World's First Levitating Bluetooth Speaker

Dumbest product, I love the fact that they go "You can take the speaker anywhere you want!" yet there is no way for it to stand upright on a surface

Also, enjoy paying 3-4x as much for a speaker that does the same thing a $40 bluetooth speaker will do

But hey, everyone loves those free floating globes on their desks, why not this?
 
"The speaker orb connects to a charging stand with an embedded LED stream that plugs into any USB port. The charging stand will illuminate once the orb is fully charged. OM/ONE’s base also features a USB port so the charging stand can be plugged directly into the base."

WFT is an "embedded LED stream"? So you still have to plug it in via USB for it to charge?
 
Wow. I thought those little bluetooth speakers were useless and they up and make it even more useless.
 
"You can take it with you anywhere you want, like the beach".

Try sticking that in your pocket and see what kind of looks you get.:D
 
Does floating make sound any better? I don't get the point other than "wow, it floats!"
 
That has to be the worst marketing video, complete with 80s porn music, i have seen on a long time.
 
Needs more embedded LED streams.

If I understand it right, the base is a wireless charger, and so it has the novelty of spinning around and floating as desk-art while also making it possible to grab and go with up to 16hrs of battery life.

As a novelty, I would actually probably buy one if they had licensed Star Wars to make it look like the death star and have one of the speakers at least in the shape of the laser dish.
 
FM 3370 said:
Does floating make sound any better? I don't get the point other than "wow, it floats!"
Click to expand...
Well designer speakers usually come with "needle" type inverse pyramid mounts to isolate them from what they are standing on, I assume to eliminate vibration.

That said, you do get an amplification effect from putting a speaker on a wooden table, and that's in fact how some of these wireless speakers are able to create reasonable bass, which is important on a tiny speaker. The Wowee does this for example, by using a gel to help integrate it into the table harmonics and produce deeper thumps.
 
I want to see an audiophiles take on the final product before I even thinking about throwing down.

What catches my attention more is the idea that these dudes built and are doing their own crowdsourcing page? Is that a thing now? Kickstarter (and Indeo) may want to take notice of such a trend, because if people don't need a middle man like them setting it up and taking cuts, their niche may get threatened hard! Not that it isn't already with all the unreliable kickstarter projects being covered lately..
 
No I just can't. Not when one of the devs reminds me too much of Hyde, oh and the price tag.
 
spincut said:
I want to see an audiophiles take on the final product before I even thinking about throwing down.
Click to expand...

FM 3370 said:
Does floating make sound any better? I don't get the point other than "wow, it floats!"
Click to expand...

This is not an audiophile product, it will be pants for sound quality.
A speaker needs to be anchored otherwise the piston energy from the cones movement will also cause the cabinet to move.
This wastes energy and mutilates the frequency response.
Bass especially will be poor unless it has back to back bass cones that fire in opposing directions.
But even then, the cabinet design is poor for a loudspeaker so I wouldnt expect any bass tbh.

Looks cool though :)
 
Now, maybe if this were just the tweeter from a larger speaker it would be kind of cool. Every time the speaker became active this would float above it allowing for the possibility of better cabinet construction but the fact people are spending $180 on the equivalent of a floating cell phone speaker boggles my mind. Being that this isn't even an official Kickstarter I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing were a scam.
 
Puterguru said:
"You can take it with you anywhere you want, like the beach".

Try sticking that in your pocket and see what kind of looks you get.:D
Click to expand...

Stick them on the back of you shorts. Instant brazilian butt :D:D
 
Make it look like the Death Star and we have a winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
It can't sound good, just the fact that it's rolling around will create audible disturbance to the sound. The whole globe is not radiating sound, most likely only those tiny ports on the top produce anything.

The sound quality is going to be utter crap but that doesn't matter to people who buy these. They're going to get the 'wow' effect showing it to their friends anyway, just a tad more wow than what a levitating globe without sound would.

I'm betting that nobody will want to listen to the sound of those balls, except the people who run $20 tiny radios on their desk right now and are happy with them.
 
I was told once by a physics teacher that the 'perfect' speaker would theoretically be a floating sphere that changes its diamator back and forth, this elimanates all distortion caused by a normal cone speaker. This looks cool for sure, but when I first saw it I thought of the 'perfect' speaker and this is NO where near that. Traditional cone speakers inside a floating sphere.
 
bobums said:
I was told once by a physics teacher that the 'perfect' speaker would theoretically be a floating sphere that changes its diamator back and forth, this elimanates all distortion caused by a normal cone speaker. This looks cool for sure, but when I first saw it I thought of the 'perfect' speaker and this is NO where near that. Traditional cone speakers inside a floating sphere.
Click to expand...

There are problems with the perfect speaker analogy.

1) it would work fine in a field where there are no reflections but in a room, it would cause a lot of problems.
A lot of room treatments would be needed to prevent unwanted reflections, or the speaker would need to be surrounded by absorbing material.

2) A single speaker is great if it can do the full range of frequencies with decent response across the range and good phase, but they cant.
Its easy enough for a single speaker cone/diaphragm etc to do 3 Octaves (doubling or halving of frequency) and this can be extended quite well to 5 or 6 Octaves, but 20Hz to 20KHz needs 10 Octaves.
The physical size will limit its lowest and highest responses.
If the lowest response was 80Hz this would be 8 Octaves so getting close.
But this takes no account of high definition audio which is currently around a max of 192KHz, a further 3 and a bit Octaves, which a perfect speaker would be expected to do -even though most current speakers tail off at around 22Khz to 40KHz.
(this is outside the debate a little, forgive me :))

3) Linear response on a full range speaker is limited greatly by the power handling.
The more power used (usually by bass), the nearer the speaker gets to its maximum excursion.
This causes the speakers spring mechanisms (rubber surround, air compression ...) to be nearer the limits which means much more energy is required to get a smaller movement in the outward direction and less for the inward direction, distorting lower power waveforms such as higher frequency.
Reducing the max power fed to the speaker will help a single speaker reduce this distortion.
Separate drivers help reduce this type of distortion substantially where more power is needed.

4) ...


A large planar loudspeaker, large enough to get a decent bass response is probably the best single speaker solution.
Not quite a Deathstar though lol.
 
It doesn't matter how it sounds, it looks cool and is a conversation point for people tgat love to buy and flaunt useless technology. It has that wow factor to it.
 
If it wasnt $200 I could agree.
I bought my Sister a floating Dr Who Tardis for Christmas for about £20.
Its cool a for a short while, but then it just gets left in a corner, still switched on, but you dont really notice it any more.
I wouldnt pay more than £20. Maybe £30 if it was a Deathstar :D
 
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