LAS VEGAS — Orbitsound claims its T12 Soundbar sounds so good, they refused to demo it on the show floor.
“It just won’t do it justice,” said Ted Fletcher, founder of Orbitsound, which is based in London.
“It’ll revolutionize the way you listen to music,” he added.
Instead, Orbitsound has set up a soundproof room on the CES show floor where listeners can go to enjoy the T12’s airSOUND technology, which delivers true spatial stereo sound without stereo speakers, according to Fletcher.
“Unlike traditional stereo speakers, there is no sweet spot,” Fletcher said. “Everywhere is the sweet spot. It’s the same stereo image wherever you go in the room.”
Instead of broadcasting to two stereo channels, the T12 splits the music into sound and spatial information, Fletcher said. Six speakers in front blast out mono sound, while a pair of speakers at the sides project sound in space.
Featuring a built-in iPod dock and a honking big subwoofer, the T12 Soundbar will replace a 5.1 home theater system, Fletcher claimed. The T12 has been on sale in the Uk for about six months and has garnered favorable reviews. It’s currently sold out. It will be coming to the U.S in the summer for about $350.
At CES, the company is also demonstrating a prototype internet radio and it’s T3 Mobile Stereo Speaker, a portable battery-powered iPhone/iPod speaker.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
