Perhaps a competitor to the Geneva Sound System (I’ve got one in my house and I LOVE it), is the Reverb Solar Powered iPod Dock (it stands 3 feet tall, so that’s some dock).

It has built in solar panels so it can be used outside your home power-cord free! It fits a majority of iPhones and iPods but also comes with a 3.5mm audio jack so you can use it with just about anything. It goes on sale April 2010 for $2,299 and you can pre-order now with a deposit of $500 (a serious leap of faith that it sounds as good as it looks). Looks great though!

Incredibly great piece by Stephane Vigny. Via Magic Realism

If you’re a fool for your audio gear, you probably feel entangled in wires. That jungle of insulated black and gray is slowly being diminished by wireless options for any sound system. Parrot wireless speakers utilizes WiFi and Bluetooth technology, allowing you to set up your Philippe Starck-designed speakers anywhere in the room and stay in control of the music from your computer, iPod, or any Bluetooth enabled source.

When reading a comic, the speaker is the character with a word bubble above his head. In everyday waking life our words don’t hover above our person to allow everyone within peering distance to catch our conversational content. For that, we employ another kind of speaker, the kind that blares song lyrics or comedy routines, not to mention embarrassing best man speeches we blurt into a microphone. These different definitions of the word speaker are echoed in designer Sherwood Forlee’s design concept for a speaker set. Forlee has created a pair of noiseboxes shaped like the speech surroundings of something said by Superman that just might sing the sounds of Sinatra or The Shins. Pretty awesome.

I’m a big fan of these Dragon Speakers– a design by Axelsson Design studio, founded by Joakim Axelsson in the UK. Reminiscent of Buro Vormkrijger’s awesome Woofer Speakers, these sound-spewing hi-fi dragons are available in white (shown), red, black or made to order in a color spec you provide for a casual 1000 GBP.

Claassen & Partners created this MSKYO ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ style iPod speakers. Nostalgic as all hell, my German is (still) rusty so I can’t tell you much about them– except that I love them. Any Germans want to offer a translation for us? I can only guess what “DEN GUTEN ALTEN GHETTOBLASTER” means. Via Reluct

A gorgeous (and affordable) looking computer speaker setup called Sonicum from none other than the quickly-becoming-my-favorite Russian design group Art Lebdev. Sleek, slick, black and easy on the eyes, sticker price of $125– slated for release in in April of ‘07.

With the limitless amount of iPod accessories out there, it can be difficult to decipher the great from the garbage. Sonic Gear definitely makes the cut with their i-steroid 2, iPod speakers. With “Best of Class Audio” and piano paint finished, wooden ported enclosures, the i-steroid 2 offers clarity, quality, and power coupled with thoughtful design. Plus, it's the only set of iPod speakers I've seen to utilize a vacuum tube amplifier. The i-steroid 2 is compatible with all iPods and comes in classic white/gray or black/red with matching infrared remote.

The Acoustical Art speakers are neat modified PVC piping with high fidelity speakers built in. These look very well made, and are precisely fabricated by hand . They are available in a few different styles, as well as a full surround sound setup. I hope the $2500 price tag for the pair shown above means they sound amazing; that’s a lot to pay just for cool aesthetics.

I just love anything Muji has ever made… Those designers are damn cool, and always thinking to the future of form and function. I’ve got a few journals, pens, and even a cool as hell pencil from the Muji store in Bloomsbury, London. I didn’t really know there design was making its way to the US so easily, but it looks like they have now opened (Oct 19th) the first North American store, on the lower level of the Moma Design Store in Soho, NY. These affordable cardboard speakers,gotta wonder how they sound, wait, who cares, they’re sooo cool lay flat in a clear plastic pouch and are easily assembled to plug into a portable CD or MP3 player. £19.95 worth of coolness, good xmas present, eh?

You can purchase them online from Moma Store or if you’re in the UK, i’m jealous and you can purchase them from Muji Online UK or just walk to one of the many Muji flagship stores through the city.This was featured in Metropolis Mag, good story!