For years, I have wondered how is it that nobody invented a lava lamp that dances to music. As it turns out, someone actually did. OK. The Van der Waals Speaker is not a musical lava lamp. It is not a lamp and it does not have molten wax. Instead, it has ferrofluid.
More importantly, this ferrofluid found in the Van der Waals Speaker “dances” to music. So, yeah, forget light-based or CGI equalizer. Feast your eyes to the Ferromagnetic Visualizer on the Van der Waals Speaker. Rest assured that the black stuff there is not a symbiote. Ermm, right, Sergey Kuznetsov, right?
We do not exactly how the ferrofluid moves. I mean we know how it moves but we do not know how it moves when the music plays. From the blow-up view of the device, we noted that the engineers may have used an electromagnet to make it happen and somehow, linking the electromagnet’s output with the frequency and volume of the music being played.
In addition to having mesmerizing and yet creepy symbiote-like stuff dancing on the face of this spherical speaker, it has an LED backlight that makes it looks even more futuristic.
As for audio reproduction, the Van der Waals Speaker with 9-inch Ferromagnetic Visualizer boasts two mid-bass drivers each rated at 15 W, two 15 W tweeters, and a passive bass radiator, bolstered by DSPs and amplifiers sourced from Texas Instruments.
It is a Bluetooth speaker using Qualcomm’s chip to realize Bluetooth 5.1 wireless transmission that supports A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles and supports AAC, SBC, aptX, aptX HD as well as aptX Adaptive codecs.
Not going to lie. The Van der Waals Speaker is an attractive gadget but before you jumped on it, you ought to know that (1) it does not come cheap (or US$349, to be precise), and (2) it won’t be delivered until November 2022. On top of that, you have to take into account the risks involved with a crowdfunding campaign.
In short, exercise your own judgment.
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All images courtesy of Van der Waals.
