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The Lofelt Basslet Is a Wearable Subwoofer

Gaming while flying. Watching movies on public transportation during a daily commute. Listening to music while at the gym. All activities that should be enjoyed while wearing earbuds or headphones. The Basslet is a wearable subwoofer designed to complement any of these activities, delivering the low end of sound and music as a haptic experience that is felt rather than merely heard.

Slightly larger than an Apple Watch, The Basslet designed by German studio WertelOberfell for Lofelt looks the part of a smart, if not boxy wearable. Its single purpose is to complement music or sounds from the headphone into a tactile effect felt beyond the wrist and throughout the body via a full bass spectrum of 10 to 250 Hz. Best of all, the wrist-worn device is completely silent to the outside world while in use.

The sound-to-body effect is created using a miniaturized actuator connected to a signal amplitudes monitoring system engineered to convert audio signals into a haptic experience that reproduces the perceptual effect of sound turning into a haptic experience, similar to the feeling of standing close to a large speaker at a live show.

One wonders how long before all smartwatches begin to integrate similar robust haptic technology to complement music playback and beyond the realm of simple notifications. Perhaps it will be mobile gaming, then AR/VR, that will become the mediums by which dynamic audio-to-haptic DSP delivers a deeper sensation of sound to the masses.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.