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Areaware 2B Radio: Minimalist Design and Features For Your Stylish Grandpa
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 4:00 AM on September 28, 2008
Kids these days, with their baggy jeans and their MTV and their fancy networked booming boxes, they don't know the joy of sitting around the old-timey radio and listening to the soothing stories. The Areaware 2B radio just might be the bridge to these whippersnappers: its visible vacuum tubes have a cool retro feel, not to mention a warm sound, and the minimalistic design is hip with the Apple generation. And thank god, this radio is only a radio, without any wifi, 3G, DRM, or any of those other scary acronyms. The 2B will ship in November for a price of $US550, but what's a few hundred dollars for such comforting simplicity? [Apartment Therapy]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
bosskev
Posted 4:22 AM 28/9/08
This one left me scratching my head. It's not particularly attractive. It's not convenient to use (I mean, an analog tuning dial???). It's way overpriced. It's just a frakkin' radio, and a strange one at that.
That was my first reaction. Then I went to the linked site where they have a picture of the backside, you know, where they show off those "visible vacuum tubes".
Umm...HIDEOUS.
bosskev
strider_mt2k
Posted 4:16 AM 28/9/08
I love me some good ol' radio, but the smart geezers will figure out INTERNET radio and spare themselves the broadcast BS.
strider_mt2k
frink
Posted 4:48 AM 28/9/08
Looks sort of like the Tivoli "Henry Kloss Model One", but 4 times the price.
frink
ACEzWILD
Posted 4:45 AM 28/9/08
Ummm....$550????
I remember making a radio in Electronics class that probably cost $0.50. WTF?
Then again, that probably would be "hip with the Apple generation."
ACEzWILD
jhoeforth
Posted 5:41 AM 28/9/08
I like it but $550. No thanks. I'll settle for Zune, it has radio plus a lot more.
jhoeforth
Jrsy is the dude, playing the dude, disguised as another dude
Posted 6:17 AM 28/9/08
$550!
Something tells me they won't be selling a lot of these..
Jrsy is the dude, playing the dude, disguised as another dude
DisposableInterloper
Posted 9:52 AM 28/9/08
I hate how people describe sounds in terms of color, flavor, or termperature. Either it reproduces sound accurately, or it doesn't, and what describes it isn't how "warm" or "sweet" it is, but raw numbers.
DisposableInterloper
Tommasta
Posted 5:12 PM 28/9/08
@Jrsy is the dude, playing the dude, disguised as another du...: Luckily they only need to sell one to break even on their investment.
Tommasta
Tommasta
Posted 5:11 PM 28/9/08
@DisposableInterloper: Do you have an inkling of a soul? Sound and music are creative concepts - no numbers can describe creativity. No numbers can confirm that I'm correct when I say that Eric Clapton can taste like a barrel full of cotton candy.
And besides, that word you used - "accurate" - is a cliche adjective that holds no place in the description of the timbre of a sound. The only person who knows what the instrument sounded like at the time of recording is the artist himself... The sound engineer experiences it through microphones, headphones/monitors, and their respective amplifiers. He then changes the sound completely in mixing/mastering after it was already subjectively bastardized in that whole analog - digital hooha.
Then it gets to your house, played on whatever system that you can afford and then you likely have some hearing loss to begin with. If that wasn't enough, the room you play it in affects the sound as well! Take that same system and same listener to a smaller room, and it'll sound radically different. Put the speakers up against the wall, you'll hear a notable difference there as well. Even if you COULD measure all those variables, NOTHING would come close to the original sound of that instrument even if simply for the analog-digital-analog conversions... besides other numerous reasons dealing with amplifier construction, loudspeaker design and adventures in architecture.
Before you hate, ed-u-cate!
Tommasta
davekaybsc
Posted 6:53 PM 28/9/08
Sorry, but sound doesn't work on a "pass/fail" system. Some like to hold up the almighty SPL meter or real-time analyzer as the be-all, end-all of audio, but it just don't work that way, folks. No instrument can detect the subtleties that the human ear can, period.
Put a Steinway next to a Yamaha, and have the same player play the same song the same way on both. Music lovers should be able to tell them apart. The test instruments will say those people are wrong, bumblebees can't fly, and all "accurate" Pianos sound exactly the same.
davekaybsc
jellobrains
Posted 11:29 PM 28/9/08
@Tommasta:
I think this is the difference between listening to sound instead of music. I agree with DisposableInterloper, it is awkward to describe SOUND in those terms. But it is totally appropriate to describe MUSIC in those terms.
jellobrains
cabasse
Posted 11:47 PM 28/9/08
@Tommasta:
i've got a $5000 power cable to sell you, it will make your sound much more sweet and airy.
cabasse
Tommasta
Posted 2:21 AM 29/9/08
@cabasse: Sounds great! It'll compliment my new Pear Audio cables really well.
Amp designs make big differences, loudspeaker designs make big differences, but for the life of me I can't see the reasoning nestled in those thousand dollar cables. One of the few industries that relies on people who scored lower than a 700 on their SATs.
@jellobrains: Well, music is made up of hundreds of thousands of different sounds and sound combinations. All I was trying to say was that numbers have no place in the listening of music - it's an experience, not a science project or a show of whose tube radio was more expensive.
Tommasta