Sound

6 min

Why the woofer points at the ceiling

Aim a speaker at a room and half the room is in the wrong place. Aim it at the ceiling and the room does the aiming for you.

The problem with aiming

Most portable speakers fire forward. That works if you sit where the speaker is pointing. At a table of six, four people get the side of the sound.

Using the room

Column’s 76 mm woofer fires straight up into a shaped deflector under the dial. The sound spreads evenly through 360 degrees and bounces off the ceiling and walls the way a voice does.

We measured the result at twelve points around a 5 by 4 metre room. The loudest and quietest seat were 2.1 dB apart. A forward-firing speaker of the same size measured 9 dB.

What you give up

Pure stereo width. That is why two Columns pair as a stereo set in about ten seconds.

Written by the Tolva workshop

Four engineers and a designer. Questions about this note go straight to the person who wrote it.

Tolva Column in Clay

Preorder · Batch one

Reserve yours for $49 today.

The deposit comes off the $349 price and is refundable until your Column ships. We charge the rest a week before it leaves.

Today

Reserve with a $49 deposit

Feb 2027

Batch one of 2,000 goes into production

Mar 2027

Ships, in the order you preordered

Questions

Before you preorder.

Anything else, write to us and a person who built it will answer within a day.

When will my Column ship?

+

Can I cancel my preorder?

+

Does it work with my phone?

+

How do I pair two for stereo?

+

Is it really waterproof?

+

Can I replace the battery?

+

What is in the box?

+

What is the warranty?

+

Create a free website with Framer, the website builder loved by startups, designers and agencies.