Speakers

One of the nice things about having a WiFi network in your home is the fact that you can enjoy online music anywhere in the house ... through a computer or mobile device. Now, however, you have the choice of instead placing Altec Lansing’s new LIVE 5000 Wi-Fi speaker wherever you wish, and listening to that same music through it. You can also wirelessly link together a string of the speakers in different rooms, and use them to either distribute the same music throughout the house, or play different music in different rooms. Read More

Thanks to their simplicity, the home theater in a box (HTIB) has become a popular addition to the TV cabinet in many households. Looking to simplify things even further, California-based company in2technologies has unveiled its aptly named Unity Home Theater System at CES 2012 that unifies a HTIB with a TV stand. So instead of a tangle of cables snaking their way from the back of a TV stand to the TV, the Unity cleans things up with a single HDMI 1.4a cable. Read More

While insufficient battery-life can be annoying in most mobile devices, getting cut off from the outside world because your radio has run out of juice can be much more serious. This is why Eton has been producing various devices powered by hand-turbines and solar panels for some time now. Today’s CES Unveiled saw Eton demonstrating its latest FRX line of self-powered radios that come in three flavors – the FRX 3 and FRX 2, which both sport a solar panel and hand turbine, and the FRX 1, which features just the hand-turbine. Also on show was Eton’s new Rukus portable Bluetooth sound system, which comes in battery- and solar-powered versions. Read More

Soundmatters has announced a new speaker designed to bring some low frequency oomph to its portable foxLv2 Bluetooth and non-Bluetooth brethren. The new foxLO, which Soundmatters calls “the world’s first palm-sized hi-fi subwoofer,” plugs directly into foxLv2 speaker’s subwoofer output but will also work with other branded portable speakers, such as the Jawbone Jambox, thanks to the inclusion of a 3.5 mm full pass-through output. Read More

If you want to make yourself the life of the party then the Party Vest could be for you. Sure, you might struggle to carry on a conversation with anyone but it will likely be a conversation starter for other attendees at the shindig. Built on top of a Daniese Gilet Cali Tessuto motorcycle vest, the Party Vest comes retrofitted with an 8-inch Boss audio bass 900 subwoofer on the back and a pair of motorcycle speakers reaching over each shoulder. Read More

The Solio may not have been the first solar charger, but its appealing design and useful interchangeable tip system gave portable power packs a much-needed popularity boost. Transferring the juice from a charger to a smartphone or media player can be a time-consuming affair, though ... time that could be spent listening to the music stored on the device. SolLight's solution is to combine a lightweight carry pouch, a solar charger and some stereo speakers into something called the SoliCharger-SP. Read More

Bluetooth speakers are not particularly complex devices in terms of operation - you just pair them with a Bluetooth-enabled device, adjust the volume and enjoy the sound. However, a duo of industrial designers have created the Hidden Radio And Bluetooth Speaker in an attempt to make it even simpler and more intuitive. The unit is also claimed to offer an impressive 30 hours of battery life. Read More

For those of us who want a little more oomph out of our computers’ sound systems, USB-powered speakers certainly offer a simple solution, although they tend to be less powerful than speakers that incorporate the more traditional 3.5mm jack. Well, today XtremeMac unveiled its Tango Bar – a 10-watt USB sound bar for Macs or PCs, that reportedly delivers twice the output of most of its competitors. Read More

We've been following the quest for the world's best speakers for some time but remarkably, there's still room for improvement. A key issue that plagues proper sound reproduction (and thus its perceived quality) is a phenomenon known as deconstructive interference. This occurs when audio signals overlap and cancel one another out, creating dead spots which, until recently, have been very difficult to track. Now, a team from Britain's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has figured out a clever way to make speaker sound "visible" - and they do it with laser light. Read More