Ah, Transparent says, that matters not, because the Light Speaker is playful. It looks like a lantern! Joking aside, the light effect, up close, is genuinely impressive.

Transparent – maker of a very cool speaker that is, predictably, see-through – has just announced its first portable speaker, and it looks like an oil lantern. The clear section in the centre ...

The main, slightly cynical, effect of this is that researchers can make bold claims about achieving ~160 percent efficiency (you don’t quite get 200 percent because the process is not perfect).