Category: Audio

I recently got my hands on a selection of audio gear from Raumfeld, a German maker of high-end audio systems who recently made their entry into the U.S. market. I’m a big fan of their Stereo Cubes bookshelf speakers, and now I’m checking out their Sounddeck home theater speaker system to see if it lives up to the same quality.

Raumfeld may not be a well known name here in the U.S., but they’ve been making high end audio gear in Germany since 2008. Recently, the company started selling its premium wireless audio systems here in the States.

One of the Spotify desktop app’s coolest features is its ability to display the lyrics of the song that’s currently playing, turning your PC into a cheap karaoke machine. An upcoming speaker called Lyric Speaker has that function built-in, thanks to its transparent LCD screen.

Imgur member cpostier’s house has a Nutone 2090, a 1960s to 1970s home intercom system that doubles as a multi-room AM/FM radio. Cpostier wasn’t interested in its primary function, but he wanted to update the system’s audio capabilities.

Music and skateboarding. You can’t have one without the other. You need some good tunes for a soundtrack when you are performing all of those cool moves. If you ride a skateboard, now you can play your music directly from your board with the GLB-GSB Blazer.

The wearability of ThinkGeek’s oversized Mega Man helmet is just a suggestion. Thankfully, fans who don’t want to go full robot can still show their love for the Blue Bomber with Emio’s officially licensed Mega Man headphones.

8Bitdo started out by making Bluetooth controllers that imitated Nintendo’s classic gamepads. It appears to be branching out to other types of gadgets but still with the same gimmick, as you can see with its new Retro Cube Speaker.

Out of the box, iOS devices can only play a handful of audio file formats. But if you’ve got files in other formats, you have to convert them, then bring them into iTunes, then sync them to your devices.

In general, I prefer the big, speakerlike sounds of full-size headphones that cover the ears. But when I’m traveling, I usually bring along a pair of in-ear headphones in order to cut down on the bulk.

I’ve long been on the hunt for a pair of noise reducing headphones with good audio and build quality, and that are wireless as well. I’ve tried some pairs from Bose before, but both pairs I owned ended up cracking irreparably.

A few days ago we talked about Mogees, a tiny digital musical instrument that triggers sound by vibration. The Motus is another unorthodox yet intuitive portable instrument. It lets you create or trigger sounds by motion.

Back in April we checked out a 3D printed violin that looked more like a Predator’s weapon than a musical instrument. But 3D printing isn’t just about making new physical forms. The technology can be tuned for very practical purposes as well, as exhibited by violin maker Hovalin.

Behold the cutest little Star Wars bluetooth speakers in this galaxy or any other. Judge them by their size do you? Well don’t. They can crank up the volume, despite their size. You can choose from goofy looking versions of Boba Fett, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, or Captain Phasma.

There are different gadgets that can turn bodies, steering wheels or food into musical instruments. Now you can turn pretty much any rigid solid object into an instrument using just one device: Mogees. Mogees consists of a very sensitive contact microphone and an iOS app.

NuForce recently became part of the Optoma family of products, and is now offering the first of its new headphones, the BE6. These compact earphones offer Bluetooth connectivity, so they’re great for athletes and anyone else who doesn’t want to be bothered by a cord when listening to their tunes.

Dolby was kind enough to invite me into their brand new headquarters building in San Francisco. The 16-story, 300,000 square foot building brings together research, engineering, marketing, business and operations teams in a single location, and is packed top to bottom with scientific labs for creating the next generation of audio and video technologies.