Audio-Technica HOTARU: A Ritual of Sound, Light, and Presence

The Japanese brand transforms the turntable into a meditative ceremony where music, light, and time intertwine.

With HOTARU (Japanese for “firefly”), Audio-Technica has unveiled more than a product — it’s an immersive installation, a glowing, levitating turntable at the center of a sensory landscape that treats sound as ritual rather than consumption. Equal parts art piece, cultural homage, and high-fidelity design study, HOTARU invites listeners to pause, breathe, and rediscover music as a living experience.

Analog as Ceremony

Inspired by the Japanese tea ceremony, HOTARU reframes the simple act of lowering a stylus as something sacred. Just as preparing tea requires slowness, intention, and purification of space, listening to vinyl becomes an act of presence: lowering the needle, watching grooves capture time, and letting resonance spill gently into the room.

“Hotaru embodies our reverence for analog culture and our pursuit of timeless innovation,” says Manabu Aoki, President and CEO of Audio-Technica USA. “Its fusion of light and sound creates a new sensory experience, inspiring listeners to engage with music in entirely new ways.”

A Journey Through Space

Visitors to the installation move as if through a tea garden:

• A roji (narrow path) slows the body into rhythm.

• A morisuna sand mound whispers purification in its quiet stillness.

• A tsukubai water basin reflects imperfection as beauty, each droplet falling in uneven time.

• A tea bell punctuates the space — not as measure, but as a marker of the fleeting present.

  
  

Every element contributes to a living soundscape. Footsteps, breaths, even the ambient hum of the city fold into the evolving composition. At the center, HOTARU hovers and glows, a firefly in the dark, transforming the room into both a sanctuary and an instrument.

Design That Breathes With Music

HOTARU isn’t only poetic; it’s precise. Its levitating platter isolates vibration, ensuring sonic purity, while a dynamic lighting system responds in real time to the music’s character, bathing the space in shifting colors.

“From its floating mechanics to its responsive light, every element of HOTARU was crafted to elevate the listening experience,” explains Bob Peet, Global Product Manager of Analog Products at Audio-Technica. “It’s analog design reimagined not just as playback, but as transformation.”

Capturing the Fleeting

Perhaps HOTARU’s boldest gesture is its treatment of time itself. Every sound — the intentional and the incidental — is cut directly onto vinyl in real time, creating a one-of-a-kind record that visitors can take with them. Played back later, these recordings change with their new surroundings, a reminder that music is never static but always alive, woven with the moment it was made.

A Firefly’s Lesson

With HOTARU, Audio-Technica imagines a future where technology amplifies ritual rather than erases it. Where listening is not about speed or convenience, but about slowing down, sharing space, and holding onto the fleeting — like the glow of a firefly that illuminates the night only for a moment, before disappearing back into the dark.