Folks who picked up the iPhone 5 should know that with this latest smartphone from Cupertino, there would be plenty more money flowing out from your pockets as you start to look out for new accessories that will take advantage of the Lightning connector on your iPhone 5. Well, audio specialist JBL does not want you to wait too long, having just announced the first wave of Lightning-enabled speaker docks which are said to be compatible with the latest iOS devices such as the iPhone 5 , iPad mini, the refreshed new iPad , and the latest iPod nano and iPod touch. The JBL OnBeat Venue LT will come across as a tabletop speaker dock, while the compact and affordable OnBeat Micro is the other offering.
The OnBeat Venue LT will retail for $200 a pop, where it delivers 30 watts of amplification and dual full-range drivers for “big sound”. It is a Lightning-friendly version of JBL’s current Venue speaker dock when you think about it, sporting Bluetooth connectivity, the ability to be paired with up to eight devices for wireless audio streaming.
As for the $100 Micro, it is more of an on-the-go device that operates up to 5 hours on a full battery charge, boasting a USB port that will also juice up other devices whenever you are not within vicinity of a power outlet.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Belkin is first off the blocks with decent third-party Lightning accessories, Lightning-to-USB cable works like a charm,
Spotify has heard the masses, and when contacted, they have confirmed that they will be rolling out a beta version of a Spotify web player to a small number of users. When one looks as a Web player version of Spotify, there is plenty of potential underneath the hood, considering how it would be able to let you enjoy music during moments when you are unable to play music via the desktop app, such as when you are at work or at a friend’s pad. It seems that the Web player will function very close in nature to that of Mac and Windows clients, although it will come with a “basic feature set.” In plain English, this translates to search, Spotify Radio, playlist editing and a What’s New section being made available, among them including audio ads and banner ads.
With the introduction of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the Android operating system has finally received gapless playback for music files as part of its core operations. Technically speaking, this was true, but the stock Google Music app still did not offer gapless playback support, while other independent audio players only supported gapless when they played .ogg files, with other apps relying on their own software so that gapless playback is achieved. Good thing Google Music has finally been updated so that the gapless playback feature has been thrown into the mix, something that quite a fair number of folks have been waiting for all this while.
Musicians might find the Gocen to be a rather unique device – especially when it is capable of scanning and playing handwritten sheet music, in real time, no less. The Gocen is being developed by a group at the Tokyo Metropolitan University, where they are led by Assistant Professor Tetsuaki Baba. The system will get to work by checking out the stave, followed by the notes and the notes’ position, in order to determine just where the high notes are. Apart from that, it will also be able to read words directly including piano or guitar as the computer is smart enough to recognize them automatically, followed by changing to the corresponding instrument.