Music

B&O Play could be described as the hip, contemporary arm of Bang & Olufsen. That ethos is certainly reflected in the company’s soon-to-be-available streaming wireless speaker, the BeoPlay A9. Unlike traditional boxy speakers, it’s flat(ish), it’s round, and it’s designed to be looked at as much as listened to.  Read More

Pioneer has just revealed the DDJ-SX, which is the first four-channel DJ controller to use Serato's advanced DJ software. In fact, according to Pioneer, everything about this unit was designed specifically with Serato in mind – everything from the design of the unit itself to the trigger pads and controls were made to work with it. The device comes bundled with Serato, so DJs won't need to purchase anything else.  Read More

Just like BMW with its DesignworksUSA creative consultancy that churns out non-automotive products ranging from computer mice to bicycles, Peugeot has launched the Peugeot Design Lab with a similar bent. The first product to come out of the studio is a futuristic baby grand piano designed for French piano manufacturers Pleyel that looks like it could beat my first car over a quarter mile.  Read More

Although I grew up surrounded by the big hair rock of Bon Jovi and the like, my first introduction to the Talk Box guitar effect was not Living on a Prayer but Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way over a decade earlier, followed a little later by Peter Frampton's epic Do You Feel Like We Do. Although it continues to be used by a good many guitar gods to this day, the long tube that invariably runs up a microphone stand to the player's mouth does make it something of a special addition to a guitarist's effects arsenal rather than a regular feature. The Talking Pedal from Electro-Harmonix does away with the tube altogether in a rocking chassis expression pedal with no moving parts.  Read More

The WTF from Loud Button Electronics brings together high gain distortion and a low frequency oscillator (LFO) in one effects pedal. The result is somewhat difficult to explain but a number of adjectives do spring to mind (weird, psychedelic, out there, oddball). However, none seem to fit better than its given moniker.  Read More

If you own an iPhone or iPod touch and have a collection of music on cassette tape, this just might be the gadget of your dreams. ION's Tape Dock allows you to take your favorite cassette tapes and bring them to the digital age. It works with chrome or normal cassettes, so your tapes should not have a problem going digital.  Read More

Pioneer is rolling out a new addition to its family of CDJ multi players for professional DJs. This new model, called the CDJ-2000nexus, is the first in the industry to include Wi-Fi connectivity. Pioneer has a long history of making CDJ players, which are designed to mimic some of the control options that vinyl provides from a CD or digital music file.  Read More

Those who grew up playing video games from the 8-bit era will likely have various of the theme tunes from those early arcade classics – including some of the Atari games now playable on the Web in HTML5 – stuck in their heads forever more. Super Mario Bros., Pokemon, Mega Man, and, of course, Tetris are all classic games with classic theme tunes. Modern video games cannot quite compete with these old-skool songs, which is perhaps why the Pianocade is such a compelling product, at least for those of us of a certain age.  Read More

TDK chose IFA 2012 to showcase the next step in the evolution of its Life on Record range of audio products. The new Boombox and Sound Cube models include Bluetooth technology for wireless audio streaming from mobile devices, and have been joined by a weatherproofed portable speaker.  Read More