Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Impressions after trying a new iPod: this complements the “Top Ten Things You Wanted to Know About the 5G iPod” and “Brief Observations” lists nicely.
Also: obligatory link to our iPod video presentation, and review.
Diamond Multimedia re-enters the sound card market: the new line will be called “Xtreme Sound”, incorporating Dolby 7.1 channel surround sound, 10-band EQ, a multi-track recording/editing studio. The Xtreme Sound 7.1 model goes for $30 (MSRP), while the the higher-end Xtreme Sound 7.1 Dolby Digital Live goes for $60 (MSRP). [via]
Finally, some potentially exciting news from Creative’s camp. Sim Wong Hoo, Creative Labs’ CEO, is expected to present an iPod video (review) competitor in person in Paris, next week. [And man, at the risk of calling us Apple fanboys (you know that ain’t true!), that “I’ll present it myself” thing does make us wish Mr. [...]
Ah, a petition to bring Ogg Vorbis support to the iPod: oh yes, that’ll make them listen. 679 valiant souls have signed it at the time of this writing. [via]
Green House’s portable speaker for the iPod shuffle: you just attach the GH-SP-125W to your Shuffle and wear it around your neck, letting the world know how much you love those bass-heavy tunes. 2AAA batteries power the 2.5W speaker for 12 hours. Expected in December (Japan only? simultaneous US release?), ~$25.
CNET Asia reviews the Archos AV500 mobile DVR: 100GB of video goodness, rate 8.3/10 (excellent). This is no iPod video, in that it’s bigger and much more powerful thanks to its recording options. We had reported on some picture of this device two months ago.
DJLife.com is Dell’s site dedicated to their line of portable audio players: think of it as the equivalent to Creative’s Nomadworld. [via]
Sony ceases production of DAT decks in December: they won’t stop selling DAT tapes and offering to repair broken units though.
Head-Fi member carsncars posted a review of Sony’s NW-A3000. We’ve taken the most important bits, summed them up below and added a few of our remarks and observations in the mix.
Note that as the NW-A3000 shares many similarities with its smaller brother, the 6GB NW-A1000, you can apply most of the stuff that follows to [...]
Everybody loves lists, right? Thanks to The Age’s article [via], we’ve got a bunch of data on the Australian MP3 player market. Here we go:
more than 400k Australians may be buying an MP3 player during the holiday season
more than 6 out of 10 MP3 players sold are iPods → more than 8 out of 10 [...]