RSSSony re-enters the glass tube business, with an innovative new speaker
By Michael Hatamoto | Published May 29, 2008, 5:58 PM
Sony is a company well known for creating new and innovative products, and has done it again with a new transparent tube speaker that will be released in Japan for a hefty price tag.
During a press event at Sony headquarters in Tokyo, the company introduced an innovative speaker design that uses hard glass instead of paper and magnesium used in regular speaker designs.
The Sony Sountina NSA-PF1 - the words "sound" and "fountain" combined - stands almost six feet high, has the width of a baseball bat, and can help music listeners cover 360 degrees of a room without stereophonics. It's said to have an audible range of between 50 and 20,000 Hz.
Traditional speakers produce sound in one direction by pushing sound waves over a diaphragm, but the Sony speakers vibrates a glass tube that is able to send sound waves 360 degrees.
Aside from the home music market, Sony plans to market the pricey speakers ($10,000, or over a million yen) to department stores, hotels and other public places where one speaker may be ideal.
To add a certain ambiance, Sony also included three different LEDs for owners to use: blue, amber, pink, or purple. The LED is located at the bottom of the speaker, and reflects off of a stainless steel casing at the top of the tube. If used in a room dark enough, the glow can be seen off a steel string located inside the top of the tube. The colors must be changed via remote control and cannot change automatically.
Scheduled to launch on June 20, Sony hopes to sell several hundred speakers per year. The company plans to market the speaker in the United States, Brazil, Russia and Middle East starting in the fall, with additional locations to be added if demand is high enough.
Does it play Blu-Ray?
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|I'd be surprised if Sony even sells several hundred of their low end speakers each year. They seem to spend all their time working with numbers and none with their ears.
Interesting products that don't work well might as well come from Bang and Olufsen.
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|I'll stick to Paradigm's
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|Sony continues to baffle and amaze with their utter lack of a clue. I get junk mail (real and electronic) from them because I had to register a product to get tech support. I clicked the "do not contact" button and took a screenshot of it. After the first email and junkmail arrived I sent the picture to their customer support address kindly asking them to honor my choice. It was returned saying "no such recipient".
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|For those with deficient educations: Blue + Pink (or Red) = Purple. But frankly for a thousand bucks a speaker I'd want full blown LASER-emitting LEDs! Also, one kewl columnar speaker per volume doesn't mean "stereophonics" - it means *mono*phonics! Hello, 1940 called, they want their olde tyme radio music back!
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|"But frankly for a thousand bucks a speaker I'd want full blown LASER-emitting LEDs!"
It's not a thousand bucks, it's TEN thousand bucks. For that much money, I would want it to be solid gold not glass! Also, this article is kind of useless because it doesn't mention anything about the sound quality or how strong the output is, other than the range. I'm guessing Sony is keeping that information secret, because it's crap. Looks like an expensive gimmick for rich snobs/companies to show off, nothing more.
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|Sounds like Bose. Form over function.
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|"For those with deficient educations: Blue + Pink (or Red) = Purple."
Since when?
Blue light + Red light has always equaled Magenta which is NOT purple. Blue and red pigments can equal purple but not lights.
Additive color (lights) Red, Green, and Blue.
Subtractive color (dyes or pigments) Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.
Purple is a weird color though. It exists in the human mind and not in the spectrum. Red and Blue crayons make it and perhaps that is what you're thinking of.
I'd like to know just what the heck Sony meant by purple. There is no such LED. Perhaps they meant violet.
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|...three different LEDs for owners to use: blue, amber, pink, or purple. In the US that's four!
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|nah, here in the us we still combine pink and blue to get purple.
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|No thanks, I'll keep my Paradigms. Dollar for dollar, there is no better speaker. They have been chosen in double blind tests as the best sounding speakers over pair that cost 20 times as much.
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|"Dollar for dollar, there is no better speaker."
Of course, I know that sound quality is subjective among different individuals, but I'll have to respectfully disagree.
For the money, I firmly believe nothing tops SVS. Their SBS-01 systems are phenomenal. Splurge a little more for the SCS-01 mirrored center channel mains, and you're close to sonic nirvana when teamed up with any one of their award-winning subs that they have been perfecting for years.
I have yet to sample the new MTS-01 systems though...
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