Teenage Engineering’s ‘rumble’ module puts haptic bass in the OP-Z

When I reviewed the OP-Z from Teenage Engineering, I was most curious about the expansion port. The diminutive portable synth and sequencer already packed a lot of musical power into a small box. The fact it could be further expanded was exciting. To...

When was the last time you ‘felt’ the beat?

Humans are just hard-wired to love bass. No I don’t mean those EDM lovers, I mean all humans. We’re psychologically built to love low-frequency sounds, because bass notes are the first things we ever hear. In the womb, we hear muffled noises of the world outside. We hear the gentle thumping of our mother’s heartbeat. Music is something we hear. Bass is something we feel.

I repeat, Bass is something we feel, not just hear, so it goes without a doubt that music heard on average speakers, sounds average. Play that same music at a concert and you’ll feel the sound in your chest as your body thumps to the tunes. Now needless to say, you can’t have the concert experience at home. You can buy a good speaker with a sizeable subwoofer… or you can just wear a subwoofer on your wrist. Yeah! The Basslet by Lofelt is a miniature bone-conducting subwoofer that you wear on your wrist. Funded successfully on Kickstarter just a year back, the Basslet is already seeing mass acceptance especially by the VR community. It truly provides an immersive sound experience even with the most average speakers or headphones. Generating vibrations ranging from 10 to 250Hz, the Basslet helps you truly feel the bass. The vibrations traverse up your arm and into your body (it isn’t just a vibrating component strapped to your wrist). The Basslet connects wirelessly with any audio source you may have and delivers the super-low frequencies to your body with zero latency while your ear picks up the remaining frequencies, allowing your entire self to feel sounds… Not just hear it. Musical applications aside (and there are so many!), just imagine having the Basslet strapped to you as you play Need For Speed or Call of Duty. You’ll feel the car’s raw horsepower as you revv up the engine, or the massive anti-tank gun as it thud-thuds away at the enemy. You’ll never want to experience audio any other way!

Designer: Lofelt

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Teenage Engineering’s next synth wirelessly syncs with Basslet

I love a good collaboration. So when I spotted a Teenage Engineering representative jamming on the (as yet unreleased) OP-Z while wearing a Basslet wearable subwoofer at this year's NAMM convention, I was curious. It turns out, The Swedish synth make...

Technology helped me through the emotional roller coaster of CES

Humans love to control how they feel. Booze and coffee have been perking us up and lubricating social situations for millennia. Mood-enhancing technology, on the other hand, usually tries to emulate a cup of joe or a glass of wine but without the nee...

Engadget Podcast Ep 21: Ooh Las Vegas

Associate editor Billy Steele, senior editor Nicole Lee and deputy managing editor James Trew join host Terrence O'Brien to talk about the early trends emerging from CES. It's only the first day of the show, but there's already been plenty of announc...