Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
iPod shuffle still selling well?: we can’t say for sure since this is based just on Asustek’s (Apple’s manufacturing partner for the Shuffle) climbing revenue reports, but it makes sense. You can get these now for very competitive prices, and for many people it’s the easiest (read: most inexpensive) way to hop on the iPod [...]
Going audiophile as painlessly (for your wallet) as possible.
Review: Stealth Audio Cables—Indra: believed to be the best interconnects in the world. At $5,750/pr/m, what will make you click that link is mere curiosity. [via]
Fix for sluggish 5G iPod interface: reports say this is a hit-or-miss solution, but it doesn’t hurt trying. Album art optimization seems to be the culprit for the sluggishness. Connect the iPod to your computer, turn off the “Album Art” option (in “Preferences”), disconnect. Reconnect, turn on the option, wait for iTunes to do the [...]
For the quarter beginning July and ending September, they’ve posted net sales of $280.2M (up one third from year ago quarter), net income $691K (down from $4.8M). Had a one-off gain from investments not happened, they would have recorded a $9.3M net loss.
MP3 players sales were up 123% and revenue sales more than doubled compared [...]
Deal: Turns out you can get the Vamp VP-325 MP3 for even less: apply coupon code “GEEKV@MP” during checkout to get a $10 discount, getting this to the low price of $40. Read our previous post on the deal.
iShareMP3 Mini: nothing special about it except from the fact that it comes with an IrDa (infrared) port that allows you to copy tracks between devices. Starts from 128MB (up to 1GB) for ~$120 (€69) which is expensive and gets this off our radar. Side-note: the iFad must die. iFast. [via]
Thousands of Chinese tracks added to the iTMS: after striking a deal with international music distributor The Orchard, iTMS has access to the catalogs of 20 of China’s largest record labels. It’ll be added this week under “World Music”; Macworld UK reports that the iTMS UK won’t offer the full selection though, which is dumb.
[...]Ray Samuels’ Hornet portable headhone amp debuts: credit-card sized, and mighty powerful. The variable-gain switch makes it suitable for driving both low- and high-impedance headphones. You’ll have to part with around 350 bucks to make it yours.
A new format by Monster Music, you’re basically getting two discs when you buy a “SuperDisc”. Disc no.1 is the stereo mix CD meant for your CD player. Disc no.2 gets you the same music in the following flavors:
in files encoded at 320kbps/AAC, 192kbps/WMA, and Apple Lossless (PCM 48/16)
in Dolby headphone-encoded music files supposed to [...]