Clear Headband Plays Music As An Earbud Alternative  [Pics]

ECAL student Renaud Defrancesco designed a listening device made of transparent acrylic glass.

Ecole Cantonale d’art de Lausanne student Renaud Defrancesco has designed a headband that is made of a transparent acrylic glass and sends music vibrations across its surface to the user’s ears.

The VIBSO headphones play music via Bluetooth and has a vibrating electromagnet that is hidden under an opaque plastic cover on top of the head and helps create the sound for the wearer. The electromagnet works like a speaker and has a connecting element that causes a membrane to vibrate and create sounds. The membrane, in this case, is made in a two-mm-thick transparent acrylic glass. Defrancesco used acrylic glass because it transmits sounds well and is flexible and easy to form.


The vibrations move down the membrane and over the surface that cover the ears, allowing the wearer to hear the music but not feel the vibrations. The shape of the headphones helps to direct the sound inward so that only the wearer can hear the music.

The headband can be covered in fabric for added comfort, according to Defrancesco. Users can also share the music by letting someone put their ear against the other side of the band without worrying about overheating.

The VIBSO headphones present a different way of listening to music. According to Defrancesco in post on Dezeen, the headphones allow the user to be “bathed in music without being isolated like with normal headphones, which can be dangerous because you don’t hear what’s around you.”

The headphones was shown at a recent ECAL Half-Time exhibition.

View more images of the headphones in the gallery below.

Renaud Defrancesco

Source, Images: Dezeen