Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Theater Research/Elite Audio = Buyer Beware…: Josh Ray, on a Chinese company that sells terrible speakers with fake specs and awards. They’re using “direct marketing” (i.e. they have the speakers loaded on a white van that goes around town…) to sell these at “ridiculously low” prices.
Koss has released what looks the like open-design cousin to the MV1, the Pro4AAAT. Impedance at 250 Ohms, MSRP is $150 and, as is the case for all Koss headphones, it’s covered under a “No Questions Asked” lifetime warranty. From the company’s press release:
The PRO4AAAT features titanium coating on 2 mil mylar diaphragms for a [...]
A few days ago the beta version of WMP 11 surfaced, it sports a cleaner look than its predecessor (we had posted a preview with screenshots back in March) and features a built-in music store (like the iTunes Music Store within iTunes) called Urge. Urge is the fruit of collaboration between MTV Networks and Microsoft; [...]
Creative to sell Zen Vision:M without the AC adapter: in an effort to slash prices, Creative introduces the Zen Vision:M SD, which is the Zen Vision:M we’ve all grown to love without an AC adapter (as Apple does with the iPods for a couple of years now), and an additional unidentified acronym added at the [...]
Question: what happens when you rate a song on the iPod, rate it on iTunes differently, and sync the two? Answer: The iTunes rating prevails even if it took place before the iPod rating. (For the record, playcounts are recorded correctly, since both the extra playbacks on the iPod and on iTunes are added, regardless [...]
Review: Audio Technica ATH-A500 + Headroom Total Airhead: fellow 9ruler Matt Burris reviews the headphone/amp combo he purchased recently, mostly from a gamer’s perspective. The ATH-A500 is probably the best closed heaphone for the ~$150 price range, and while I disagree with the amp choice (read: overpriced for what it actually delivers, as is the [...]
It all depends on whether or not you let iTunes manage your music library:
If you do, then moving your music while preserving library data (playlists, play counts, etc.) is pretty trivial and documentation provided by Apple has got you covered (check “Part 1” in the guide that follows).
If you don’t (which is the user group [...]
3tunes automatically records the songs Pandora plays for you and saves them in the format of artist – title.mp3. We’re obviously talking about transcoded tracks here, but it’s a nice way to grow your collection and maybe listen to that track a couple of times more before you decide you really like it and go [...]
More details regarding Amazon’s upcoming music service: 20% off physical CDs for subscribers; non-subscribers get to download the CD in WindowsMedia format as soon as they order it. Some thoughts of ours regarding Amazon’s foray into the digital music arena can be found here.
“Oh no, the battery doesn’t hold a charge like it used to”—frequent portable audio forums and you’ll be hearing this a lot. The batteries that power your portable audio device can last longer and be more efficient provided you treat them carefully. What follows is a list of the best resources on the matter.
Battery types, [...]