Gadzooki

Personal Soundtrack T-shirt

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It was meant to be an April fools joke by people from ThinkGeek.com but it created such a stir that they’re thinking of pushing thru with the idea.

Imagine you’re wearing the t-shirt, a friend cracks a joke, and you’re t-shirt blows a laughter or a drum roll sound track.  Cool?  Eh, not really my cup-of-tea BUT it may work for some.  Not sure if it’s culturally acceptable in some countries.

Anyway, I have to appreciate this “invention”.  It’s a little original and may morph into something a little useful in the future.  Right now I could think of an “electronica performance” where someone’s onstage with this Tee and on cue it will jive to something going on around it.  Add some lights in, errhhmm… maybe.

A more practical idea would be if a known brand could use this in their marketing Kiosks to blurb out pre-recorded material.  I think that will take off.

It is now sold (but you need to email for a reservation) at www.thinkgeek.com for US$39.99 and is available only in black at S, M, L, XL & XXL sizes.  It comes in a remote so you can choose the track you wish to play.  Is it patented?  Ah, that’s THE question.

From their website, the product features below:

1. Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt features a working speaker on the front and can play background music and sound effects at your command

2. Perfect for making your ordinary life more exciting

3. Pocket remote allows easy selection of 13 looping music themes and 11 different sound effects

4. Music and sound effects fade up and down when choosing a new sound for a seamless experience

5. Requires 4 AA batteries. Not included

The Bigger Earphones the Better!

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500XL DESKTOP EARBUD SPEAKERS

Want a bigger earphone for your iPod! So is bigger better? But consider this oversized Apple iPod earbuds used as speakers. Although size of the speaker doesn’t really matter since everything has been shrunk due to the progress of tehcnology, this oversized Apple iPod earbuds adds coolness factor to your desktop. Sometimes bigger IS better, especially when it comes to sound. These pair of earbuds, have put in the “make-em-big” machine, and thus the 500XL DESKTOP EARBUD SPEAKERS was created – which is 500 times the size of the original! And how great will these look on your desktop alongside your mp3 player or pc?

These speakers include a built-in amp, and they’re powered by either batteries, USB (included), or a standard wall-plug power supply (not included). Costs $49.99 check it out a Perpetual Kid Entertain Your Inner Child!

  • Speakers measures approx 7″ long x 4″ in diameter.
  • Rating Power: 3 Watt

“Ringles” to be marketed as a new music format

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with the slumping sales of CDs, the music industry is desperate to find an alternative that can boost sales. We’ve heard of their desperate attempts to put anti-piracy devices into CDs (to disastrous results — just look at what happened to Sony’s rootkit fiasco) and digital rights management for electronic formats. The newest tactic has been to present new formats that consumers may get interested in. Because of the rising popularity of digital formats, record companies are looking at the distribution of music on flash drives (the White Stripes have done this already), which makes it easier for consumers to transfer music to their computers and digital music players.

A new distribution method is also being utilized by a growing number of companies — and this is through the so called “ringle”. This is basically an amalgamation of the now unpopular single and widely used ringtones. Each CD will contain three songs — the original hit, a remix and maybe an old track from the artist — as well as one ringtone.

 Sony BMG and Universal Music Group will be the first companies to come out with this new product. Some of the big retailers like Walmart and BestBuy have already signified their support for the ringle and it may only take some time before consumers also warm up to the idea. The name “ringle” sucks though, someone should have thought of a better name for the format.

Affordable but high quality earphones from Creative

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creative.jpgI have become an earphone addict ever since I got my iPod and had my cmoy amp built. I am constantly on the lookout for the best sounding earphones in the market. Of course, I have one big condition — it has to be affordable. Although I love to get my hands on those Etymotics in-ear monitors but I have a standing policy that if it costs more than my second hand Denon integrated amp then it’s too pricey.

A number of companies have been coming out with really good earphones because of the increased demand for high quality monitors. This is one sector that the popularity of the iPod has immensely helped. In fact, new brands continue to appear on the market hoping to wrest some of the customers away from such tried and tested brands like Sennheiser, Shure, Bose, and even Philips and Sony.

One good pair of earphones I recently used is the Creative EP-630. Yes, the popular PC peripheral maker and consistent thorn on Apple’s side (because of its affordable line of high quality digital music players) has entered the earphone market with a very affordable yet great sounding earphones. These cans are quite comfortable to use and, surprisingly, can go head to head with the midlevel Sennheisers I got in terms of clarity, loudness and range. And you can get it for less than 30 dollars! That’s a great deal any way you look at it.

[tags]Shure, Creative, Sennheiser[/tags]

I love my cmoy amp

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altoid-cmoy.jpgWhen it comes to music and my music collection I am quite serious. I may have a very tight budget for indulging in this hobby but I still want to get the best out of it whenever possible. I’ve had my iPod for almost two years now and it has been my constant companion wherever I go. I love bringing my music with me because it keeps me from being bored — like when I have to accompany the wife in her grocery runs or when I’m waiting in line at the bank. But aside from my iPod I also have one constant companion — the cmoy amp that I always pair with my iPod.

Let’s face it, the sound quality that comes out of an iPod is not really that good. Clarity is sometimes very suspect and audio can sometimes sound muddy. I may not have top of the line earphones but I do hear the difference especially since my Rockbox’ed iPod contains mostly high bitrate MP3s or FLACs.

A cmoy amp is a very portable headphone amplifier that makes the audio stream from an audio source (in this case, an iPod) sound louder and clearer. The great thing about cmoy amps is its great portability. There are DIYers that have even used Altoids tin cans as the casing for their amps.

I’ve always told my friends that once you’ve used a headphone amp there is no turning back — and they have unanimously agreed. They are now proud owners of cmoy amps, too!

[tags]cmoy amp, iPod, Altoids[/tags]

All These Freakin Wires!

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My wife bought me a Samsung HT-Q70 home theater system from Circuit City for Christmas to hook up to our 40 inch Samsung LCD TV. It’s a nice, middle of the road system with seven components and a maximum total output of 1000 Watts. And it sounds really good when we’re watching movies like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. I love it.

But that’s not the point of this post.

The real point is that my life is filled with more wires than ever. Oh how I long for the days of a single coaxial cable running into my TV set. Now, I have about two dozen wires running all over my living room, and I don’t even feel totally confident that they’re setup for maximum visual and auditory pleasure. You know what I mean?

The situation gets worse. Now we’re being asked to pay upwards of $150 for “higher quality” HDMI wires. Now, I have no doubt that these wires make a big difference to the quality of audio and video. But for God’s sake, when did wires start costing over $100. It seems like the biggest rip-off since bottled water.

The sad thing is, though, that when you buy a home theater system you now have about four choices for “types” cables. You can get composite, component, S-Video + optical audio, or HDMI. Supposedly, HDMI produces the best quality digital signal. In fact, some people tell me that HDMI is the only cable that is capable of giving you true 1080p resolution.

My parents recently got a similar setup. They had Comcast come to their homes to set everything up (I would have set it up, but I recently decided that being the tech geek of the family was taking too much of my time, and I made it clear that everyone is now on their own). Anyway, Comcast setup their home theatre system, but guess what? They did it wrong. They are running the HD signal from the Comcast box to their DLP HDTV via Component cables. From what I understand, component is not capable of carrying true HDTV. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m pretty sure that their signal is not coming in as HDTV…at least it doesn’t look it.

Apparently, not even the company that is selling you HDTV can get their wires and cables right. But things get worse. The Comcast guy doesn’t have their TV sound running through their 5 speaker system. It’s just running through the TV speaker. That means that the only way they can make use of their home theater system is when they are watching DVDs.

But I digress. The main point of this post is that the current state of home theater systems and the mass of wires they produce is a complete disaster. The average consumer is overwhelmed and not properly informed to make a wise decision. Further, rather than advances in technology resulting in fewer cables, it seems to be resulting in more and more cables for more and more components.

Here’s what we need. The home theater sector is in desperate need of high bandwidth, fully digital, multi-channel, low-cost and low-loss wireless connectivity. I’m fine with plugging units into the electrical outlets, but can someone please get all these components to communicate with each other, wirelessly, out of the box already?

42 String Guitar

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I just couldn’t pass this sucker up. Could anyone really play this thing or is it just a gimmick? With 10 fingers and two hands, it seems like overkill to me. But what do I know. I spent three years trying to learn to play guitar and have very little to show for it.

42 String Guitar

Four necks. Two sound holes. 42 strings. Two access doors; one on the upper player’s side and one at the tail block.

Created by luthier Linda Manzer for guitarist Pat Metheny, the instrument took 2 years to build (approximately 1000 hours), and when the 42 strings are strung up to high tension, the Pikasso is under approximately 1000 lbs pressure. It weighs 6.7 kg or 14 3/4 lbs.

Itty Bitty Tube Amp: The ZVEX iMPAMP

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Ok. Ok. I admit it. I watch HGTV sometimes.

Tonight it paid off. They had a cool-ass little gadget called the iMPAMP. This thing rocks. Literally. It’s a power tube amp the size of a notecard (or a Nintendo DS) but with sound big enough to produce the effect of a decked out studio.

Itty Bitty Tube Amp

You can hook these guys up to your iPod for old-school sound from a new-school device. But you don’t have to go big to get that old-school sound. The zvex iMPAMP is designed small enough to fit in the palm of your hand…a perfect compliment to your iPod nano.

As a burgeoning old-sound connoisseur I’ve got to get my hands on one of these guys. For $525 it’s a steep price to pay, but if you live for sound like I do, then it might just be worth emptying out the spare change.

Whether you hook it up to an old-school turntable system or a latest-tech portable media player, nothing compares to tube sound. And with these tubes, you can take the sound anywhere.

SkullPhones: Earphones That Don’t Go In Your Ear

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bone conductionWe like new things. Tech is all about innovation. And this new sound gadget is very new….and old. A company called Morito is producing earphones that actually use your bone (the old part) to create the impression of sound. The headphones cause the bone in your skull to vibrate (sound is transmitted by wave vibration in the normal course of events anyway).

The cool thing about these earphones is that they don’t actually go inside your ear. Awesome innovation, eh? Easier to hear the outside world, while listening to music. No more sore ear from buds. No more ear-muff style phones. Instead of earphones we have skull phones.

By the way, The Raw Feed is wrong when they say that the earphones don’t actually produce sound. They do. They just do it by producing the sound vibrations in a different place: your skull. So really, there is no more illusion in the skullphones then there is in normal headphones. Both produce non-natural sources of vibration to give you the impression of sound.

News Release

MP3 In Your Pillow?

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multi-color mp3 pillow For only $9.99 you can tell your friends that your pillow plays music. Falling asleep to music has never been easier, thanks to this nifty new product being offered by Linens N Things.

The Cozy Tunes Pillow has a standard headphone connector allowing you to hook your MP3 Pillow up to any standard audio device: an iPod, radio or even one of those white-noise/pleasant-sound generators that help you relax;-)

While this is definitely one of those cool conversation piece products, but Anything But iPod hints at one potential problem: cords and sleep mix about as well as bubble gum and sleep.

Blue MP3 Pillow

[En Espanol: GenertationMP3]