Even if you’ve never heard of Shure’s SM7B, you’ve almost certainly heard the SM7B. From live radio to podcasting and streaming, the sleek, black microphone can be found hanging in front of mouths, delivering its trademark broadcast sound. Today, Shure is unveiling the latest edition — the SM7dB — to celebrate the microphone’s 50th anniversary. It also happens to solve one of the mic’s biggest pain points (the clue is in its name). The $499 Shure SM7dB comes with a built-in preamp that adds either 18- or 28dB of much-needed gain.
The SM7B famously needs a lot of amplification which can lead to quiet audio or an undesirable “hiss” on inferior preamps. To solve this, people often purchase an in-line preamp such as a FetHead or a CloudLifter — which is an additional $100 or so on top of the $399 SM7B.
The SM7dB eliminates the need for additional hardware and also promises a “clean” boost in volume. What’s more, it does this without adding any significant size or a change in form factor. To be clear, the new microphone is a shade longer than its un-amplified counterpart. And there’s a minor cosmetic change from the sleek, stealthy matte black to a slightly shinier paintjob. There’s also a glossy “Shure” logo now on the microphone body which makes the whole thing look a bit less cool if you ask me but you might not be so sensitive to such things.
The addition of a preamp brings with it some other practical changes. The classic SM7B has two switches on its rear: a high pass filter and a mid-frequency boost. The SM7dB still has those, but there are two more switches — one for bypassing the preamp and the other for toggling between the amount of gain (the aforementioned 18- and 28-dB boosts).
Photo by James Trew / Engadget
When “bypass” is activated, the SM7dB acts as a regular dynamic microphone and won’t need phantom power. Once you activate that preamp though, you’ll need to supply 48v to drive the preamp. The vast majority of audio interfaces with an XLR input will also supply phantom power, so there’s no issue here but if you’re used to working with dynamic microphones and the mild convenience of not having to think about phantom power, just know there’s a slight workflow change here.
One of the main benefits of a dynamic microphone is its noise rejection —- they’re much more forgiving on background noise or the sound of passing traffic, for example. Thankfully, the built-in preamp here doesn’t change that as the microphone still works as a dynamic should (unlike condensor microphones that need phantom power to work and are much more sensitive).
With the full 28dB of gain applied, I initially thought there was some audible noise when recording silence, but it quickly became clear that with all that extra gain and my audio interface set to record at full volume it was simply just too loud and was picking up more ambient noise — it would have been far too loud if I had started speaking into it. Once the levels were adjusted accordingly, the noise floor disappeared.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, without any preamp turned on, the new SM7dB sounds near identical to its legacy sibling. I tested both via a Rodecaster Duo which has ample gain to drive these microphones on its own. However, when I tested both of the SM7dB’s preamp settings (while lowering the gain on the Rodecaster accordingly) the output remained just as clear and noise free with no obvious change in character — which is exactly what Shure was going for.
Shure
The obvious downside is that, the SM7dB costs about $100 more than the regular SM7B. That’s a decent amount more, especially if you don’t really need the preamp but are maybe hoping to future-proof your setup, or just upgrade to the newest model. On the other hand, if you were going to buy an SM7B knowing you’d also need a separate preamp then the new model costs about the same as buying both separately.
Given the sheer popularity of the SM7B, the new edition should be well received. Not least because of the obvious advantage of it being louder, but for a more practical, if slightly superficial reason, too. That being that the design of the SM7B puts the XLR port facing either directly up or down on most boom arms or mic stands (rather than perpendicular) which certain inline preamps can look a little, well, ridiculous sticking out of the top of bottom. With the SM7dB, then, you can possibly eliminate one more visual distraction from your streams. Whatever your motivation for considering the new microphone, it’s available starting today.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/shure-hid-a-preamp-inside-its-latest-sm7db-microphone-130009353.html?src=rss
Editorial Note: Apologies for the delay in this review, earlier this year I was in a bike accident – not with this bike, I should add – that left me with a months-long concussion.
I am a proud townie. I don’t mind the odd nature walk, but I’m far happier striding for hours at a time through cities, coffee in hand. I loved walking from law school in the center of London back to my apartment, six miles away, through the hustle and bustle. That’s possibly why I feel such a kinship with Honbike’s Uni4. It’s an elegant, efficient and beautifully-designed city e-bike of the future that is a joy to ride, just so long as you never think about taking it out of its comfort zone.
Hardware
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
I won’t lean too hard into the “unique design” angle because plenty of bikes eschew the usual diamond frame template. It’s undeniably eye-catching, with a crossbar running from the headset / head tube down to the rear wheel, which then appears to bleed into the chain stay. I quite like the commitment to making it look as if it’s one continuous structural unit, even if it is divided by a wheel. The chunky crossbar gets much of its strength from the 432Wh worth of battery inside, which promises a top range of 100 km or 62 miles. The squared-off tube ends and built-in front light gives it a look and feel best described as “VanMoof-y.”
The Uni4 costs $1,699 in the US and £1,799 here in the UK, less than the £2,000 you can pay for a half-decent e-bike. Honbike hasn’t scrimped too obviously, with a Gates carbon belt drive with a quoted life of 10,000 km. There are Tektro Aries disc brakes on custom, six-spoke wheels that make it look like you’re riding a sport bike. The front and rear fenders are included although the instructions do tell you to put the front fender on backwards. There’s an integrated front light but only an aftermarket, battery-powered rear light bolted onto the seat. It’s less than ideal, but the logic for why it’s there is obvious: With no top tube, there’s nowhere to install an integrated rear light that’s high enough to be visible at night.
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
Integrated into the headset is a dot matrix display that’s supremely bright and perfectly visible in bright sunshine. There’s a small control unit on the left hand grip where you’ll turn it on, run the lights and set your power level. On the right, a built-in throttle will activate walking assist mode and give you a tiny shot of power from a standing start.
There are plenty of e-bikes costing around two grand that often feel a little phoned in, and no, I won’t name names. But for every standout like the gorgeous Raleigh Trace, there are plenty that look like their manufacturer took an old road bike, added a rear wheel motor, bolted a battery onto the downtube, and called it a day. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the industry to up its game – and the big brands are getting better – in the face of better-designed competition. The Uni4 is a better-looking bike than lots of those in its price bracket and, I’d say, looks like it costs a little bit more than you’ll actually pay.
The bike is hewn from 7,000-series aluminum and weighs about 20 kg or 44 pounds, which is a little heftier than it may look. It’s a two-handed job to lug it about, and so you probably wouldn’t want to carry this up several flights of stairs on a regular basis.
In Use
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
I often wonder to what extent we should judge a bike upon the merits the company itself sets for it versus a more general-purpose view. The Uni4 is marketed as a city bike, engineered to eat up the long, flat stretches of asphalt between us and our destination. It’s no surprise – because I already tipped my hand here – that it’s ideally-suited to that environment, comfortably cruising along the road whenever and wherever I chose to go. In fact, judged on that merit alone, if you’re only ever riding this on the road (or a dedicated cycle lane) you can just order one right now. When the electric assist is off, the Uni4’s essentially the world’s most overbuilt single speed, and it works in that configuration, too. If you’re on flat, well-paved roads, then you should feel very comfortable that you’ll get where you need to go quickly and easily.
It’s only when we take a more general-purpose view and test the Uni4 out of its comfort zone do you see its weaknesses. Like many townies, it starts to struggle the further from civilization you get, even if you’re well within the boundaries of a city. Not far from where I live, there’s a path through a small wood that you can use to cut the distance between two major roads. It’s a well worn path, and on sunny days it’s a (mostly) flat and dry stretch that’ll save you 10 minutes or more. Sadly, even the gentlest of terrain will pose a problem because there’s no suspension or shock absorption, shaking your bones to a fine powder. Afterward, I took the bike to some tree-lined residential avenues, the sort where the roads are only relaid once every three or four decades. The trees have had time and opportunity to burrow across the road and make the terrain less than smooth as a consequence. Your municipality may be fine with potholes and uneven roads, but take it as read that the Uni4 is not.
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
You’ve noticed, too, I’ve mentioned flat roads a few times, because you’re not going to get too much help up hills. There are only three acceleration modes, and no fine-grain control beyond to help you get more power where you need it. Here in Norwich, there’s a daily savage hill that, up one side, has an incline of between 11 and 14 degrees, while its opposite hits 22.4. It’s so steep that it’s the site of an annual endurance cycling competition, and seemed an ideal place to test the Uni 4’s gyroscopic uphill assistance. Essentially, the bike is meant to know the gradient you are cycling up, and automatically adjust the power to suit your needs. Yeah.
For the gentler side, it’s doable, but you can expect far less help from the bike than you might expect. The company says it’ll run between nine and 12 mph on a 18 degree incline, but only if the rider’s maximum weight is 90kg. Sadly, I’m a few kilos over that figure, and so I really had to work for every little bit of help, leaving me fairly sweaty by the time I’d reached the summit. For the latter, however, you’ll struggle to go more than halfway up before the bike simply refuses to continue. During my testing, a pair of dudes in a panel van were hooting with sadistic glee as I tried, and failed, to motivate the Uni4 to climb any further. This isn’t a dealbreaker, since there aren’t too many really nasty hills in the center of most towns and cities. But you might need to plan your route to avoid anything too extreme during your morning commute.
While I’m piling on, the bike is designed to look like a single piece of metal that curls into itself. The lack of a second tube means there’s less of an obvious mounting point around the frame when you need to lock it to a public rack. Instead, you’re forced to wrap the chain around the wheel mount and then back again to try and create something that feels secure enough to leave. You can also electronically “lock” the electric assist, but that won’t stop the wheels from turning, leaving an enterprising thief with at least something usable. Given the cost of one of these things, the fact so little thought had been given about safely storing one is a bugbear.
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
Honbike says the 432Wh battery will squeeze out around 62 miles, or 100km in range via that 250W motor. Naturally, that’s in the best possible conditions with the lightest rider and the least amount of electric assist available. Here, in the real world, you can expect that figure to fall by a fair amount, and the company has tuned the motor to emphasize a smooth, gentle ride over world-beating power. You’ll pretty much find that the bike will just keep you gently cantering around at 10 mph in all but the highest power setting. You can push things to the current legal limit of 15 mph if you want, but you’d rarely need that sort of power unless you’re going hard in heavy traffic and need to work your legs. But I found that – as a heavier, more power-hungry rider – that my range would be closer to 30 miles on a single charge.
And here’s a nice thing: Honbike may have a perfectly fine app, it’s also completely inessential. The built-in display will give you most of all the information you’d need to access, including your speed and a basic battery monitor. If you want, and you splash out for a smartphone mount, then the app can show you a local map, your speed, distance and trip duration. At the end of each trip, it’ll also tell you how much carbon dioxide you’ve saved by cycling, if you really need the boost to your eco credentials.
If I have one other concern, it’s about how riders will be able to keep this bike running for a very long time. An end user can buy replacement tyres and inner tubes, brake pads, pedals, fenders and the front and rear lights, from the company’s online store. While brake cables that are run through the frame are an annoyance, it’s a common issue on high-end bikes, and most repair stores can handle it with little bother. But, for the other key parts, including the wheels, the motor and the battery, it appears that Honbike recommends you send it in to its service center. I don’t necessarily blame the company for getting nervous about user-repairs to power units, since the risk is fairly significant.
Wrap-Up
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
It’s worth saying that more of this piece has been focusing on the Honbike’s flaws rather than its strengths. Which is a bit of an irony, really, since riding around on this thing has been pretty much a joy from start to finish. It’s just that it’s very much designed to be the apex predator in a single environment, and so you need to be aware of that before you buy. But if what you want and what you need is a bike that’ll get you from one end of the city to another, in an elegant and painless manner, then there’s plenty of reasons to buy one. Especially when you look at other bikes in this sub-two-grand bracket and realize that, as limited as it may be, it’s also a real looker.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/honbikes-e-bike-of-the-future-is-perfect-for-cities-133014272.html?src=rss
Artificial intelligence has proved a costly endeavor—well, yes, in terms of money, but AI requires massive amounts of energy, and water consumption to operate at scale. That hasn’t stopped big tech companies such as Google and Microsoft from putting that energy-hungry AI into practically every single one of their user…
Valve has failed to convince a court that it didn’t infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys, according to a new ruling. The company argued that, based on copyright law, publishers had the right to charge different prices for games in different countries. However, the EU General Court confirmed that its geo-blocking actions “infringed EU competition law”and that copyright law didn’t apply.
“Copyright is intended only to ensure for the right holders concerned protection of the right to exploit commercially the marketing or the making available of the protected subject matter, by the grant of licences in return for payment of remuneration,” it wrote in a statement. “However, it does not guarantee them the opportunity to demand the highest possible remuneration or to engage in conduct such as to lead to artificial price differences between the partitioned national markets.”
The original charges centered around activation keys. The commission said Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries — like Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia — would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone in, say, Germany buying a cheaper key in Latvia, where prices are lower. However, doing so violates the EU’s Digital Single Market rules, which enforces an open market across the EU.
The five developers were given a reduced fine of €7.8 million (over $9.4 million at the time) for cooperating, but Valve decided to fight and faced the full €1.6 million, or more than $1.9 million penalty. In a statement back in 2021, Valve said that the charges didn’t pertain to PC games sold on Steam, but that it was accused of locking keys to particular territories at the request of publishers. It added that it turned off region locks for most cases (other than local laws) in 2015 because of the EU’s concerns.
The court rejected the appeal and backed the original EU Commission’s decision that the companies’ actions had “unlawfully restricted cross-border sales” of games. As a result, Valve is still subject to the original €1.6 million fine — but it has two months and ten days to appeal. Engadget has reached out to Valve for comment.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/valve-fails-to-get-out-of-paying-its-eu-geo-blocking-fine-122053595.html?src=rss
Legislation from Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) would force state and local governments to identify untested kits or risk losing funds.
LinkedIn is making its platform more accessible by integrating Microsoft’s Immersive Reader. The service says that, in honor of Dyslexia Awareness Month and National Disability Employment Awareness Month, it’s providing users with more ways to digest articles and newsletters. That seems particularly useful at a time when LinkedIn has been embracing longer-form content.
Every article and newsletter will feature the Immersive Reader icon, which provides access to several accessibility tools. A text-to-speech function can read articles out loud. LinkedIn says that “distinguishing between words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently makes it easier for auditory learners and those with visual impairments to consume and process content.” The tool supports more than 60 languages. On a similar note, Immersive Reader powers real-time translation for more than 100 languages.
LinkedIn
Other features include one called Content Isolation. This separates the main text of an article or newsletter from everything else that’s on the screen to help people focus on reading. Immersive Reader is able to isolate a line or two at a time as well. It also supports a feature called Syllable Splitting. According to LinkedIn, this breaks more complex words down into smaller components to help users understand and pronounce them.
Immersive Reader has been making its way into several Microsoft products and services over the last few years. It’s been available in Office and Minecraft: Education Edition for some time. Bringing the tool to LinkedIn should make the platform easier to use for folks with dyslexia and other conditions.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedin-adds-accessibility-features-with-the-help-of-microsofts-immersive-reader-170923659.html?src=rss
Meta is gearing up its annual event devoted to all things VR, AR and the metaverse. The company is once again showing off a new VR headset, the Meta Quest 3, as well as its next-generation smart glasses. We already know quite a bit about the Meta Quest 3, thanks to a preview from Zuckerberg earlier this year. The $499 headset has been considerably slimmed down and has redesigned controllers. It will also have better graphics, thanks to a new next-gen Qualcomm chipset, which will power new mixed-reality features similar to last year’s high-end Quest Pro. This is the consumer version of VR/AR Meta hopes the wider public will embrace.
Meta
The VR headset likely won’t be the only Reality Labs gadget we’ll hear more about at Meta Connect. As UploadVR noted last week, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth hinted at a second-generation of Meta’s Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses also in the works. The new frames should have better cameras and some new features, like livestreaming.
Beyond hardware, we’re expecting Zuckerberg to attempt more compelling pitches on the broader idea of the metaverse itself, AI chatbots and avatars and Meta’s baby metaverse, Horizon Worlds, which could do with more things to do and, honestly, more people in it.
It could take several months, and legal challenges may lie ahead.
The Federal Communications Commission plans to reinstate net neutrality protections nixed in 2018 during the Trump administration. After Anna Gomez was sworn in as the third Democratic member on the FCC’s five-person panel, the agency is pushing forward with an attempt to bring back net neutrality regulations. Net neutrality rules are meant to ensure internet service providers may not block or give preference to any content.
It will take quite some time to restore the previous rules. The FCC commissioners will vote on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at their next monthly meeting on October 19. If, as seems likely, the agency votes in favor, it will start new rulemaking and seek public comments on the proposal.
Similar to the ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, LG’s Gram Fold is a touchscreen device that can be a massive tablet or a computer when fully unfolded. Users will get a 17-inch OLED screen with a QXGA+ (2560 x 1920 pixel) resolution when it’s used purely as a display, and they can link it to its accompanying Bluetooth keyboard, which can rest on the lower half of the screen. It’s 4.99 million won ($3,700) — not cheap, but still more affordable than HP’s $5,000 Spectre Fold.
Spotify is rolling out a new feature called Jam, which will give friends a way to curate a single playlist on the service and listen to it together in real time. Participants in a Jam session can contribute tracks to a shared queue, which they can access whether they’re in the same room or around the world. The audio streaming giant is rolling out the feature to both free and Premium subscribers, but only the latter can start a session. Rival service Apple Music has teased a similar collaborative service coming to iOS 17, but it’s expected to arrive later this year.
Logitech has launched a new $299 cockpit for racing simulators that wouldn’t look too out of place at a backyard BBQ. The accessories maker has teamed up with gaming seat company Playseat to release the Playseat Challenge X. It’s equipped with all the right parts to support your gaming wheel, but when it’s not in use, it’s like any other foldable chair that you can stow away.
As The Verge notes, it does look almost identical to Playseat’s non-Logitech-branded Challenge racing cockpit, which is $70 cheaper. This version, however, already comes with a tilting pedal bracket and a gearshift mount. While the chair doesn’t include the actual accessories needed to play racing sims, it is compatible with the company’s G wheels and the driving force shifters that support them. The Verge says it should work with other brand’s wheels, shifters and pedals, as well, assuming they’re compatible with the mounts on the chair.
Logitech
Speaking of the chair itself, it uses a breathable material that can keep you cool in the heat. You can easily adjust it and find the most comfortable one among its six positions, and you can move the pedals further if you’re tall and need the leg room. The maximum user height it can accommodate is around 7 feet, while the maximum user weight it can support is 359 pounds. It could be a good option if you’re looking for a simpler, relatively affordable chair for your racing games, and you can get it now from Amazon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/logitechs-new-racing-cockpit-is-a-299-foldable-chair-114510123.html?src=rss
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