I have to confess that as a music junkie, I am obsessed with buying all kinds of speakers. (I even have one in the bathroom). So when I saw Sugr Cube, I was thrilled.
Sugr Cube is a touch and gesture controlled Wi-Fi speaker that streams online music. They just launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter and were featured as a “New & Noteworthy” Staff Pick. When I told Sean Song, the cofounder of Sugr, that I’ve got too many speakers already, he replied confidently that Sugr is different and that it will outperform any other speakers I ever got.
The Sugr cube is made of attractive maple wood with elegant workmanship and design. With their patented motion control technology, users can play or pause the music by gently touching surface of the cube. By tilting the cube 45° left or right, you can skip back and forth on the playlist.
It’s great fun to play with, because most of the time we control our speakers by buttons or dials, or via the screen of our phones. “We want to make everything simple and easy so users can focus on the music instead of the speakers,” Song said.
Sugr streams online or local music over WiFi and currently supports iTunes, Pandora, BBC radio and Douban FM. To make things more fun, Sugr Cube has also added some social elements. Users can pair their devices with friends from Facebook or any other social network, and enjoy the same piece of music together. “We believe that music is a good way to communicate. By sharing music, people can communicate subtle emotion and feelings.”
Sugr is a team of experienced designers, developers, and hardware product engineers from US, Norway and China. Co-founder and CEO Sean Song is a music geek. “I have been a music fanatic all my life. My dad was a Peking Opera actor who brought me up with the love of traditional music. When I grew up, I studied Audio Signal Processing in college and ended up spending eleven years on this technology. This is also why Sugr Cube is great at sound quality as a portable speaker. Sugr’s volume can be amplified to over 90dB with crystal clear sound. This is my expertise.”
The team has extensive experience in designing audio accessories for Microsoft and Huawei. They started at the end of 2013 and have successfully raised RMB2 million (about US$300,000).
Sugr Cube has just launched on Kickstarter, and will be sold for an early bird price of $119 with free shipping in US.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)