Tag: Sound

Industrial designer Pieter Maes, one of the artists responsible for developing LaCie’s cool golden hard drive created this design for a cluster of speakers which are formed into a near perfect sphere. By joining a number of individual speaker cones to a single central spider-like structure, the orb can project sound in every direction.

Tired of the same old speaker designs? Here’s some compact speakers with a decidedly different look. These Microbon speakers are have a hexagonal case design which is certainly unusual. Instead of a typical cheap plastic case, these speakers have cheap wooden cases.

These colorful plastic pieces may look a lot like a LEGO blocks, but they’re actually tiny iPod docks. Each block even has some scrawny little speakers built in, making it completely self-contained. Since the speakers don’t even require external power, don’t expect much volume, but what do you expect from something this small? The strange thing for me is why you’d want a single solitary block that doesn’t snap together with any others.

Building out that ultimate home theater, but can’t deal with wires running all over the place? Sure, there are plenty of virtual surround systems which consolidate the front, rear and center satellite channels. But all of those really require a subwoofer if you want any meaningful low-end. Now Infinity and JBL (both part of the Harman International family) have announced subwoofers that can be placed anywhere in your room without running any speaker wires.

The title speaks for itself. Sound Activated Mini Dancing Monkeys has to be the best product name I’ve heard in a long time. What more can you ask for than mini monkeys that dance along to sounds?

Somebody at Pottery Barn’s PBteen division was assigned the task of creating a bookshelf stereo, and appears to have taken the concept a bit too literally by creating a bookshelf with speakers built into it. Actually, the Modular Speaker Double Shelf is actually a pretty clever idea, combining both a sound system and a storage unit into a single piece of furniture.

At almost 5.5-feet tall, you certainly won’t miss these giant speakers in your living room. The Ferguson Hill FH001 loudspeakers feature a huge acrylic horn balanced on a delicate aluminum base. The speakers’ massive horn design allows them to crank out plenty of volume with as little as 5-watts of power driving them.

At the tip-top of the audiophile market, there’s an elite group of folks who think the best way to listen to music is on a good old-fashioned analog turntable. This record player is for them. The DaVinciAudio Labs AAS Gabriel turntable bases its unique design on the same process that’s used to cut grooves into masters for vinyl discs.

I can definitely say I’ve never seen a subwoofer that looks quite like this one. Elemental Designs $2500 Dodecasub offers up ten individual ten-inch subwoofers in a single, geometrically striking package. The enormous multi-element subwoofer looks like a giant twelve-sided die to me.

Soundmatters is best known for their all-in-one surround sound systems which cram an entire 5.1 home theater into a single small box. Up until now, their designs were still a bit too unwieldy for placement anywhere but on a shelf or on top of rear-projection set.

Industrial designer Nicolas Gonzalez Garrido has created this nifty lamp that looks like a dog. It’s called the Guide Dog because when you enter a dark room and whistle, it illuminates to show you the way. At this point the lamp is just a design concept, and Nicolas hasn’t announced plans to produce it.

If you’re looking for some deluxe speakers to complement your shmancy crystal radio, look no further than these noisemakers from ELAC. Their new 240 series speakers feature drivers that look like crystal. They’re made from aluminum covered with a angled crystalline surface that mimics the look of a cut precious gem.

Tired of cheap looking plastic portable speakers? These portable speakers are made out of wood, which not only makes them look swell, but should make them sound better than plastic ones too. These compact speakers from China’s Microbon Science connect to your PC or portable media player through a 3.5mm

Creative Japan today took the wraps off this cool portable speaker for the 2G iPod Shuffle. The compact speaker goes great with the brushed metal finish of Apple’s tiny media player. Just dock your 2G Shuffle on the top of Creative’s new Travelsound i50, snap on the clear protective cover and you’re ready to go.

While Microsoft bundles a headset for Xbox 360 online gameplay, it would be an understatement to say that the sound and build quality is a bit sketchy. So what’s a heavy-duty online gamefreak to do? Turtle Beach may have the answer with their Ear Force X3 headset for the Xbox 360. You won’t be fooling around with these puppies around your ears.

I’ve written about some out of this world speaker designs in my time, but never anything quite like these speakers from Germany’s MBL. Their 101 E Radialstrahler Reference speakers offer a striking sculptural design that makes them look more like something you’d see at a power plant than something that would crank out world-class audio.