Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Ever wanted to edit a track’s tags but weren’t bothered enough to launch your tag editor of choice? AudioShell to the rescue. This shell extension allows you to quickly view and edit your tracks’s tags from within Windows Explorer. Works with pretty much every current audio format out there:
MP3 (all ID3v2 tag versions)
WMA, ASF and [...]
“Zune: what we know, think we know, and don’t yet know”: ...and there goes our own lengthy post on Zune wasted (it was already written and scheduled to go live this week). This is the best wrap-up on Zune so far.
Two MS employees working on the Zune project are talking about it on their blogs: [...]
Nicely worded rant on the DRM’d tracks you buy from online music stores: “So, there you have it, you’re paying for photocopies (and crummy one at that), you don’t own said photocopies, and you can only view it on the special copy viewer. Sounds like a good deal to me, where the heck do [...]
CNET review: Sony NW-A1200: gets a 7.3/10. Stylish design, smart features when it comes to browsing/finding your music, excellent sound quality, wide format support (MP3/AAC/WMA/ATRAC3)—these are the good things. Unfortunately, the scratch-prone monochrome screen and the lack of extra features such as FM and recording, plus the ever-dreadful SonicStage kinda break things. [via]
This is Grado performing a wise move and targeting the money-making cow that is the iPod generation—they may not buy music, but they do buy gear! The terribly-named iGrado (John, whoever came up with the name should be fired) will go for $49 and house the same drivers as the legendary, best-seller, well-loved SR60 (these [...]
Pictures: mobiBLU US2: the design is obviously RAZR-influenced, but notice the horrible placement of the “Play/Pause” button on the top. [via]
Sony launches new Walkman line (NW-S20x), targeting the athletic crowd: the device comes in the shape of metallic cylinder that sports a 1-line OLED and a collar knob for music navigation. On-the-fly playlisting, FM tuner, G-Sensor functions, resistance to water and a pedometer complete the nice package.
The NW-S203F comes with 1GB of memory and goes [...]
[Yes, this is a picture of Jessica Simpson. What’s worse is that in the post that follows, I may try to convince you to shell out two bucks for a track of hers.]
Y! Music is offering a DRM-free MP3 for sale. DRM-free. Yes, I know Allofmp3 and eMusic have been doing this for ages, but [...]
FM recording no more for Zen Vision owners with latest firmware: Creative apparently thinks that the FM recording feature is too much of a luxury for Zen Vision (not the :M one) owners, so in the latest firmware they’re kind enough to remove that capability. Thanks Creative! You! Rock!
According to a WSJ story (registration req. to read the article—ATRACLife has republished it), Sony admitted to reporters they failed to meet the initial sales target for their new line of models introduced over the past year. Sony president Ryoji Chubachi, who was quoted saying “We miscalculated with the Walkman”, declined to point out a [...]