Portable Audio

September 19, 2007 From the speaker company whose high-end reference units grace the studios at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch and Abbey Road comes a portable iPod speaker dock to drool over. The $599 Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin packs a 5” subwoofer, plus twin 3.5” midranges and two 1” tweeters straight from the company’s famous M-1 studio monitors. Sweet! Read More

September 13, 2007 Long entrenched as the focal point of working life for many people, laptops are increasingly expanding their role to become a hub for personal entertainment with new solutions to accommodate this functionality emerging on a daily basis. This AudioHub Notebook Speaker System from Logitech combines a unique 2.1 one-piece speaker system and three integrated hi-speed USB ports in a compact design at just three and a half inches in height that's designed to fit neatly behind most notebooks. Read More

September 12, 2007 Plantronics have introduced a Bluetooth convertible mono to stereo headset for MP3 Bluetooth enabled mobile phones. The Voyager 855 headset offers a convertible design for listening to calls in mono as well as listening to music in stereo as headphones via a detachable stereo cable. Drop the second earbud or detach the cable and the headset serves as a high-quality mono Bluetooth device. Read More

September 4, 2007 AKG's K930 wireless stereo headphones are among the plethora of noteworthy new products Gizmag has encountered at the IFA show in Berlin this week. With a range of approximately 100 meters, the K930 headphones do not require a line of sight from the transmitter enabling the signal to penetrate through walls and ceilings and greatly expanding the user’s mobility. Read More

September 4, 2007 Toyota has released an iPod integration kit which provides a direct link between your car’s audio system and an Apple iPod. The connection is housed inside the glovebox of the car, providing a simple plug and play option from iPod to stereo that also act as a charger. The iPod can then be completely controlled by using the car’s audio head unit, or (where fitted) the controls on the steering wheel. The integration kit can be installed into any current Toyota and Lexus model, and is compatible with most versions of iPod. Read More

August 18, 2007 Logitech have unveiled two new iPod speakers - one designed specifically for the bedroom and the second aimed at iPod portability. The iPod Pure-Fi Dream speakers for the bedroom are designed as a replacement of the conventional alarm clock and incorporate innovative functions such as motion and light sensing technology that allow you to access the "Snooze" feature with a simple wave of the hand. Read More

August 13, 2007 Ever shrinking portable music players often sacrifice sound output for portability so the audio boost provided by tiny 1.4 by 2 inch IASUS Mobile Amp could be a welcome addition to the pocket of many audiophiles. Its diminutive stature makes it the world’s smallest and lightest hi fidelity amplifier for mobile devices – but it also makes an impressive difference in music quality, providing up an extra to ten decibels while suffering only 0.3% distortion. Read More

July 18, 2007 Ancient Zimbabwean wisdom suggests "if you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing" though we're sure it is also true that if you can hold a note, carry a tune and belt out something relatively pleasant to the ear, everyone has more fun. There is currently a renaissance of music sweeping the world. More people are listening to more music thanks to the low cost high convenience MP3 player, and advances in user-friendly software and devices mean more people are beginning to explore not just listening to music but making it. One such device is the i-Sing, an MP3 player with the ability to digitally cancel out the original artist's vocals on any track, display song lyrics and record the user's own vocals over the instrumental tracks at the touch of a button. Bound to be popular with fans of the (insert country here) Idol TV phenomenon, the i-Sing harnesses some very cool technology and combines it with childproof ease of use. Read More

June 5, 2007 We've seen iPod DJ solutions like the Numark iDJ before, but now the next logical step has arrived. The Pacemaker is a 120 GB portable music player that doubles as a fully functional DJ setup, giving it the somewhat bizarre title of the world's first pocket-sized DJ rig. Read More