Dan Buttner and his team from Lofelt want to change the way we listen to music. Their big idea was that recorded music doesn’t give the physical feedback of drumbeats and basslines, and that lessens the experience for the user. Their solution is the Basslet, a portable subwoofer worn on the wrist to bring the feel of music directly to the individual.
Basslet is currently enjoying a very successful run on Kickstarter, where the company is looking for funds to cover first run production costs. The Basslet uses a device the team calls the LoSound engine to create bass frequencies from 10 to 250 Hertz. When charged for an hour the team estimates that the Basslet will boom and move for more than six hours. A sender is inserted between the music streaming device (usually a smartphone) and the receiving device (usually headphones) and takes the music as input and pumps out bass and drum beats as outputs.
The Kickstarter page says that trying the Basslet for the first time will feel like sensations happening against your wrist but the more the device is used the more the user will feel the music as a total body experience. The question and answer section also reminds us that the device has magnets and magnetic fields and may interfere with some pacemakers.
There aren’t many technical specifications on the page, because the technology is “patent pending” but my biggest question is about timing and how fast the device can process music and then give feedback to the user. The development team looks to be fully staffed and moving in the right direction, talking about validation testing and working with a proven manufacturing partner. Immediate applications for this device look to be in the music, gaming or virtual reality industries. It’s also possible that medical devices or accessibility designers could incorporate this technology as well. Units are expected to ship in December 2016.