Object of desire

This numbers among the more unlikely uses for old whisky barrels. Japanese manufacturer Pioneer has crafted these speakers from white oak recycled from 50-year-old barrels used for ageing the popular tipple.

Is this just one for your whisky-quaffing uncle who wants a showpiece for his living room? Well, no. For one thing, he won’t be wanting to shell out £400 when he could spend that on the booze itself. This is for the real music lover, since the wood from whisky barrels has ‘natural musical characteristics’, resulting in a ‘richly expressive sound’, according to Pioneer.

Every pair of speakers is different, with nail marks and whisky stains in the wood. You can also impress your whisky-drinking chums by extolling the benefits of the speakers’ silk-soft dome tweeter and woofer with composite Aramid fibres.

How much the whisky has to do with the sound quality, though, is a moot point. Indeed, it may be the hi-fi equivalent of  hinking you sing better after a few shots.