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Deeptime has debuted a world’s first - Speakers made of sand

By Marcus Wong - on 26 Feb 2019, 12:46pm

Deeptime has debuted a world’s first - Speakers made of sand

Think speaker material and most people would think some type of wood but Czech design studio Deeptime has just debuted the world’s first commercially available audio set made of sand. Yes, sand. The same material you find on beaches has been reinforced with a custom-made hardener and put through a custom 3D printing process to create speakers that incorporate bamboo fiber cones and a subwoofer whose shape is said to be inspired by the fossils of black sea urchins. Meet what Deeptime calls an “Ionic sound system”.

Spirula speakers

A limited run of 1618 pairs, these are inspired by the spiral-shaped cochleae present in the human ear and are said to be both air-tight and resonance free. They’re driven by a 3” full-range driver that has a bamboo fiber cone, structured Santoprene surround, and powerful underhung motor. This allows the driver to deliver response from 75Hz to 20kHz with very low distortion. Because it’s housed in the wave-guide spiral of the speaker, sound waves don’t radiate out from the rear of the unit, but rather are directed forward. The tube is also filled with absorbent fiber to soak up sound energy from the back of the driver.

Thunderstone Woofer

An active subwoofer that uses trilateral symmetry to incorporate three bass ports and longer resonant tubes, this subwoofer was designed with the magic of Sea Urchin fossils in mind. Inside, you’ll find a custom circuit board set that incorporates switch-mode power supply, a control board with Bluetooth chipset running aptX & AAC audio codecs and a powerful D-class integrated amplifier with ultra-low noise levels. As such, you can easily connect to the subwoofer via Bluetooth, 3.5mm analog stereo, or a mini-Toslink optical cable. It also contains an LED source that glows amber to indicate operation and gets brighter as you increase the volume.  

Here are the specifications for both speaker and woofer:

Spirula speaker specifications

  • Design: Passive sealed enclosure
  • Materials: Silica Sand, Aluminium
  • Speaker Dimensions (L × W × H): 208 × 117 × 222 mm
  • Speaker Weight: 2.4 kg
  • Driver: Full-range 3“ bamboo fiber paper cone
  • Frequency Range: 75 Hz – 20 kHz
  • Nominal impedance: 8 Ohm
  • Sensitivity 1W/1m: 87 dB

 

Thunderstone woofer Specifications

  • Integrated Amplifier: D-Class, Ultra Low 0.005 % THD+N at 1W–25W/8 ohm
  • Satellite Power Output: 2x RMS 30 W / BTL Peak Power 60 W
  • Subwoofer Power Output: RMS 55 W / PTBL Peak Power 110 W
  • Power Input: AC 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz
  • Audio Input: Analogue 3.5“ Stereo Jack, Digital 3.5“ Fibre Optic Jack
  • Bluetooth: aptX & AAC audio codecs
  • DAC: 24bit/96kHz (High-Res)
  • Range: 10+ meters
  • Design: Triple ported enclosure
  • Materials: Silica Sand, Aluminium
  • Dimensions (L × W × H): 372 × 372 × 239 mm
  • Weight: 6.5 kg
  • Driver:  High-End 5.75“
  • Frequency Range: 40 Hz – 200 Hz
  • Nominal Impedance: 4 Ohm
  • Sensitivity 1W/1m: 88 dB 

It seems the Thunderstone woofer acts as the control unit for this limited edition 2.1 system (only 1618 sets will be made) as that's where all the connections are found. The Ionic system is available now from Deeptime for a cool 3141,59 EUR. And yes, Deeptime is aware that that’s π x 1000.

Source: Deeptime, WhatHiFi

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