Glass works

Pictured above is a loudspeaker diaphragm made out of glass, shown at CES Las Vegas by Glass Acoustic Innovations Technology Co., Ltd. (GAIT, at www.gai-tech.com), which claims to be “the inventor of glass diaphragm in the global acoustic industry”. The Taiwan-registered company is linked to BDNC, which began glass speaker development in 2016 and recently completed a crowd-funding campaign for the new products. GAIT claims also to have chip-on-glass technology which allows electronics to be deposited on the diaphragm itself, and — inevitably — is integrating colourful LED lights within glass speakers.

Others have used glass for sound reproduction before, memorably Sony in its wireless glass sound speakers, and it’s also a crowd-funding favourite via outfits like Ammos. Masaaki Takenaka of materials manufacturer Toray in Japan holds a patent for glass loudspeaker designs dating back to 1992.

Another source of reflection at CES was the Sound Mirror (below), an IPX6-rated waterproof speaker which operates as a voice-activated “acoustic mirror”. It can connect wirelessly or via Ethernet to allow Google Chromecast, Apple AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth streaming. There’s even Alexa built in, so the Sound Mirror can be voice-activated and answer your questions while you’re preening for the day.

The design won three CES Innovation awards, and the lush soundmirror.ai website is full of lovely pics but entirely devoid of technical details, contact information, availability or pricing, so there may be some delay before it appears at a store near you! But then that’s par for the course at CES...