Multichannel recordings, multichannel speakers. How many speakers should you have, how many CAN you have? And how do you set them up in your living room? Well, when design is something which you – or the lady of the house – care more about than your listening experience, make way for AudioOrb, the first loudspeaker which allows listeners to sit inside. Wait, what, SIT inside? Yes, sit inside. Do we even want it? Oh yes, if it looks like the above!

Studio Total (ST), a Stockholm-based lab, invented AudioOrb with 18 (!) internal speakers for a rich and full audio spectrum, to blast whichever music you desire, ready to give you the ultimate audiophile experience. Just sitting while listening to music is what a lot of people can live with, but the team has to take it one level higher by completing AudioOrb with Tempur memory-foam pillows. These pillows just conform to the body line of the interior and make sure the person can have some serious chillaxing in there. The pod is also praised for its sound cancellation qualities. “Spherical spaces almost completely block the noise from the outside world,” the project’s Indiego page said.

If you think that the AudioOrb reminds you of something, then you are not so wrong. To create the AudioOrb, ST team collaborated with Petter Johansson Art Direction and Design (PJADAD), which is affiliated with Micasa Lab, the creator of the Cocoon 1. The team started with a Cocoon, a clear plastic sphere designed to give users some personal space, and replaced the usual storage modules with 18 speakers. Just like the Cocoon, the AudioOrb can be transported into any environment.

So far there is no further information about how long a person can breathe inside the pod, or how more oxygen can get inside. However, that didn’t stop me from dreaming of owning one of this ‘audiophile decadences’. This did: the company says that it would build two units, perhaps the only two ever built. And it is not for the faint-pocketed: vowing your $15,000 to the project is the only way to get your hands on one of these pods.

Oh well, it was worth my half an hour day-dreaming.