Wavell
Wavell is a Danish headphone brand built on comfort, design, and great sound at a fair price. We gave their headphones a voice of their own.
Wavell is a young headphone challenger with an Arctic-inspired brand: clean lines, icy textures, and an explorer’s spirit. They wanted their headphones’ everyday sounds to carry that identity, not the generic beeps common in the category.
We created an audio identity for Wavell and turned it into a complete UI sound system: twelve product sounds covering every key moment, from power on and pairing to noise cancelling and low battery. Together, they make Wavell recognisable by ear as well as by eye.
Working with such a young and ambitious team was extremely inspiring, as these qualities tend to be accompanied by an open mind and a willingness to explore new ideas – which was exactly the case throughout this project.
Every time someone pairs a Wavell headphone, powers it on, or lets the battery run low, the product speaks.
The challenge was making that voice consistent across a long list of different moments – power, pairing, connection, battery, ANC, spatial audio, and warnings – while also giving it a genuinely distinct identity rooted in their Arctic-inspired aesthetic, rather than settling for a generic, forgettable UI sound.
Balancing that consistency with a sound that felt unmistakably Wavell’s own was the core tension of the project.
To solve this problem we first looked to identify what was Wavell’s core audio identity. To do that we looked to Wavell’s own brand markers. We found that Wavell is a brand that borrows aesthetically from the Arctic Region of the World, with its smooth and icy textures. This is what inspired the wind-like sound design that you can hear in most of the sounds we designed for them.
Furthermore, Wavell’s core brand attribute is that of the “challenger spirit”, which we translated into open chords and major harmony to keep the sound positive and confident, much like the great Arctic explorers of old.
Finally, we mixed in deep resonant tones to add warmth to an otherwise icy sonic environment.
“I loved how big a part aesthetics played in the production phase, and how we could connect the visual aspects of their logo and their Arctic communication into sounds that also worked functionally.”
Søren Elsborg
Creative Director
Sonic Minds
The result is a full UI audio architecture where every cue, from power on to battery low, shares the same sonic DNA and sounds unmistakably like Wavell, while keeping every function clear and differentiated across their product range.
Explore the full user journey UI audio system below:
