This architecture-inspired artistic amplifier delivers an immersive experience of the Tokyo soundscape!

In the top floor suite of hotel ‘sequence | Miyashita Park’ in Shibuya, Tokyo, you will find a marvelous piece of equipment quietly sitting on the ledge overlooking the scenic metropolis it is named after. Called #001 TOKYO, it is a vacuum tube amplifier, the first one by Puddle Sound – a brand created by Japanese architectural studio, Puddle. However, what they are offering is not just a product but a completely new experience of the Tokyo soundscape to immerse yourself in.

Puddle Sound’s vision is to make people more conscious of how they associate sound from a place and time as a specific memory in their lives. And they do this by bringing together three things: a modern Tokyo-style guest room design, original sound recorded around Shibuya, and the integrity of the tube amplifier as art. Thus was born #001 TOKYO. It is a custom-made amplifier, one of only 15 limited-edition models, which comes with an architectural acoustic design for your space to bring sound, art, and life together.

Designer Masaki Kato, the founder of Puddle, wanted to use various primitive materials to take the audience on a journey of a novel sensory experience. Securely placed within a glass housing are the vacuum tubes alongside a circular heatsink made up of 400 copper cooling pins. Surrounding them is natural clay, coated over the steel casing, and is given a rough texture to give an appearance of a desert landscape to this piece. On the lower part, which is recessed than the rest of the body, we see control elements and connectivity ports nicely laid out with ambient light shining upon them, making this design an embodiment of Japanese minimalism in perfect harmony.

Puddle Sound has collaborated with various artisans who bring their amazing craftsmanship from their respective fields to create this wonderful work of art. Now if only there was a portable version, allowing you to carry a small piece of Tokyo wherever you go.

Designer: Masaki Kato for Puddle Sound

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Peek inside Samsung’s sound lab to see ringtones being born

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Samsung's opened up about how the engineers in its sound lab build the default tones for your handset. Tasked with developing a "Sonic Branding," a ringtone that's as iconic and recognizable as Nokia's famous reworking of Gran Vals is to the Finnish handset maker. Research showed that most phones are answered within 10 seconds, so for Over The Horizon, the two-second is repeated and variated several different ways.

Designing the soundscape for NatureUX also posed problems of its own. In order to create those aquatic noises, designers stirred a rubber bowl of water and scratched wet plates with toothpicks hundreds of times until the perfect tone was found. What was the leading cause of rejection? The enhanced sounds were a little too similar to that of a flushing toilet. Of course, while handset sound design is the team's most famous effort, it's also tasked with producing the audible signals from everything from Microwaves to Washing Machines -- so perhaps your next load of clean laundry will be heralded with a three-minute guitar solo.

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Peek inside Samsung's sound lab to see ringtones being born originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bringing Sound Back to The Music

Soundscape is a midi controlled musical interactive surface that mainly focuses bringing the control of music, back to the listener. As the designer explains, “instead of being witness to music, the user can now interact and immerse them selves within the sound – bringing tactile back into the aural.” The device is a 3D printed black rubber surface juxtaposed with a Rosewood housing. As you explore it with your hands, the underlying circuit is triggered and the music playing is effected in varying degrees depending on the sequence and spread of the triggered signals.

Kale explains, “The texture of the 3D printed surface is made in a way to be explored not only visually as a type of typography or terrain, but also explored by touch in the tactile sense. The Soundscape is run through USB port, using Native Instruments Traktor Digital music program, and utilizes effects and sounds specific to its digital banks. It hopes to recreate an aesthetic resonating back to the time of mahogany radios and rich sounding record players.”

Designer: Kale Joines

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