Tag: Audio
CES 2010: Final Thoughts
The Consumer Electronics show, the behemoth of tech, the Valhalla of gadgetry, has come and gone for yet another year. But this time, rather than arriving with a bang, it slinked into sight with something more like a whimper. CES…
CES 2010: Day 3 Round-Up
Another day, another Tech Digest CES 2010 round-up. Fancy Tweeting hands-free in your car or controlling your PC by breathing? Check today's top stories below and find out how. Twitter coming to Ford cars The digital equivalent of drink-driving? Motorola…
Six steps to recording the perfect podcast
Ever wanted to hear your dulcet tones on the Internet but didn’t know where to start? Read our handy guide to recording, editing and hosting your podcast and you’ll be there in no time.
We can’t guarantee you’ll be popular, but at least you won’t stay silent.
1. Get the right hardware
It’s fairly obvious that if you want to record yourself speaking you’ll need some way of getting audio on to your computer.
There are plenty of ways of doing this, but you’ll want to get the best quality piece of kit you can afford if you want to sound good and minimise the amount of tidying up you’ll have to do later.
Podcast Pick:
My absolute favourite mic for podcasting (and indeed many other uses) is the Blue Microphones Snowball USB mic. At around £85 it’s not the cheapest option but it’s used by professional broadcasters and podcasters alike. Simply plug it in to a spare USB port and you’ve got a quality audio recording device for vocals, instruments and ambient sounds…
Archos launches three portable media players
Not content with unleashing their latest mini-PC range, Archos also used today’s launch event to announce the arrival of three PMPs to add to their line-up.
The vision range’s flagship PMP is the touch-screen Archos 3 vision. It’s just 9mm thick and it only weighs 56g. The touchscreen is 3-inches with a resolution of 400×240.
It has 8GB of storage and supports multiple media formats including…deep breath…MP3, WMA (non protected files), WAV, OGG, FLAC, MPEG 1/2/4, WMV (non protected files), FLV, AVI, RM, RMVB, JPEG, BMP and GIF. It ships with a cable for TV playback and it also plays FM radio.
Playback time is 14 hours for audio and four for video. A cool feature is the FM transmitter which allows you play back your audio via any radio you can sync with it – iTrip stylee.
The real good news with regards to the Archos 3 vision is the price. £89.99 is very reasonable for a touch-screen PMP.
One step down from the 3 vision is the 2 vision. It has a 2-inch screen – not touch screen though. It uses a surface slider control for navigation.
It supports MP3, WMA and WAV as well as photo viewing. It has 8GB of storage although this can be upgraded using the micro-SD slot. It’s only £49.99 – another very fair price from Archos.
Finally, the Archos Clipper is a gym/jog friendly, shuffle-style mp3 player. It’s nearly twice as heavy as the latest iPod shuffle at 20g – but it’s hardly going to weigh you down. It’s 2GB and will only set you back £19.99.
Archos also mentioned the 4 and 7 visions which should be released by the end of the year although they didn’t supply and specific details. I’m not Mystic Meg but I’m guessing a 4-inch screen and a 7-inch screen – I think that’s a given.
The three PMPs mentioned all go on sale next month. Go direct to Archos if you fancy getting yourself one.
Onkyo launches two home cinema receivers
Japanese company Onkyo has today announced the release of two new home cinema receivers – the TX-SR707 and the TX-NR807.
Both units are 7.2-channel receivers and are THX-certified. They both feature six HDMI inputs – which should more than cover most home setups, Audyssey DSX and Dolby Pro Logic IIz decoding, 1080p video upscaling, four dedicated DSP modes which will be useful for hard-core gamers and ultra-low jitter Burr-Brown 192kHz/24-bit DAC.
The TX-NR807 is also internet enabled allowing for firmware updates and, more importantly, it’s equipped to stream audio and internet radio such as Last.fm.
The units are available from the end of July and are priced at £700 for the TX-SR707 and £800 for the TX-NR807.
Philips NP2900 – MP3 streaming with sound engineering
Part of me thinks that Philips is too scared to give its products proper names in case we’re disappointed with what they produce. It’s a bit of a shame really because the quite dry sounding Philips NP2900 is actually a very nice piece of kit.
What we’re looking at is an apparently well designed, well engineered £249 machine that’ll work over Wi-Fi to play streamed MP3s from your hard drive and all billions of internet radio stations too.
Better still, the NP, er, what was that number again, comes with a new Philips technology they call LivingSound which aims to expand the stereo sweet spot of the system with a series of precisely angled drivers within the four speakers and specially levelled internal amps. The plan is to broaden the soundscape as much as possible.
Naturally, it also comes with Philips FullSound tech too which aims to unruin the ruin caused by MP3 file compression at the slight expense of having to guess what the music is supposed to sound like. Perhaps not a technology for the purist but then nor are MP3s.
Available from May ’09 (this month)
Philips Ariaz and Opus GoGear Review:
Elecom Power Graphixx series make mp3 players jealous of the earphones
In the whole world of tech, earphones seem to attract the most functional, boring designs. I appreciate there’s not a great deal of scope for creativity, given they still need to fit in the ear (thus making some kind of starfish design distinctly uncomfortable), but I always thought they could be a little bit more interesting than just lumps of circular black (or white, Apple fans) plastic. Turns out I was right, and the result is this lovely series of colourful earphones from Elecom.
Serpent Speakers offer flexible audio without that hissing noise
Snakes don’t have ears – they rely on vibrations to go about their snaky business, but if they did they’d surely appreciate these aesthetically pleasing “Serpent Speakers” by designer Ben Wahrich.
CES 2009: Pioneer unveils new Blu-ray and upconverting DVD players, new AV receivers
Pioneer has been showing off its latest range of Blu-ray players, upconverting DVD player, and AV receivers.
First up is a new collection of advanced Blu-ray players, all capable of handling BD Live for advanced disc features.
The BDP-120 and BDP-320 are aimed at consumers who want a simple high definition disc player right out of the box and come with 1GB of memory (either via a flash drive or internal memory), full BD-Live functionality, USB and Ethernet ports, True24FPS feature for realistic reproduction of discs recorded at 24fps, full support of all high resolution audio formats including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD bitstream output, and up to 7.1-channel analogue output…
Sennheiser launches high-end in-ear phones
Sennheiser has announced a new professional line of in-ear earphones, the IE series, offering high quality, accurate sound for a range of budgets (well, except under £120).
The Sennheiser IE 6 are hi-fi earphones with enhanced bass and come in at £119.99. The Sennheiser IE 7 are classic hi-fi earphones with a balanced sound, for £169.99, while the top-of-line IE 8s are aimed at audiophiles and cost £249.99.
All feature high-end, accurate, pro-grade audio and are based on Sennheiser’s in-ear stage monitors, having a single driver to eliminate distortions, strong Kevlar cabling, metal carry cases, and a two year guarantee.
