Articles in the Music Category
Music, PCs »
As Christmas comes and the year draws to a close, what would a geek want in his Christmas stocking, or rather, in a nice FedEx box?
In my own unrealistic mind, I have keys to an Audi A4 2.0T, an Intel six-core Gulftown CPU (though that’s only officially out next year) and a Classè integrated amp for my music.
But I’m being greedy. I’m a PC geek, a car lover and a hi-fi buff (I refuse to call myself a pretentious audiophile).
Just how do you buy a gift for a geek? Let’s be fair and agree that there are different goondus, or well, geeks who might be differently pleasured with different gifts. Here’s what the various types of goondus might want.
Internet, Music »
In an age when stupid restrictions from content owners prevent you from watching what you want on the Net because you are not in the right “geographical region”, it’s great to know pop group U2 is streaming its concert from the United States live on YouTube.
If you are reading this now on a Monday afternoon in Singapore, the concert is going on live at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California – the scene of many a great concert, including my favourite ’80s band Depeche Mode.
Can you believe this:
- This is U2 and it’s free
- This is a live concert, so you are joining the 90,000+ who are watching it live at the Rose Bowl, interacting through Twitter or the comments page
- The quality is great – not your usual YouTube stuff, but well streamed and buffered to ensure smooth and sharp images
Read the full story >>
LCD TV, Music, PCs »
You can actually walk through the halls without squeezing past sweaty people – well, in most parts – at this year’s Comex show at Suntec City.
At nearby Raffles City, there was even ample parking – many empty lots – at about 6pm on Friday when I visited this year’s third quarterly computer and electronics bazaar.
So, what are the good deals that Techgoondu recommends you check out? I’d say the usual stuff were in store – large-screen TVs and portable hard disks – but there were one of two surprises, like Audio Technica’s headphones.
Music »
What do you gain by upgrading from a pair of $100 earphones, say my trusty Sony MDR EX85LP, to a pair of cans worth some $2,200, like the Sennheiser HD800? To picky ears, things to watch out for are many, including such aural qualities as warmth, punchiness, frequency extension, detail, soundstaging and, well, you name it, the audiophile lexicon is a very large one.
To me though, there are two crucial qualities, and they are – if you allow me to indulge in more audiophile jargon – timbre reproduction and air.
Having the right timbre, simply put, means sounding right. For instance, the percussive tap of each grand piano key ringing true with sumptuous overtones. Or the singing human voice having body, bite and breath. Of course, naturalness does not tend to excite, and hence top-end headphones may be underwhelming at first. But they reward with an unfatiguing sound and long-term listening pleasure.
Music »
Soundbuzz, one of the first online music sources in Singapore, is officially shutting its store come July 15, even as more online music stores are opening with a wave of optimism surrounding music downloads.
In a note to subscribers last Friday, as well as on its website, the company said everything will be taken down after July 15 midnight, marking a sorry end to a bright dot.com poster boy of yesteryear.
Music »
Creative has just unveiled its new Aurvana Air earphones, which look every bit like a premium set of lightweight pieces for the frequent traveller.
But wait a second, do they not look like Bang & Olufsen’s simply-named Earphones? The same rounded hook holding up the phones against the ear may not be that new now, but check out the stalk, where you see the Creative logo. Change it to B & O, and you might just appear like you got the more expensive version.
Cellphones, Music »
Just a month after Nokia launched its Comes with Music service here, music fans can now have another way to get music on their phones with Sony Ericsson (SE).
Turning the heat on Nokia, SE is getting in the act here too with its PlayNow Plus service, which lets users download thousands of songs onto their Walkman phones.
Announced this afternoon with much fanfare (even Wang Lee Hom was on stage), the service will be launched with the SE W705 Walkman phone from SingTel later this month.
What’s on offer:
>>1,000 songs included in the SingTel W705 phone from labels such as EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and Ocean Butterflies (local label).
>>takes less than one minute to download a full-track song on the 3.5G SE W705
>>free SE PlayNow Plus subscription for a year, offering unlimited downloads
>>200MB monthly data bundle for a year, to go with a regular SingTel voice plan
>>first-month free unlimited data usage, so you could get all the songs you want
MP3 player, Music »
Philips GoGear Opus
Philips may not be on many portable gear head’s shortlists of brands when it comes to buying a new portable music player, but its new model’s support for FLAC could swing a few votes its way.
The GoGear Opus is one of a slew of new releases by the Dutch electronics giant in Singapore today, and the only one in that bunch – as well as one of the few in the market – to supprt Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), an open source lossless compression standard that more than a few discerning listeners have told me is sonically a tad better than rival codecs like Apple Lossless and WMA lossless (although I can’t really discern those differences – all lossless codecs sound as good to me).
A rival to Apple’s Nano in terms of features and price, the decidedly chunkier Opus has a larger screen real estate compared to the Nano (2.8 diagonal inches vs 2.0-inch) but also costs slightly more ($339 vs $328 for the 16GB version; $299 vs $248 for an 8GB version).
Internet, Music »
First, there were the Apple iTunes Store and Amazon.com’s MP3 downloading service. Then mobile phone giants like Nokia and Sony Ericsson waded into the online music selling fray. Now, search engine vendors Yahoo and Google are gate-crashing this ever-burgeoning party – with a bang.
On Monday, Yahoo announced it has refreshed its music service to encompass a bigger ecosystem with external online music providers like Apple, collecting a fee with every referral, according to Reuters.
New York Times over the weekend reported (screenshot above from the article) that EMI, Warner Music, Universal Music and other big wig record labels will be working with Google to offer free downloads of music in China.
MP3 player, Music »
There are 4GB worth of reasons to love Apple’s new and very small iPod Shuffle. But there is one reason why I don’t – lack of controls on the player.
In making the new Shuffle so small, Apple’s designers decided to ship some of the heft to the earphones – smart, really. The new Shuffle relegates crucial controls like volume, song selection and play functions to a captive control strip attached to Apple’s earphones.
So you are pretty much stuck, unless other earphone makers start making earphones with Shuffle controls (Monster has already said it will roll out a series).
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