You probably know Will.i.am best as a highly successful musician who kind of divides opinion. However, whether you think that his songs are terrible or his lyrics are pretty good, you are probably as unconvinced as the rest of us by his inventing skills. You see, the guy who was born as William James Adams Jr has been trying his hand at creating gadgets for some time now. Most people seem unimpressed by what he does but he just keeps going. Right now he has come storming back onto the new gadgets scene with something called i.am Buttons....
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The emergence of flexible multi-room sound systems is tipped to be one of the biggest gadget trends in the next few years. A product that is now available in this respect is the versatile Libratone Zipp. This is a cylindrical speaker system that is designed to give you access to your music wherever you are. The shape of the Zipp means that it delivers 360 degree audio wherever you place it. The quality of the sound may not be quite as high as on some of the higher end audiophile gadgets but it seems safe to say that it is good enough for...
Headphones are the hottest gadget around at the moment, there I said it! The boom in music streaming services and the ability to listen on the move has resulted in much more competition, which means quality and features of headphones are getting better all the time. Last month Audio-Technica sent me a pair of their fresh off the line ATH-CKX5iS headphones to review, so they’ve been in my ears to test the ‘extraordinary’ comfort promised by the official 5iS page. First Impressions The box is transparent, which means you’ll get a...
Chicbuds’ are known for creating fashionable accessories for smartphones, which is why I was rather excited to hear about their new Porta Party Bluetooth speaker. Granted the new designer look probably won’t suit men, but women they’ll love them – won’t they? This is where I turned to my wife for her opinion, which surprised me. What you get in the Porta Party box 1x Porta Party Speaker (in a nifty box) 1x instruction manual 1x charging cable (USB) 1x 3.5mm adapter How it works The Porta Party came...
Didn’t you just love globes and atlases when you were a kid? Ok, maybe not but there is a new concept out there which you are probably going to enjoy a lot more than standing up in front of the class and trying to pinpoint Borneo or blooming Popocatepetl. The genius behind the audio globe (yes, audio globe) is called Yuri Suzuki. He travelled the world with a Dictaphone and spent 3 years collecting sounds from all over the planet. Now he has made this into a globe which includes the, well, the Sounds of the Earth we suppose. Basically,...
When you look at your CD collection what do you see? Does it bring back happy memories of wading through shelves filled with Prefab Sprout albums or of eagerly waiting for the latest Ace of Base effort to come out? It might come as a surprise to some music lovers when they realise that the humble CD is now 30 years old. It is fair to say that its golden age has passed and that internet downloading and streaming is pushing the CD into a corner. However, there was a time – not so long ago – when these shiny discs looked like they had...
If there is one burning question which has to be addressed in the modern world it is this one; what ever happened to the traditional one man band? These guys used to briefly entertain us on the streets with their crazy and eclectic range of instruments which hung off their bodies. Sadly, they all seem to have realised that there are more sensible careers that don’t rely so heavily on banging cymbals together with their knees and pulling strings to bang the drum strapped to their backs. Not to worry though, as a modern solution is at...
We all know that anything that comes from the Ministry of Sound is something to look forward to. Whether it is a big closed back headphones to portable in-ear earphones, you will never be disappointed with what they come up with. Being the one of the front-runners in the audio accessories department that focuses on dance music, the new Ministry of Sound MOS003 in-ear earphones pack a lot of punch that will move your body to the beat. Those who are into dance music must be very familiar with the Ministry of Sound. The company started out...
If you have speakers just collecting dust in your basement just hanging around the house and you want them to support wireless audio, a new device has been created for you. Designed to be easily set up, the Air DAC Wireless System from NuForce lets convert your old speaker system to wireless in just a few steps. The NuForce Air DAC wireless system is composed of the Air DAC receiver and two transmitters (the uTX USB dongle that can be used on computers and the iTX dongle for Apple iOS devices like iPods, iPhones and iPad). According to...
Music recording apps for the iPad are becoming more and more popular these days as developers and manufacturers release new software and hardware on a regular basis. Now Wave Machine Labs are announcing their latest Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for the iPad, the Auria. Music making apps for the iPad are currently seen as more useful alongside musicians’ main recording rig rather than instead of them. This perception, however, may be changed with this new app. Wave Machine Labs’ Auria is a a 48-track iPad music production...