Sirocco Speaker by Shengtao Ma is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2024 A' Design Award in Audio and Sound Equipment Design Competition Category.
IronAudio Products· 2024
Sirocco Speaker
by Shengtao Ma
Client: Qingdao Thousand Wood Industrial Design Company Limited
A' Design Award Winner in Audio Products Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #160959The Design
About Sirocco Speaker
Sirocco is a multifunctional speaker, whose design is inspired by Chinese lanterns. It is bold and innovative in structure. Through the unique honeycomb structure design, it further conducts and diffuses the sound, thereby further enhancing the user experience and music quality, and bringing users a different use experience and visual experience. It is also foldable, and the shell of the speaker is storable and modular, with a variety of shell shapes, which can be replaced at any time according to the user's mood and home environment.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Sirocco Speaker is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Sirocco Speaker is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Sirocco Speaker is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Interviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative fusion of Chinese lantern aesthetics with audio technology in the Sirocco Speaker is captivating - could you elaborate on how this cultural inspiration shaped your approach to sound diffusion and acoustic performance?
Chinese lanterns generally have a relatively regular geometric shape, the most common of which is circular. Designing the speaker to resemble a lantern, the circular lantern shape can provide 360-degree sound diffusion. From the acoustic principle, the circular shell can reduce the directionality of sound reflection, allowing the sound to spread more evenly in all directions, just like water waves spreading from the center of the circle to the surroundings. This is different from the way traditional speakers sound from the front, and can create a more immersive sound environment. Chinese lanterns usually have multiple layers and frames. In design, this multi-layer structure can be used to control acoustic resonance. Multiple layers of support structures similar to the lantern frame are set inside the speaker, and the materials and spacing of these structures can be carefully selected. When the sound propagates inside the speaker, these support structures will interact with the sound waves, and they can absorb sound waves of specific frequencies and reduce harmful resonances.
The honeycomb structure of the Sirocco Speaker serves both aesthetic and functional purposes - how did you balance these dual requirements while ensuring optimal sound quality and visual appeal?
The size and shape of the honeycomb unit will directly affect the propagation and diffusion of sound. Smaller honeycomb units can increase the scattering of sound, make the sound more evenly distributed in the space, reduce the directivity of the sound, and thus create a wider sound field. When designing the honeycomb structure of the speaker, we pay attention to showing its exquisite craftsmanship details and high-quality manufacturing process. The high-precision processing technology is used to make the edges of the honeycomb unit smooth and neat, and the splicing is tight and seamless, showing the exquisiteness and reliability of the product.
What specific technical challenges did you encounter when developing the modular, foldable aspects of the Sirocco Speaker, and how did these engineering solutions enhance the overall user experience?
Foldable speakers need to be folded and unfolded frequently, which is a huge test for the durability of the folding mechanism. The folding mechanism is prone to wear and looseness, so materials with good elasticity and recovery are finally selected to make the shell and foldable parts. If the connection between the modules is not sealed well, it may cause sound leakage, reducing the efficiency and quality of the sound. For modular connection, a simple and easy-to-understand magnetic connection method is adopted. The magnetic connection is convenient and fast, and users only need to bring the modules close to automatically absorb and connect.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This speaker further conducts and diffuses sound through its unique honeycomb structure design, thereby further enhancing the user's experience and music quality.
This speaker is foldable. The speaker's shell is stowable and modular, and comes with a variety of shell shapes that can be replaced at any time according to the user's mood and home environment. Improve sound quality. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Width 180mm x Length 180mm x Height 350mm
- Tags
- Honeycomb, Modular, Warm, Natural, Retro, Humanized, High-Fidelity
- Production Technology
- The switch and volume adjustment part of the speaker adopts the retro horizontal sliding adjustment form. The main part uses a large number of wooden structures, and the foldable honeycomb structure at the upper end can be assembled and disassembled by rotation, making it easy to replace, store and clean.
- Design Challenge
- The challenge in the design process of this product was how to combine the honeycomb structure of the lantern with the speaker and have replaceable modular functions.
- Research
- Based on the traditional speaker, this product has a new design for its appearance and structure. It improves the sound quality through a unique honeycomb structure and adds replaceable modular functions, making it interesting.
- Inspiration
- This speaker is inspired by Chinese lanterns. The structure of the Chinese lantern is extracted and simplified, and its unique honeycomb structure is combined with the speaker to help improve the sound quality.
In addition, the Chinese lantern is foldable, and its application on the casing of the speaker makes it stowable and modular. It allows users to store it conveniently, and at the same time, it can be replaced with different appearances according to the user's preferences. - Project Duration
- The project starts at Qingdao University of Technology in August 2023 and ends at Qingdao University of Technology in February 2024.
- Operation Flow
- This speaker can be connected to the user's mobile phone or computer and other devices via Bluetooth, or you can choose to connect with a data cable. The appearance and structure are inspired by the honeycomb structure of Chinese lanterns, which can improve the sound quality and make it easy to fold, store and replace.
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