Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Sennheiser presented [via] their first consumer canalphone model, the CX 300. Available this month in two colors (silver/black), with a MSRP of $50.
We’ll stay tuned for feedback on this one. Sennheiser is known for making quality phones, so if the CX 300 gets positive reviews, these may well be a worthy introduction to the world [...]
2006: $4.5Bn in sales for MP3 players this year: ”...MP3 players sales are seen climbing to $4.5 billion in 2006, with 30 percent of all MP3 players sold having video playback capability.”
GarageBand 3 makes podcast creation a snap:
In addition to being one of the best ways to make music on a computer, GarageBand 3 is now also a complete solution for creating professional quality Podcasts. Voices can easily be recorded using the built-in expertise of an audio engineer and Podcasts can be enhanced with radio-style sound [...]
A list of songs to check if you’ve got a high-end audio gear: there are some picks with which I don’t agree, but still, a good starting point.
Creative launched ZENcast which is actually two things, a site and an application. As a site, ZENcast is a directory of podcasts/vidcasts, similar to Yahoo! Podcasts. As an app, the ZENcast Organizer (requirements: Windows XP or Media Center, plus Internet Explorer) manages the transferring of podcasts/vidcasts to the user’s device (for now, it’s compatible with [...]
Sima’s Hitch USB-101: one of the most useful accessories to surface at this year’s CES, the Hitch allows you to pair two USB devices for file transferring between them. In the case of iPods it allows you to choose the songs you want to transfer. Battery-powered, runs on Linux. Expected around April for an estimated [...]
From the “budget-conscious” department—SonicFlare’s most outrageous loudspeakers of 2005: “2005 was a big year for audio and what better way to sum up the craziness than a roundup of the most outrageous new speakers of the year. Ranging from $1,299 to $250,000, these speakers are on the cutting edge of technology and audible design.”
The [...]
iTunes 6.0.2 is out: features easy video conversion to the H.264 format that the iPod video supports and allows wireless audio streaming to multiple AirPort Express receivers at once.
Also: sports an annoying “MiniStore”—for which privacy concerns have been fairly raised, since Apple didn’t bother at first to clarify what exactly it does a propos to [...]
Highest revenues ever for the Cupertino-based company, with $5.7Bn (“one for the records” according to Jobs). #
More than 14M iPods sold during the holiday quarter—that’s 100 iPods per minute. #
Over 850M songs sold at the iTMS (which is now holding 83% of the digital music marketshare) and 8M videos sold since they were added in [...]
Microsoft ceases development of the app, continues to offer the current version for download and offers the Flip4Mac plugin for free. Said plugin allows users to work with .wmv and .wma files in QuickTime.
It’s a win-win for both parts. It didn’t make sense for MS to continue spending resources on a platform dominated by Apple’s [...]