MP3

The L and R labels on your headphones serve a purpose, and it isn't just about fit. The audio source - whether it's a receiver, PC or MP3 player - sends left- and right-channel sounds to the appropriate earbud. While it might seem minor, this can be a difference between a disjointed experience listening to music, movies and other video, to a fuller experience that connects sight (in the case of video) and sound - with sound coming from the direction it's intended. There's no chance of a mix-up with the Universal Earphones being developed by Igarashi Design Interfaces Project in Tokyo - the headphones decide for themselves which ear they are in, and send sound to the each channel accordingly. Read More

When you hear the word "Walkman" you probably envision an 80s and 90s-era cassette player with AM/FM stereo and headphones. It's a far cry from Sony's Walkman B170 line which features small (only 28g or 1oz) colorful, and sound-rich MP3 players bearing the Walkman logo. Read More

Perhaps you’ve experienced this frustration before. There’s a piece of audio on a website that you want to use in a project of your own, and it’s playing right there on your computer, yet you have no way of copying it – short of holding a microphone up to your speakers, that is. Well, Kenneth Gibbs and Seena Zandipour want to change that. They’ve invented a little gizmo called the SLUG, that can reportedly obtain lossless recordings of any streamed audio being played back by a computer or other electronic device. The music labels will no doubt be about as happy to see the emergence of this thing as they were when blank audio cassettes first hit the stores. Read More

Despite some initial similarities, this is definitely not another iPod nano strap, such as the TikTok or LunaTik, but Chinavision's new Timesnap MP3/MP4 multimedia player wristwatch. Although not touchscreen-based, it offers a number of features including music, image, text and video file playback, along with an FM radio, at a reasonable price. Read More

Engineers from one of the main players responsible for the development of the MP3 codec, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, have taken a similar approach in an effort to provide telephone calls and video conferences with sound quality approaching that of direct communication, while at the same time cutting delay times that often sees both speakers talking over each other. Their solution is a new audio coding technology called Enhanced Low Delay Advanced Audio Coding – or AAC-ELD – that they claim results in long-distance communications that appear almost as if the participants are sitting across from each other. Read More

The convergence of the car and the motorcycle we forecast last year looks set to continue with the first public showing today at EICMA 2010 in Milan of a range of three and four wheeled scooters by Italian start-up Quadro. The start-up is particularly exciting because the company is to be run by Luciano Marabese, the man who designed both the Piaggio MP3 three-wheeled scooter and the Yamaha Tesseract four-wheeled motorcycle shown in 2007. The new machines will use an hydraulic tilting system patented by Marabese. In 2011 we’ll see the 350cc three-wheeled Quadro and later in the year, a 500cc four-wheeler. The four-wheeled motorcycle will evolve into a full family of supersports, hybrid, electric and off-road models, offering better braking, faster cornering and more safety and stability than a motorcycle. Read More

Samson Technologies is about to release its smallest portable recorder to date. The Zoom H1 Handy Recorder is capable of recording up to 24-bit/96kHz WAV or 320Kbps MP3 using its built-in or external stereo microphones, and has an easy-to-use hardware-based user interface, where all of the controls are placed within easy reach. It weighs just a couple of ounces, runs on one AA battery and records to microSD. Read More

Most songwriters will agree that when inspiration hits, it's vital to get it down fast. Roland's new MP3/WAV handheld recording device, the R-05, could help capture that magic moment before it slips away forever. Having the ability to record and playback in high quality uncompressed stereo, with onboard editing features and a 16 hour continuous recording battery life, the pocket recorder will obviously appeal to musicians. That said, Roland sees it being useful in non-musical applications, too. Read More

How the heck does it do that? Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo has used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to demo a very cool new handsfree interface you can use to control an MP3 player using gestures you make with your eyeballs. Sensors in the earbuds themselves measure changes in electrical potential to convert your eye movements to iPod commands. Fascinating stuff... and while using it on an MP3 player might seem a bit naff, there's probably a range of other situations where handsfree, voice-free control options like this could be really useful. Read More