Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
From the “probably useless but noteworthy, plus you never know” department: presenting Trust’s USB speaker set, the SP-2930p [via]. In the form factor of a USB key, and with a convenient clamp to attach them to the screen of your notebook, we’ll give them props for nice design, all right. But whether these’ll be able [...]
Josh’s impressions from the Vacuum Tube Valley EXPO on Zu Cable and the Z.Vex iMP Amp: I liked the bit about the Zu guys being so passionate music lovers. We had presented the iMP Amp two months ago.
Sony NW-A1000 eye-candy: a bunch of pictures of Sony’s latest 6GB portable audio player. It’s sleek & all, but a bit dark no? Anyway, read our presentation of the new WALKMAN lineup here. [via]
France: copyright levy on flash-based MP3 players to be reduced: it’ll be more aligned to the levy imposed on HD-based MP3 players—for example, as it is now, the levy for a 4GB Nano is €51, while it is less than half (€24) for a 60GB full-sized iPod. With the French authorities’ new decision (to be [...]
BenQ exits the MP3 player market: two weeks ago, it was Olympus—now: “BenQ plans to withdraw its Joybee series MP3 player models from the Taiwan market due mainly to strong competition from the Apple Computer iPod series…” [via]
30 things that can drive a music collector mad: If you are a collector, you are constantly confronted with insanity right and left, not only when meeting other collectors, who could sometimes single-handedly feed the entire profession of psychologists, but especially when confronted with irritating to completely moronic label behavior, product design, or else. Volkher [...]
Good news, and if I may, about time: a working group has been announced by the Consumer Electronics Association to “create an industry standard docking connector specification that could be adopted by any host or portable device manufacturer regardless of the format or protocol that it supports.” If you use an iPod (and have pledged [...]
GYM, which stands for “Grab Your Music” allows you to browse, play and extract the tunes stored in your Network Walkman. Interface-wise it’s reminds me of a more plain iTunes minus the left “Source” column.The extraction thing is what’s the fuss is about here, since GYM seems to be the first piece of software that [...]
“Sony, I download your music”.
The Wall Street Journal, on the labels’ push for higher-priced tunes since “hey, ringtones go for $2.5 or more!”: “Ringtones are meant for showing off in public [...] people are much fussier about having the right one, having it sound good and being able to change it the second they feel it no longer represents [...]