Last month, New Zealand based architecture and industrial design major Casey Lin (21) introduced the Timbre Speaker – a music device speaker she created as part of a class assignment.

Stripped down to its bare essentials, Timbre’s main components consist of a Black American Walnut wood box, two glass vessels, a combined power and volume knob and of course, the necessary audio and power ports.

Casey’s material choices of glass and wood were driven not by aesthetics but by the materials’ favorable acoustic qualities – the wood adding a warmth of tone and the glass a reverberant characteristic.

But let’s cut to the chase. How do these simple parts really come together to function as a speaker? Well, with the magic of your everyday surface transducers of course! Surface transducers are readily available, often inexpensive, devices that can render virtually any surface into a speaker simply by causing it to vibrate.

While the transducer laced wooden box is capable of functioning as a stand alone speaker, the addition and movement of the glass vessels allow for an element of sound customization based on the vessels’ size, shape, material and position on the box.

Cool, great looking and interactive. A+ Casey! For information on how to get your very own Timbre Speaker contact Casey through her website designbycl.