Hasta La Gadget!

Audio company Harman Kardon has announced a new and affordable Bluetooth adapter designed to turn any audio system into a wireless music streaming system. The adapter is called the BTA 10 and is impressively small. The adapter is a small black square that should be easy to hide in a crowded stereo rack or entertainment center.

The adapter costs $59 and weighs only 1.1 ounces. The adapter measures 2″ x 2″ and supports streaming audio content over Bluetooth with Apple, Android, or Windows smartphones and tablets. The adapter ships with required connection cables for standard RCA left/right jacks on normal audio products and 3.5 mm input connection for portable and desktop products.

The Bluetooth adapter can stream music from any source that has an analog connection and can be paired with up to eight different Bluetooth devices. The device uses Harman TrueStream technology promising the highest-quality Bluetooth listening experience available. With this adapter plugged into your stereo system or home theater system, you can stream music and other audio content from your smart phone directly to your audio system.

The adapter supports Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP. It also has a 33-foot wireless range allowing you to use it from across the room. Harman Kardon also offers a one year warranty from the date of purchase. The BTA 10 Bluetooth Adapter is available online and in stores right now.

Harman Kardon unveils new BTA 10 Bluetooth audio adapter is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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MartinLogan: Because somewhere out there an audio obsessed nut needs $25,000, five-foot-tall electrostatic speakers. Or at least that was the case until recently. With the new Mikros 90 on-ear headphones, the legendary brand now makes two products that don’t cost thousands of dollars. That’s cause for celebration, and just look at these things. They’re so beautiful they’re giving me palpitations. More »

There are some of us who need our music whenever we sweat things out on the treadmill, or when we are pounding the pavement in preparation for a marathon, while others prefer to avoid music at all times, concentrating more on their breathing and rhythm. MusicalHeart caters to the former crowd, being a music-recommendation engine which will rely on your current heart rate in order to recommend the right kind of songs that are on your playlist. It will require a smartphone app that is hooked up to a special pair of headphones, listening in to your heart rate via the throbbing of arteries in the ear.

Once the current heart rate is determined by the headphones, the app will then pick out a song which matches the wearer’s pre-defined desired intensity level. Should you be performing under the target heart rate, MusicalHeart will pick a song to help increase your tempo, and should you be close to having palpitations, then the app will play a slower song in order to lower it.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Tokai rubber speaker might gross you out, Apple’s fifth gen iPod touch lacks an ambient light sensor because it’s apparently too thin,

Check out the rubber speaker in the video above, where it is touted to be the first of its kind in the world, where it is made out of rubber which forms artificial muscles, while maintaining a thin profile with a softness that is previously unheard of. The company behind the world’s first all rubber speaker would be Tokai Rubber Industries, where the material of choice is known as Smart Rubber, where it can conduct electricity while freely expand or contract in order to generate the necessary sound.

This is just the next logical step in Tokai’s research and development stage, considering how they did come up with flexible, all-rubber touch sensors in the past using Smart Rubber. Tokai shared, “Until now, thin speakers have been piezoelectric and film types, as used in smartphones and tablets. But those don’t produce low-frequency sounds. By contrast, the rubber speaker we’ve developed does produce low frequencies. It’s the first speaker of this kind in the world.”

Whenever a voltage is applied between the rubber electrode, there will be static electricity that causes the sheet to expand. Sound waves will then be generated via the repeated expansion and restorative force of the rubber sheet, even as the speaker comprises of a piece of non-conductive rubber that is sandwiched in between a couple of rubber electrodes. There is no confirmation as to whether the rubber speaker will ever become a mass consumer product, but who knows?

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