporary dark hues. If you’ve already not noticed, the audio player comes with the Pony branding which dupes the Sony brand name.

 

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Retrofuturistic streaming audio player recreates the simplicity of a radio

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There is no shortage of powerful and sophisticated media players these days that have almost every and all features you can possibly cram inside. Some of these designs are more upfront with the complexity of options and controls, while others hide behind a deceptively minimalist facade that relegates the knobs and sliders to a mobile app instead. While there is always a place for such advanced devices, there is sometimes also a need for simpler and more focused features. An old-school radio, for example, simply plays music it receives from certain frequencies, and that’s the kind of distilled listening experience that this DIY streaming audio player tries to offer in a retrofuturistic design that looks like a cross between that analog radio, a small TV, and, oddly enough, a miniature microwave.

Designer: Nik Reitmann

Streaming devices are so common these days that it almost makes no sense to make one yourself. After all, our smartphones themselves are capable of these and more, and you can easily pair them with a wireless speaker at home for louder output. Of course, if you value the journey and the process of making such a functional design more than the final product, then you’ll probably want something that at least stands out in more than just appearance alone.

This DIY streaming audio player stands somewhere in between a smart speaker and a smart display, focusing on the streaming audio activity but with a touchscreen display that adds a bit of flavor to the experience. It’s not a touch-only device, however, as its creator preferred to embrace some analog controls, especially a volume dial that seems to be a rare sight on many smart speakers these days. There are also a few LED-lit buttons, though, and the whole setup can be controlled remotely from your phone or even a computer.

The design chosen for the player is admittedly distinctive, embracing an aesthetic that seems to mix different eras. The arrangement of a large display or rectangular element opposite a set of buttons and a knob is reminiscent of analog radios and even some TVs from decades past. The smooth surfaces and curves, however, give it a more modern look that is amusingly close to the appearance of a microwave with a physical knob instead of just buttons. Either way, it’s an interesting design for a dedicated streaming audio player that distills the listening experience to its very basics rather than getting lost in a multitude of features.

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