Custom-built Art Speakers for Ikea’s Lillåsen work desk

May 5, 2023
Custom Builds

The Project Brief

The project brief we got was to design and build a turnkey desktop music system for Ikea’s Lillåsen bamboo work desk. The Lillåsen is a small work desk measuring just 102cm x 49cm.

The compact work space of the Lillåsen simply didn’t allow us the luxury of space. So, we toyed with the idea of having a music system that is tiny in appearance but big in sound and integrates aesthetically with this bamboo-finish desk.

The Art Mini Speaker 2.1

We designed a compact 2.1 system in white oak wood finish to complement Lillåsen’s bamboo look. The 2.1 system consists of 3 separate components – Control Module + Mini Satellite pair + Mini Subwoofer. The components are designed to be separate for ease of placement and upgradeability.

We took a leaf from our Art Speaker Classic series and designed a system with a traditional minimalist aesthetic making use of bold & bright Indonesian batik fabric from Wellie Batik.

In line with sticking to the “tiny in appearance but big in sound” design, we kept the Mini Satellites really small (fits right in your palm). The goal was to take up as little desk space as possible.

However, tiny satellite speakers are not going to give us that “big sound” we’re looking for. For that, we added a Mini Subwoofer to fill in the gap where the tiny speakers fell short.

This 2.1 system is a full featured Compact Smart Wireless Music System with high efficiency amplifiers and advanced AirPlay, Bluetooth 5.0, Spotify Connect & Wi-Fi wireless connectivity. It comes with premium music services such as Amazon Music, Internet Radio, Qobuz, TuneIn, Tidal and more.

The Control Module

This diminutive Control Panel packs a punch with total amplification power of 200W along with an advanced DSP & wireless processor.
Batik fabric volume control to complete the traditional minimalist look
Magnetic mounted to the bottom of the desk

Mini Subwoofer

Dual forward-firing long throw compact subwoofer drivers which does most of the heavy lifting and gives this system that signature “big sound”.
Comes with detachable covers so that we can change the look as often as we like.

Mini Satellites

The Mini Satellites are designed with 180° wide dispersion speaker drivers giving these tiny speakers an amazingly open and wide soundstage.
To give you an idea how small these speakers are, just look at how they measure up when stacked on top of one another against a small 330ml beer bottle.

Technical Specifications

  • Built-in high efficiency Class D Power Amplifiers (200W) – 50W + 50W for Mini Satellites & 100W for Mini Subwoofer.
  • 50mm 180° wide-dispersion Full Range Drivers for the Mini Satellites.
  • Dual 80mm long throw Subwoofer Drivers X Dual 80mm Bass Radiators for Mini Subwoofer.
  • Mini Satellite Dimensions (per speaker): 100mm (H) x 90mm (W) x 90mm (D).
  • Mini Subwoofer Dimensions: 150mm (H) x 210mm (W) x 155mm (D).
  • Wireless Connectivity: AirPlay, Bluetooth 5.0, DLNA, Spotify Connect, Wi-Fi, uPnP
  • Wired Connectivity: USB in (USB mini), Aux In (3.5mm aux)
  • Multi-room, multi-speaker synchronisation via Wi-Fi.
  • Music Streaming Services: 4Stream app (available on Android & iOS)

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