I Need Something More
Revisit: Hello? My Name Is Wave
I decided that my second revisit would be to remake Hello? My Name Is Wave with a higher level of completion and on a larger scale. I wanted to make up for the mistakes I had made in the first version, and focus on achieving better sound quality and a better method of playing a single piece of music. I also wanted to move beyond playing one whole song, and instead focus more precisely on one specific part within a piece of music.
- Type
- Experimental audio object
- Materials
- Plywood, speaker drivers & cassette player
- Playback
- Cassette tape
- Year
- 2026
The form
I also redesigned the form completely. The original version had a fairly ordinary rectangular speaker shape, but I began to think that if this object was meant to be a living being with a soul, then it should at least have the appearance of a living creature rather than a conventional speaker. Because of this, I redesigned the entire exterior from the beginning.
The body
When considering what material to use for the speaker body, I decided to use higher quality plywood this time. After making the body, I sanded it carefully to make the surface as smooth as possible. This speaker also has a higher output than the previous version. As the size of the woofer increased, the amount of wood that needed to be cut and shaped also became much greater.
The sound
This time, I changed the placement of the woofers. Instead of using the previous bass port method, I placed two woofer drivers symmetrically in the head section and used an isobaric loading technique, which meant that I did not need to calculate a bass port in the same way. Isobaric loading is a technique where two drivers are used together as if they were one driver, allowing a similar level of output to be produced from a relatively smaller volume. It also helps reduce unwanted vibration on the sides of the speaker. I installed the left and right speakers in the two arms. In a way, it can be seen as the hands holding the sound, while the head produces the bass.
The cassette
I also changed the music playback method from the previous DFPlayer chip to a cassette tape system. This was a solution I came up with because of the contact issues I had experienced with the chip. Using a cassette deck, I recorded only the middle instrumental section of Daft Punk’s Touch as a one and a half hour loop, giving the speaker its own soul. This speaker now endlessly plays only that instrumental section of the music.
I Need Something More
The name of this speaker is I Need Something More. I chose this title because of a lyric that appears in the song. Compared to the original Wave, this version has much stronger bass, higher clarity, and a much louder output.