There is a certain kind of audiophile who has spent years trying to reconcile two competing obsessions: a love of great sound and a love of great design. The two don’t always cooperate. Speakers are bulky, wires are ugly, and the equipment that produces the best audio rarely looks at home in a carefully considered interior.
Symbol Audio has spent its existence trying to solve that problem, and its latest project with USM might be its most elegant answer yet.
The Wall of Sound installation, featuring 18 of Symbol’s new Speaker Modules powered by McIntosh, was loosely inspired by the Grateful Dead’s iconic 1974 speaker array.
Symbol, founded by furniture designer Blake Tovin as a project to create display-worthy furniture for vinyl collections and listening equipment, has built a following among design-focused audiophiles through collaborations with premium audio brands including Sonos and McIntosh. The brand has long worked within the USM Haller system, the iconic Swiss modular furniture framework, for vinyl storage and audio equipment. Its new Speaker Module takes that relationship a step further, engineering high-fidelity audio components directly into USM’s signature modular structure so that the furniture itself becomes the speaker.
Available exclusively through Symbol in three sizes, (small, large, and subwoofer), the modules slot into the USM Haller system without disrupting its clean architectural language.
“We’ve built sound directly into the USM framework, creating a seamless listening experience without compromising the integrity of the design,” says Walker Tovin, Brand Director of Symbol Audio. The result is a system that looks, from across the room, exactly like a USM shelving unit.
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- Symbol Audio’s Speaker Modules are available in three sizes, small, large, and subwoofer, and integrate seamlessly into USM’s modular framework without compromising its architectural language.
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- The Symbol Loft in Lower Manhattan offered a second look at the new speaker collection, this time in a residential context.
The collection debuted at NYCxDesign, where Symbol and USM presented an installation at the Afternoon Light Design Fair that drew on an unlikely source of inspiration.
“Our installation was loosely inspired by the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound from 1974,” Walker says. “A massive speaker array that transformed live sound and has become an iconic symbol of the Dead.” The original Wall of Sound comprised around 600 speakers. Symbol’s version used 18 of its new modules, powered by McIntosh, a longtime Symbol partner and fixture in the world of high-end audio.
“Although the number of speakers was pared down from 600 to 18, it delivered exceptional sound throughout the space,” Walker says.
The installation was as much a sensory environment as a product presentation. Symbol modeled the space in 3D before building it, designing the product into the room rather than placing it within one. Stage lighting evoked the atmosphere of a live performance. Incense burned throughout, so that visitors encountered the space through smell before they ever saw it.
Symbol’s T-Bone Sofa was configured as a large sectional to anchor the room and draw people into what Walker describes as “the Symbol lifestyle of listening and gathering.”
Symbol’s T-Bone Sofa, configured as a large sectional, anchored the immersive Afternoon Light installation alongside the brand’s new USM-integrated speaker system.
A dedicated presentation at the Symbol Loft in Lower Manhattan ran alongside the Afternoon Light installation, giving the collection a second context in which to show what integrated audio can look and feel like in a residential setting. The two presentations made a convincing case that high-performance sound and considered interior design can be one in the same.
