Yesterday we looked at the P4 Passive Speakers from Audioengine, but for those of you that need an amplifier to power those premium bookshelf speakers, today we’re going to look at the new N22 Compact Amplifier from Audioengine. The two products are connected at the hip for obvious reasons. Audioengine designs their products to work [...]
Since I use a Blackberry, this software really piqued my interest. It is possible to move media around, but it’s a pain, because you need to manually resize your movies and photos and then drag them onto the phone’s flash card. doubleTwist makes all of this very easy. It’s simply a matter of point, click, and drag.
The software supports a variety of phones including the Blackberry Curve, Pearl, Storm, Bold along with G1, Android, Nokia, Sony, Ericsson, LG, and Motorola.
Spotify is a Music streaming service from a Developer in Sweden with the headquarters based in Luxembourg that allows you to stream music from the web. Now I know that they are striking up deals with Indie companies in the US and I’m sure they’ll get the bigger boys on soon, so hopefully they’ll be appearing over the pond in the US soon.
There are three basic models that you can subscribe to. First, a free option which currently I think is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, and some of those countries you will need an invite, so you’ll need to take a look locally to see if that’s the case.
I have mentioned before how much I love Toast but with Toast 10 Pro they have certainly raised the bar even higher!
The latest version helps greatly enhance and extend Mac OSX and iLife applications with a broad range of additional capabilities for creating, sharing, and enjoying personal digital media content.
Toast 10 Titanium Pro, to give it its full and rather grand name, is the Rolls Royce offering with some rather intriguing third-party applications included over and above the Toast 10 Premium product (see below for full feature list). The Pro version is very much targeted at the advanced user, with a heavy bias on the photo & video enthusiasts, designers and creative people, and …… High Definition and Blu Ray users; as Pro includes a very handy plug in which allows you to authour HD video content on to standard DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.
I realized that there is one product that, although I got it in a Mac software bundler, I pretty much use all the time. Now I think there are other solutions out there but I do like the interface and options that this application gives me. So what on earth am I talking about? CoverSutra.
You heard right CoverSutra. This little app links into your iTunes app and can be used as a controller from wherever you currently are to control your tunes. The application can also use a neat little CD cover case that floats on your desktop and displays the art work for your currently playing Podcast or Album artwork if it’s Music that you’re listening to.
Audioengine’s newest product, the W2, is perhaps the coolest iPhone gadget on the market. Have you ever wanted the ability to stream music wirelessly from iPod or iPhone to your home stereo without monkeying through a remote interface? Now you can. The W2 allows you to connect your iPod or iPhone directly to your stereo wirelessly.
This week I wanted to talk about something that I depended on VERY heavily over the last few months and I’ve been wanting to talk about a really long time: my glorious Etymotic Hf2 High-fidelity | Hands-free noise isolating headset + earphones.
Since losing my dear old car back in May, I had pledged to riding my bike during the summer. I decided to treated myself to a set of Etymotic’s hf2’s because I’ve always been in love with my ER6i’s. The etymotic brand has always been a comfort to my ears, both in sound and in wearability. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned about the time I travelled and slept in hostels where these were able to block out a room full of 100 people, more than half who were snoring.)
Because I had the new iPhone, I also wanted to have the ability for a handsfree set of headphones, and was delighted to know not only did Etymotic produce a compatible noise-isolating set of earphones, but that they were iLounge.com’s Best in Show for 2008. By iLounge’s review, the Etymotic hf2s actually combine the high end $330 ER-4P earphones with an iPhone ready microphone and remote control button. It’s listed as compatible with the Blackberry Curve and other music phones with a 3.5mm/4-contact phone + stereo plug and the nano4G although I haven’t had the opportunity to try.
In any case, I happily shelled out the $179 for a set (remember this means about a trillion dollars in Canadian funds, plus shipping & handling.)
Continue reading about Etymotic Hf2 High-fidelity Hands-free Noise Isolating Headset
This week, I got to try out “Hear” from joesoft.com – a Mac app that is meant to improve audio quality in movies and music throughout all of your Mac OS X applications.
First thing first – it’s only system requirement is Mac OS X 10.4 or higher! Huzzah! This makes makes me happy, of course, as I’m still running Tiger on my two main work horse computers. (I will have you know I did manage to install Leopard on an old Powerbook Titanium DVI G4 so I’ve partially dipped my toe into the pool of Leopard. Just give me some time to wade in…)
Second thing – my mac is tiny and old, and the speakers on it really don’t pump out audio that it needs to. I need to revert to headphones or speakers, and even then, it’s only two speaker setup. I simply don’t have the decent system that allows surround sound, and that’s at work and home.
So imagine my surprise after first launching Hear, that suddenly with a click of a button I could watch a movie in surround sound, or even stream my iTunes with amazingly enhanced audio. I’m able to kick it up a notch and play music or watch a movie with this enriched sound, without having the true gear to play it through.
Continue reading about Joesoft Lets You Hear What You’re Missing
It’s my Dad’s 90th birthday this week and after spending time working on a multimedia project for the party, I burned a DVD then got out the Sharpie Permanent Marker and wrote “90th Birthday Movie” on the disc.
It’s just such a weak link in the chain. You’ve drank endless cups of coffee, cleaned up the sound, picked out the perfect transitions, chosen the music, made those still images come to life with the “Ken Burns Effect” turning it into professional looking movie
Continue reading about Disc Cover: Dress Up Your Music and Photos
By David Sparks: For those of you not familiar with Audioengine, it is a speaker company that specializes in outstanding consumer speakers. Audioengine’s self powered A2 and A5 speakers sound terrific . Audioengine just released a new product, the W1 which is two small devices. One is marked “sender†and the other “receiver.†These units, [...]
