Archive for the ‘Sound Gadgets’ Category
Friday, September 26th, 2008 |
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Pay attention when staring at this chair and try to guess what this piece of furniture is made of. I could bet all my money on the fact that most of the people will think of LEGO, and with good reason, as a matter of fact. It looks like the interlocking plastic bricks assembled in the form of a futuristic chair, but we’re far from the truth.
Designer Matthew Plummer Fernandez chose to take design cues from the most unusual “place” ever, rather than inspiring himself from nature, architecture or any other traditional aesthetic sources. The angular contours of the so-called Sound/Chair are the consequence of a mapping sound waves experience. In other words, the result is an exact replica of a sound wave graph and embodies two different entities: a sound and a chair.
The product begins as a sound that is precisely crafted to imitate the shape of a chair when visualized as a 3-dimensional object using a volume, time and frequency plot. Made of polyethylene foam, water-jet cut (the first prototype was hand-cut expanded polystyrene), this chair is the first step to a project aiming at exploring the translation of furniture into sound and vice versa. If the sound can be visualized as a 3-dimensional object as long as it’s graphed mathematically, its “image” is brought to light: a landscape of spikes and shapes that vary accordingly to the type of sound. Altering those three parameters (volume, length and frequency) we’re facing a sound wave in the shape of a chair, which inherited the aesthetic of the specific sound.
After trying 719 different sounds, the designer put the chair into production. The Sound/Chair was launched at Selfridges’s pop-up shop as part of London’s design week and can be bought for an incredible amount of £3950 ($7280). This is one hell of an expensive chair, for god’s sake!
(Source Dvice)
Posted in Sound Gadgets | No Comments »
Thursday, September 25th, 2008 |
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No more than a couple of months elapsed from the day I received my MP3 player and ever since that day it became my best friend. I’m being laughed at in almost any circumstances because I just can’t let it go. It’s not something I’ve wanted to happen, but it did and I couldn’t be happier that I’m in the possession of a great distraction from the noisy environment.
I’ve always enjoyed the sound of music, but now I’m totally addicted. The only problem is with my mother who doesn’t waste any opportunity to tell me that those headsets do nothing else but helping me lose all contacts with reality. Moreover, she’s afraid that someday an accident will happen to me and it will be all my fault.
Although I don’t really like to admit she is right, I can’t disagree. Wearing headphones can block out too much of the world sometimes and might lead to undesirable accidents. Most of these devices are designed to filter the noise from the surrounding area, featuring the noise-cancellation function, meant to reduce unwanted ambient sounds. This isn’t very safe, as far as bicyclists wearing these headphones are concerned, because they need to hear what’s going on around them. There’s nothing more frustrating than to quietly cycle or jog outdoors and to be furiously honked, not giving you enough time to get out of harm’s way.
The main issue is that people wear these in-ear headphones or even common ones in order to entertain themselves with their favorite songs, but they tend to neglect facts and people surrounding them.
Therefore, the Semicircle Headphones, a piece of special design head gear, were created by Seohyun Baek and are thought to be a necessity. The semicircle shape is meant to fit in your ear without blocking out background noise and produces less fatigue during long stretches of music-listening. You can enjoy your music, but in the meantime you are acoustically connected to the environment. All you have to do is plug in a transmitter into your PMP’s headphone jack and the Bluetooth receiver in the earbuds will pick up the signal. In addition, the wireless connection ensures a wire-free experience.
There is no information about price and availability, since the concept hasn’t seen the mass production yet.
(Source Yanko)
Posted in Sound Gadgets | 14 Comments »
Sunday, September 21st, 2008 |
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What’s the use of a lamp sitting at your bedside if it doesn’t tell fairytales to your children before going to bed? Ok, maybe your little ones could live without the misadventures of their favorite characters and the goodnight kiss, but could you handle the lack of music originated in the lamp you love so much?
Yes, everything must be multifunctional nowadays. You expect more from your furniture than to fulfill its primary purposes effectively. Therefore, you seek for additional functions. The AmpLamp makes its special debut as it offers a convincing lamp design with embedded powerful sound equipment. Combining a speaker with an amplifier and a table light, the AmpLamp features a very good sound quality and gives you the chance to enjoy music through a unique pice of true designer style.
The device is the launch product of Futuros Ltd., which was formed in 2006 by Paul Frobisher precisely to develop and produce the AmpLamp and aimed the equilibrium of technology and beautiful design. After exploring the concept of turning a loudspeaker into a piece of design that would blend into its environment, Paul Frobisher commissioned Dominic Bromley, a highly acclaimed ceramics designer, to create the housing for the AmpLamp.
As far as the speakers are concerned, those are hidden inside the lampshade, using a combination of technologies which create stereo sound from a single sound. The AmpLamp uses NXT and Airsound technologies which utilize the lampshade as resonance body and tiny side-spotted speakers that include the spatial information. Generating 80 watts of power, the amplifier and the strong subwoofer are embedded in the base. Compatible with any audio source you may own, the AmpLamp is also provided with a handy iPod dock/charging.
The AmpLamp is a “unique patent pending concept” at the moment, as we’re told on the Futuros’s official website, so there is no information about price and availability yet.
(Source Dvice)
Posted in Sound Gadgets | 2 Comments »
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 |
In September, our friends, TechPin.com together with the LaptopsArena.com team, are inviting you to take part at a giveaway that will bring some cool pocket gadgets to 6 of you who will get on the randomly chosen winners list!
It will be fun, interesting and you won’t have to do anything complicated in order to participate. Further details are available on TechPin.com and LaptopsArena.com. Subscribe to our newsletters and start posting your opinion. Good Luck!
Posted in Electronic Gadgets, Music Gadgets, News, Office Gadgets, Sound Gadgets | No Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008 |
As if the Japanese weren’t setting enough trends for every conceivable aspect of life, they now have a special design project dubbed KDDI AU that is meant to create all sorts of crazy devices that would, sooner or later, be commercialized and become a standard.
Their latest concept devices can e seen on display in Tokyo. An important segment is represented by cellphones coming in various forms and with various unique functions. A good example for this segment seems to be the Box To Play. According to DVice, this sleek concept device is sort of a combination between a cell phone, complete with the usual call and camera functionsn, and a peculiar music device which appears to include a tiny embedded turntable that allows you to scratch the music playing on the phone.
Even more, the phone also includes a neat feature that lets you transform the device into a box which displays a music visualizer similar to what we see in Winamp. But this is not the only interesting phone that KDDI came up with. There are a bunch of other crazy phones that can pe transformed into musical instruments. Go ahead and check them all out on the KDDI AU official site (it’s in Japanese, but you’ll find your way).
Posted in Phone Gadgets, Sound Gadgets | No Comments »