Hasta La Gadget!

It’s official. Aside from letting loose its first set of headphones post-Monster for the Executive types, Beats Electronics has set its sights on nabbing the portable Bluetooth audio crown from Jawbone’s Jambox. You’ll recall this hitting the FCC a bit ago, but today the Dr. is officially ready to offer you it’s remedy for on-the-go wireless audio with its $200 Pill, an NFC-equipped portable Bluetooth 2.1 speaker. Coming in your choice red, black or white, the cylindrical system is loaded with a quartet of 1-inch drivers, and supports codecs including Apt-X and AAC. An internal battery is said to provide about seven hours of listening at around 75-percent volume (80 decibels), and the unit can be charged via its Micro-USB input. Notably, an auto-off feature turns the unit off after 30 minutes if no audio is streamed to it. As you’d expect, the Pill features a front-facing on-board mic for use as a speakerphone, physical volume buttons and power button, as well as a 3.5mm input if you’d like to play sans Bluetooth. We’re also pleased to notice that the diminutive system also features a 3.5 output if you’d like to send the audio out to another audio ware. The Pill comes with a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable, a USB to Micro-USB cable for charging with an included wall adapter and, lastly, a carrying shell case that can be hooked to a bag.

We’ve been able to spend about an hour with the system, and we’re frankly come away very impressed. The unit feels very sturdy, with a stiff metal grill and soft-touch coating around the rest of its exterior. It feels very comfortable to hold in a hand, and will easily fit in a jacket pocket. Actually, one of our only initial complaints is that the included carrying shell doesn’t leave any room for the included cables. All of the buttons have a soft, slightly clicky tactility, which also aids to its premium feel.

Using it initially alongside one of Beats’ on-hand Jamboxes in a wired A/B comparison, the Jambox came out sounding like a distorted, rumbling mess up against the pill — we even had a rep bring out a second unit confirm that it wasn’t a dud. If that wasn’t enough, the Pill also manged to get much louder, staying fairly clean (in comparison), and without rumbling on the table as the Jambox did very slightly. As a triple-check measure, we later came up with a similar outcome with our in house unit of Logitech’s $99 UE mobile boombox — a speaker we find comparable in sound, if slightly better, than the Jambox. In what could be viewed as slightly ironic, the Pill has a voicing that edges toward the flatter side of things, rather than pumping out exorbitant amounts of bass. It’s not to say that it can’t reproduce bass at all, it’s just not the focus here. This flatter output seems to be a big part of what keeps it from distorting, but we should be clear, that the audio here is many times better still on the Pill. Pleasantly, the speakers are also angled up slightly, which makes makes for a noticeably more natural listening experience. Our only other concern for the time being is that the Bluetooth connection with our iPhone 5 did crackle occasionally like a vinyl record, but it’s too earlier to say if the issue will be consistent during future use. We’re still a ways off from being able to definitively give you a thumbs up on the Pill, but — at least, initially, it seems like it’s easily blowing the Jambox and similar speakers out of the water Like the Executive headphones, the Pill is available today at Beats stores and other retailers — check out our video hands-on after the break for a better look.

Continue reading Beats by Dre Pill portable Bluetooth speaker officially drops, we take one per the Dr. and go ears-on

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals, Portable Audio/Video

Beats by Dre Pill portable Bluetooth speaker officially drops, we take one per the Dr. and go ears-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Beats Electronics  | Email this | Comments

A lot of people think that file sharers and other Bittorrent downloaders never pay for music or other forms of digital media. It’s an understandable stereotype, but according to a study, it’s not all true. It turns out that file sharers actually buy 30% more music than those who don’t download content illegally.

You’ve probably heard the gripe from multiple music labels about how piracy is translating to billions of dollars of lost revenue, citing that the more people who illegally download content, the less likely they are to buy the content. However, the American Assembly, which is a non-partisan public policy forum affiliated with Columbia University, published part of its upcoming Copy Culture Survey that sheds a little light on this “issue.”

The study focuses on the digital music collections of different users and how they obtained the music in their collection. The study found that not only do file sharers have larger music collections compared to others (predictably so), but file sharers also buy more music legally than those who don’t illegally download.

The explanation for this isn’t too tricky. A lot of file sharers use Bittorrent and P2P services as a way to sample music first and then decide if they want to buy a certain song or album. It’s a pretty solid system, and the study even says a lot of the music that users get for free simply come from friends through physical media as well — such as borrowing a CD and ripping the files to your computer.

[via TorrentFreak]

Study finds that file sharers buy more music than anyone else is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re thinking about working with Xbox Music in the very near future, the first thing you should be thinking about is how it measures up to the competition. With Microsoft’s first iteration of Xbox Music here right before Windows 8 is released, you’ll need Windows 8, an Xbox 360, or a Windows Phone 8 device to use it. Spotify is a service that works on all of these platforms as well as Apple’s devices and Google’s Android, too. The third warrior in iTunes Match works on Apple products and connects directly with iTunes.

With Xbox Music you’ll be working with a massive library of music with labels that’ve agreed with Microsoft to let their audio be streamed. This service works as both a free model and a pay model, with the free model working in an unlimited manner across all your devices with advertisements to pay your way for 6 months. Once your 6 months are up, you’ll be limited to 10 hours a month. These limits are removed entirely if you choose to pay Microsoft $9.99 a month.

Spotify works similarly with a $9.99 a month cost and a free model besides. The free model also works with advertisements to pay your way, but does not work on your mobile device, only your desktop machine. If you pay the $9.99 a month, you get streaming via mobile and no advertisements anywhere – Spotify also has a separate library of music from Microsoft, and Microsoft and Spotify have separate libraries from iTunes as well – lots of licensing going on here.

Apple’s iTunes Match works with your music and costs $24.99 a year. There is no free service with iTunes Match, and it combines the music you’ve purchased via iTunes with 25,000 songs of your choice uploaded by you from your CD collection. These tracks are added to your library at “256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality” unless Apple does not have their own copy beforehand, at which point you’ll have the song at the highest quality you were able to upload it at. This music can be streamed from any of your web-connected Apple devices.

Of course there’s also Google Music which works on Android devices and through any web browser, this being an absolutely free service that allows you to upload your own music as well as purchase music from Google Play. There’s no limit to streaming on any device and no cost to you – advertisements appear on Google Play, of course, but only for Google Play products.

Which one are you going to go for this upcoming Windows 8-heavy season?

Xbox Music vs Spotify vs iTunes Match vs Google Music is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

V-Moda’s been seriously edging for the audiophile crowd lately — namely with its Crossfade M-80 on-ear headphones, the VAMP headphone amp for the iPhone 4/4S, and a soon-to-be disclosed followup dubbed as Vamp Versa. That brings us to its soon-to-be released M-100 headphones, which haven’t really been a secret since their inception, making them a special set. Unlike many companies who strive for secrecy in regards to upcoming products, V-Moda’s taken a drastically different approach with its latest cans, with owner Val Kolton stating that they’re effectively the first crowd-sourced set of headphones.

Many headphone lovers out there likely know that Kolton’s been heavily in contact with the Head-Fi community, hoping to craft the best sounding, looking and fitting ear-gear possible. As he puts it, “the easter egg and inside joke is that the [M-100 headphones] can actually stand up. It is the first headphone that we know of that ‘stands above the rest’ and all others fall down/crawl. It also can stand on top of a few other new brand’s models almost like Cirque De Soleil.” It may be hard to tell based on the fashion-focused looks, but the company is adamant that its audio gear goes through more stringent research and testing than some of the biggest names out there, and that it’ll show in the end products. Most notably, its TrueHertz testing where, for the M-100, “six points from 5hZ to 12kHz are measured to be within [its] obsessive quality control levels.” According to Kolton, most companies only check at 1Khz, and allow for much wider variances. He followed up stating that “like fine wine, a headphone is only as good as its fit (taste buds) and its driver variances (grapes/cork). To us, all brands advertising ‘HD’ sound [aren’t being forthright] unless they believe or even know these key components are “‘fugazi.'”

For perspective, the M-100 is essentially the third iteration of the Crossfade LP over-ear headphones. Aside from a few tweaks to the design, it’s packing an audiophile-focused tuning (rather than DJ) that’s based on blending the voicings of its M-80 on-ears and the LP2 over-ears. It wouldn’t be unfair to say the company is aiming for a flat, yet fun sound — all in a package that’s fit to take to the streets like its earlier offerings. Those familiar may know that just under 150 of the first 200 production-quality models are currently floating around as early stock and test units for a final bit of real-world feedback before mass-production begins — and this editor’s been lucky enough to get his mitts on a set for some initial impressions. So, is the product shaping up to match all the hype? Click on past the break our take.

Continue reading V-Moda’s M-100 audiophile headphones get ready for mass production, we go ears-on

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Wearables

V-Moda’s M-100 audiophile headphones get ready for mass production, we go ears-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

You’re innocently going about your day when it happens: You hear a song you’ve never heard before. It rules. You need to know what it is. More »