This Cone-Shaped Speaker Learns Your Musical Preferences

The Aether Cone is magically simple: Tap it to play a song. Don't like what you hear? Rotate the ring around its edge—a tiny twist skips the current track, and a big one adjusts the overall mood of the playlist.

Aether Cone Speaker | $399 Lupine Hammack

The Aether Cone is magically simple: Tap it to play a song. Don't like what you hear? Rotate the ring around its edge—a tiny twist skips the current track, and a big one adjusts the overall mood of the playlist. By studying your listening habits on streaming services, Aether's algorithms can learn what kinds of music you like and even where and when you prefer to hear specific genres. It's an expert guesser, but if you want to listen to a particular artist or song, just press the center button and tell it what you want to hear. The point, according to Aether cofounder Duncan Lamb, is to eliminate the forest of choices forced upon us by phones. But all that simplicity and ease of use belies a two-year design process during which Lamb's team sweated every detail.

CLEVER UI
Aether considered giving the speaker a touch interface but found that too techy. The solution? The speaker's functions—turning it on, changing the mood, picking a specific song—can be controlled by pressing the button in the center, twisting the ring around the edge, or simply speaking voice commands.

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ANTI-ROLL MODEL
The team chose a cone because it denotes sound, but a true cone would roll—so Aether flattened the rear for stability. The complex transition from round to flat necessitated the aid of a 3-D-modeling master. “He came in and left as quickly as Spider-Man,” says Casper Asmussen, Aether's chief designer.

SONIA YECK

ICONIC SHAPE
Several prototypes were built to refine the form. Finding the correct angle was crucial, not only to project sound but also to make interactions feel natural— the upward-tilting face suggests it's ready to hear your voice.

Aether