Joey Roth’s ceramic speakers use minimalist materials in a minimalist design. Made from cork, aluminum, Baltic birch plywood, porcelain and little else, the white devices eschew plastic or metal in favour of vibration-dampening parts. Roth’s exhaustive site has a video demonstration and a detailed schematic, featuring such arcane audiophile bait as the phrase “banana plug termination.”
The speakers can be hooked up to whatever music player one might be considering – iPods, computers, TVs, turntables – and they come with their own amplifier, which resembles some tiny, cleanly modern piece of Ikea furniture, right down to its wooden volume slider. For all their oxygen-free cables and audio output, Roth’s creations aren’t ideal if you only care about sound-flattering hardware: they cost $495, and one could find cheaper speakers of similar quality and functional design elsewhere. But those wouldn’t look this good. If you’re willing to pay a premium for speakers that elegantly complement your MacBook, these are them.
