Pics and stuff after the jump.

Belkin Podcast Studio
At last year’s CES, Belkin introduced the TuneStudio, a 4-track recording mixer for your iPod. This year, they busted out a 2-track version aimed at podcasters called Podcast Studio, but it’s still killer for musicians on the go who want to record direct to iPod. It’s way smaller than the TuneStudio, and you can use the built-in mics or your own via XLR or 1/4-inch sockets or 3.5-mm line inputs. Hopefully it won’t take them a year to get it on the shelves like with the TuneStudio, but don’t expect it before this summer. If the recording quality is anywhere near that of the TuneStudio, I’m getting one. Unfortunately only two prototypes exist at the moment.

Roland CD-2e
I love the idea of recording my gigs on a laptop, but it takes time to set up and there’s always the danger of a crash. Roland’s CD-2e recorder is way easier to use and has virtually zero setup time, recording 16-bit 44.1kHz WAV audio direct to CD via a slot-loader on the side or to an SDHC slot on the other. It’s got a lot built-in, like on-board effects, stereo mic, instrument and line inputs, and stereo speakers, all in a 3-pound package that’s only 2 inches thick. It runs on AC power or 6 AA batteries and costs about $600. The killer app for this is recording live shows and giving out CDs immediately afterwards.

Gibson Robot Guitar
Although it was introduced a little over a month before CES, this was the first time I got to check out Gibson’s Robot Guitar in person, and I freaking love it. Gibson had some dude playing “She Talks To Angels” by the Black Crowes in standard tuning, which is no problem up to a point (those little harmonics don’t sound right in standard tuning). But on the recording, they use open E tuning, which means you’d have to sit there and totally retune your axe. So I watched the guy spin a dial and press a button, which made the tuning pegs turn by themselves… and put the guitar into a pretty well-tuned open E. He replayed the song (correctly this time), and it took me right back to 1990. A limited run went on sale in December for $2499 a pop. Soon retrofit kits will be available so you can convert your existing guitar to use the Robot tuning mechanism.

Synesthesia Mandala
A couple of musician/engineers developed a sturdy drum synth pad that connects to your computer called Mandala and some software that lets you get different sounds from a single pad. You use the software to divvy up the pad into rings (called zones), so you can get up to 128 different sounds on a single pad. The sounds are truly awesome and include just about everything you can think of, or you can make your own. The pad and software goes for about $350, and you can use as many pads as you want. I tried it out, and it’s a lot cooler than I thought it would be, given my experience with Roland’s way more complex V-Drums. This is intended for home recording musicians who don’t have a lot of space but have way too much free time.

(More pics after the jump.)

HD-DVD’s thought police
Ahh, the HD-DVD faithful. This is where they go to be re-brainwashed after hearing that Blu-ray won the format war… a very Orwellian scene indeed.

Monster lays cable in Lamborghini
This is an absolutely gorgeous Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder that is outfitted up the wazoo with Monster cables and interconnects. Chances are, if you can afford Monster cables, you can afford the car.

Pump-top TV
Yes, it’s a gas pump with an ad-hawking LCD on top. Chances are, you’ve seen one around, as they were announced in the middle of 2007, but it’s still funny. They could even save your life at the gas station: Why mug someone when you could just rip off an LCD screen?

Dolby gets stung by Bumblebee
I tried my best to get a good shot of Bumblebee’s ‘nads, but I’m not sure whether Transformers have them or not. I wonder what that is hanging between his legs by a string…

Sony synchs Rollys
Two robotic MP3 players, neo-disco tunes, and a PR wag with sharp timing and very telling musical taste added up to a hilarious little display. I couldn’t stop watching though… it was mesmerizing (and a bit creepy) to watch these tiny things dance and spin around to club hits in perfect sync.

I’m off to go find the flat-screen TV with video of a fireplace on it… that actually emits enough heat to warm your hands.

At least, before Seth Porges (Popular Mechanics), Richard Blakely (Gawker), his assistant Nick, and I went to see Smashmouth at the Palms hotel. Now my ears simply hate me.

Images and first-hand accounts after the jump.


Creative X-Fi HD
An iPod dock that upscales your iPod’s video to 720p or 1080i is pretty hot. It also does DTS surround sound and upgrades the audio with Creative’s X-Fi Crystallizer (sharpens up the highs very well) and CMSS 3D (an iffy virtual surround feature for those who lack a full surround speaker setup). HDMI output looked pretty fine on an HDTV at the show, though upscaling content from iTunes is no substitute for real HD. It’s also got composite and component outputs, plus digital output for audio, but the kicker is that you can pick up an X-Fi Wireless Receiver and transmit your video and audio wirelessly with a range of up to 100 feet. It comes with a wireless remote, and it charges your iPod, so you can listen to Smashmouth’s “All Star” on repeat as many times as you need to. The price seems high, though, at $399.99 (plus $99.99 for the wireless receiver). Still, it’s pretty hot if you’re an iPod user. Look at Creative and Apple, playing so nice together. Warms my heart.

B&W Liberty
Bowers & Wilkins is one of my very fave speaker companies out there. I got a chance to check out their new Liberty wireless 5.1-channel speaker system. The head unit has a large LCD touchscreen, built-in digital radio, DVD player, and wireless transmitter with dynamic frequency selection (kills interference), and it supports iPod connectivity too. It’s coupled with an orb-shaped subwoofer (PV-1), 3-way floor-standing main speakers, 2-way rear speakers, and a center channel speaker, all of which are wireless! The whole system looks absolutely awesome, but it won’t be out till the fall of 2008, and pricing isn’t set yet. I’m saving up already.

Acoustic Research FPS10 Flat Subwoofer
AR is hawking lots of wireless audio goodies this year, but the thing that caught my ear was this crazy flat subwoofer, the FPS10. It takes up a good chunk of floor space, but it’s only 4.5 inches high, so you can slide it under a couch or other furniture. Now that’s hot. The speaker cone is 10 inches and there’s a 12-inch passive radiator, putting out 225W (RMS) of beefy bass. It comes with an RF remote, so you can control the sound and volume without worrying about having a direct line of sight to the sub. The remote also has an LCD, so you can see the sub’s status. $699.95 ain’t cheap, so you’d better be adding this to an already sweet home theater setup. I can’t wait to find out if it sounds as good as it looks!

Etymotic hf2 iPhone Headset
They’re based on what I consider the best headphones in the world, the Etymotic ER4, but now they’ve got an iPhone-compatible jack and a small inline mic. Not groundbreaking, but at least they made them look pretty cool, and damn they sound good. Best of all? The MSRP is $179, compared with $299 for the original ER4. Seriously. Same headphones, but cheaper. They were originally going to launch at Macworld, but Etymotic jumped the gun and busted them out at a ShowStoppers event here at CES.

Price: $169.95
In-store date: February 2008
Site: www.jbl.com
Why it’s cool: It’s tiny and can run on batteries, just like previous On Stage models. The difference is that this one is iPhone compatible. As an iPhone owner, that’s pretty important, though hopefully this will show up for quite a bit less money online. Maybe not the most exciting thing out there, but it’s a solid utility infielder.

The On Time 400IHD looks very similar, but adds dual alarms and an HD Radio receiver for picking up multicast HD stations. It also supports iTunes tagging; press a button when you hear something you like, and the next time you sync your iPod in iTunes, it’ll let you find and buy it in a snap. (Like you won’t just look it up and BitTorrent it.)

Neither works with the iPhone, but they do support all the newest iPods as well as many legacy models. Sorry, we didn’t have pricing and availability for the 200ID at the time of this writing.

Price: 400IHD, $299.95
In-store date: 400IHD, Winter 2008
Site: www.jbl.com
Why it’s cool: I’ve always loved JBL’s On Time line of iPod alarm clocks. These are pretty small, and I think the addition of HD Radio is a simple but very smart idea, because it gives you access to lots more content. No iPhone support is dumb though.

The bass is supposedly helped out by JBL’s Slipstream port design, though I’m always skeptical until I listen carefully to a speaker alone in my evil lair. They’re pretty cute lookin’ with all its Apple-esque silvery stylings.

Price: Duet 200, $119.95; On Stage 200ID, $149.95; On Stage 400ID, $249.95
In-store date: March 2008
Site: www.jbl.com
Why it’s cool: Hmm… this field is too crowded for me not to be incredibly jaded. Let’s just say I’d ask any of them to dance, but I probably wouldn’t try to get any to come home with me.

Price: HTS6100, $599; HTS6515D, $499
In-store date: May 2008
Site: www.philips.com
Why it’s cool: All-in-one home theater systems that use virtual surround can be hit or miss. These certainly look pretty cool, though we’ll have to test them out to see if they live up to the overblown descriptions in the press release.

Price: $399.95
In-store date: Spring 2008
Site: www.monstercable.com
Why it’s cool: If Dr. Dre loves them, they must be cool. The mute button is neat, but I wouldn’t throw away your high-end AKG, Sennheiser, or Grado headphones just yet.

GoGear SA3025/3045: 2GB or 4GB of flash, 1.5-inch screen, 11fps video playback (worthless!), and a whole 10 hours of battery life for music. $59/$79.

GoGear SA3225/3245: 2GB or 4GB of flash, 1.8-inch screen, 15fps video (still mostly worthless!), 20 hours of battery life for audio and 5 for video. $69/$129.

GoGear SA5245/5285: 4GB or 8GB of flash, 2.8-inch screen, 30fps video, 25-hour battery for audio and 5 for video, also available in a Bluetooth-enabled version for wireless listening.

GoGear SA6145/6185: 4GB or 8GB of flash, 3.5-inch screen, 30fps video, 16 hours for audio and 4 for video, $149/$169 (not bad for 8GB!).

GoGear SA6545/6585: 4GB or 8GB of flash, 4-inch 16:9 screen, 30fps video, 16 hours for audio and 8 for video. The 6585 also has video-recording capability and TV output. $179/$199.

All of them have FM tuners and voice recorders. They support MP3 and WMA, while the 5245 and 6585 also rock the AAC. All but the 3xxx series do protected WMA and protected WMV, and they all do regular WMV.

In-store date: All are available in Q2 2008 except the 6145/6185, which is available now.
Site: www.philips.com
Why it’s cool: I can’t say I’m particularly excited about anything here, though it’s nice that Bluetooth is popping up in more media players. But boy, how ’bout those sexy product names, huh?

Description: Philips shot a hot load of headphones all over music lovers at CES.

The SHB9000 is a set of full-size Bluetooth headphones you can use with your music player, cell phone, or both. The headset portion has noise and echo filters, and it automatically adjusts volume depending on ambient noise. The headphone capabilities include “native MP3 decoding for loss-less direct streaming from many advanced music phones.” That sounds to us like lossless Bluetooth transmission, but that’s unlikely in cans that cost only $129.

The SHE9850 and 9800 in-ear headphones look like pretty standard fare; they block out noise passively and kick the crap out of regular earbuds. According to the press release, they benefit from an “Angled Acoustics design that adjusts the angle of the speaker tube to ensure a naturally comfortable fit for all ears.” Can’t wait to shove that into my sensitive canals. The 9850 come with memory foam tips in addition to the standard silicone.

Last and least, the SHE3620 Bubbles series consists of regular ol’ earbuds that come in “fun” colors like pink, green, and blue. These are low-end ‘buds, for sure, but they come with an adapter that lets you plug in another pair of headphones. (Take that for song sharing, Zune!)

Price: SHB9000, $129; SHE9850, $99; SHE9800, $79; SHE362x, $14.99
In-store date: March ‘08.
Site: www.philips.com
Why it’s cool: The headphone market is so crowded with also-rans… There’s not much to distinguish any of these, though the SHB9000 is mildly intriguing.

The other three receivers use Pioneer’s P.H.A.T. seriously? (Pioneer Hybrid Amplifier Technology) to crank out 120 watts over 5 channels with improved sonic accuracy. All but the VSX-518-K have iPod, XM, and Sirius inputs.

Price:$199, $249, $349, and $599
In-store date:April, except the VSX-1018TXH-K, which will drop in June.
Site:www.pioneerelectronics.com
Why it’s cool: The high-end model has just about everything you’d need for a high-def setup, plus plenty of power. The other ones? Not bad for the price, but nothing to crap your pants about.

Price:Not yet set.
In-store date:Not yet set.
Site:www.panasonic.com, www.sibeam.com
Why it’s cool: I hate wires, but I love HDTV. This is a no-brainer. Of course, this’ll be competing with Westinghouse’s and LG’s wireless HDTV systems… We’ll just have to wait and see which is the most reliable.

Here they are, folks: great shots from the brand new Apple store on 14th Street in Manhattan. There’s no floating apple in a big cube, but there is one of the sexiest staircases this side of the Prada store.

Feast your eyes after the jump.

A 46-foot Genius Bar

After checking out B&W’s 685 stereo speakers for more than a month, I’m truly impressed. These mid-size speakers are perfect for a roomy bookshelf or on speaker stands, and they handled all the music I could throw at them with precision and superb richness. Movies still benefit from a decent subwoofer, but most acoustic music lovers can do without one in a small living room. At $600 a pair, these are definitely one of the best speaker values ever.

I’ve now spent over a month comparing the new 685’s against the larger B&W DM610i’s I’ve been using for the last several years. I tested both pairs of speakers using a Marantz S-5000 receiver and B&W’s .

My trusty 610i’s are great, but in some ways I prefer the newer model’s more aggressive sound at low to moderate volumes in my 12 x 11-foot living room, not to mention the more compact size. Each 685 has a beef y 6.5-inch woofer with a fixed bullet-shaped centerpiece, as well as a 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter — they look pretty hip without the grille covers on, too. They’re rated at 8 ohms impedance, so they can be powered by most receivers.

I sat them atop a pair of primo B&W speaker stands and let em fly.

Initially, before the “burning in” process of mellowing out the speaker cone and suspension, the 685s sounded a little on the shrill side, but this subsided within about a couple days. They have strong mids at any volume, where the 610i’s seemed to drop out at lower levels. After the burn-in, the highs are crisp but roll off just enough to avoid being harsh.

Since the 685s don’t reach as deep into the bass as the 610i’s, I set up a Cambridge SoundWorks passive subwoofer, which gave the overall sound a very accurate and natural bottom end. But even without the sub, the 685s sound superb for complex music thanks to plenty of detail and smoothness across registers. The sub is a must for movies, though.

I tested the 685s with plenty of acoustic jazz, including Miles Davis’s Round About Midnight and The Complete Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Everything sounded surprisingly full given the speakers’ relatively small size. The bass didn’t sound tubby and there were no gaping holes in the mids. Ride cymbals sounded very lively but not shrill, and I could easily hear the grit in the horn sounds on Miles’s mid-1950s recording.

Classical music like Bela Bartok’s Piano Concertos 1, 2, and 3 comes through exceptionally well, thanks in part to the speakers’ ability to maintain excellent sound even at low levels. There’s usually a lot of dynamic range in classical recordings, and it’s important that quieter passages sound as good as louder sections. The 685s deliver. If you listen to a lot of organ music or tracks with tympani, however, a subwoofer will make sure you hear everything down to the deepest tones.

On bass-driven albums like DJ Shadow’s The Outsider and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium, all the individual parts stood out, but it was still clear that the low end is the moneymaker on these recordings. This is one area where the 685s benefit a lot from a subwoofer — even a simple passive one, though a powered sub may fit bass-head tastes even better.

Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” had plenty of thump, and the imaging on some DVD-Audio tracks from Queen’s A Night At the Opera was excellent for speakers in this price range. Classic and modern rock both have plenty of screech, grit, and wail; the 685s really help separate out all the layers in tracks by studio-magic bands like Led Zep and The Who, and modern masterpieces like Interpol’s Antics have all the depth of a classic Floyd album.

Movies like The Matrix and Hero really need help from a subwoofer, but dialogue-oriented flicks like Broken Flowers sound as full as they need to with or without. They also integrated nicely into my Cambridge SoundWorks surround speaker set as front speakers, blending smoothly with the center channel (though this is as much a function of setup as speaker quality).

At roughly $600 a pair, these are a solid investment if you’re starting to get serious about your home audio setup. For movies and music with especially deep bass, a subwoofer is a must, but you’ll be well rewarded.

Full review after the jump.

Brushed-aluminum cases are all the rage these days thanks to Apple, but Bose took it a step further and used stiff metal to help dampen vibrations. Each silver-grilled speaker measures a barely-there 4.8 by 3.8 by 2.5 inches and is angled about 15 degrees upward, which is handy for a desktop or low table.

Inside each speaker is a small tweeter and a pair of opposing passive radiators — woofers that move in opposite directions — squeezing air (sound) between them and out .5 by 2-inch slots on either side. That means bass and mids get dispersed horizontally, while the tweeters shoot the highs and upper mids straight out front. Combined with the sturdy enclosure and a DSP chip that beefs up the bass and the highs, this gives the Computer MusicMonitors surprisingly clear and full sound even at top volume.

The speakers match my MacBook Pro perfectly, which should help move a lot of these in Apple Stores. They also look pretty well-coordinated with the new aluminum-faced iMacs… or any silver/gray metallic computer, for that matter.

Setup is very simple: Plug the left speaker’s audio cable into the back of the right speaker. Note that the cable is not removable from the left speaker and has a proprietary connector, so you can only have the speakers a maximum of 6 feet apart. Of course, unless you have a truly enormous desk, this isn’t a big deal.

The AC power cord connects to the back of the right speaker, but the wall-wart plug is insanely huge. That’s partly because it has an integrated cable winder — good for travel, not so good for crowded outlets or power strips.

You can hook up any audio source to these speakers via the included eighth-inch to eighth-inch audio cable, though I was a bit surprised to see the cables connectors aren’t gold-plated. For nearly $400, you’d think Bose would spend a couple extra bucks on a classier (and less corrosion-prone) cable.

The included remote control is a simple three-button job. It handles power on/off and volume up/down, and that’s all she wrote.

I certainly wouldn’t call the sound “reference quality”, but it is very musical — meaning it’s warm and pleasant to listen to even though the sound isn’t as accurate as a good studio monitor. The overall sound is best for music listening, though the speakers aren’t bad for some types of movies. Gamers and action movie fans may not be impressed, though, since there isn’t a whole lot of low rumble.

Acoustic jazz like John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” sounds crisp and clear with bouncy bass and sparkly highs, though the piano gets a little lost during horn solos. Classical music retains a surprising amount of depth and richness, whether it’s a full orchestra or solo piano.

Rock fares very well on these speakers. Bands like Cake, the Killers, and Led Zeppelin all have plenty of crunch and thump, while guitars and effects pan, swirl, and shriek like they should. R&B and soul tracks do pretty well too; Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Erykah Badu’s vocals all come through loud and clear, and the bass has only a little of that typical “Bose bloat.”

Electronica often has parts that are so deep, nearly all small speakers have trouble handling them. Bass Mekanik’s Faster, Harder, Louder and the Gorillaz self-titled album both have some impressively low bass, and the MusicMonitors basically choked, though you I could feel them vibrating when I touched them. This is exactly what makes these a poor fit for games and movie explosions.

Volume-wise, these will fill a small room (think dens or home offices) and don’t distort appreciably even at top volume. But they’re definitely made for near-field listening while you’re sitting at your desk.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend these given their high price and lack of versatility. The main thing they have going for them is their tiny size, which Bose seems to think will appeal to laptop and desktop users alike. But perhaps they haven’t heard the venerable Klipsch ProMedia 2.0, which are damn impressive portables and cost under $100.

The science behind these speakers is pretty cool, and Bose learned from its Herbie Hancock-hawked Wave systems that blinding people with science can actually sell products. Still, Bose should have included a subwoofer output and cut the price in half if they wanted a runaway hit. Lucky for them they can sell just about anything on the Bose name alone.

The Zen measures 3.26 x 2.16 x 0.44 inches, but weighs a scant 2.1 ounces. It feels slightly bulky, but what do you expect from a player with a full-size SD card slot and roomy 2.5-inch screen, which rivals that of the 5G iPod in size but supports more colors? The glossy black plastic front gets schmutzed up with fingerprints faster than a subway pole, but it’s complemented nicely by the matte black finish on the back.

The buttons to the right of the screen are laid out very similar to those of the 30GB Zen Vision. But they aren’t backlit, so it can be difficult to know what you’re doing in broad daylight or total darkness (even with the screen glow) unless you’ve memorized the button layout. There’s a pinhole mic on top next to the card slot for making voice recordings, and the sync connector on the right next to the headphone jack and power/hold switch is a standard USB 2.0 mini-plug — no proprietary cables!

Startup time isn’t excruciatingly slow like with the SanDisk Sansa e200 series, but it’s not particularly speedy like the iPod’s instant-on capability. I love that the main menu is easily customizable, as is the wallpaper, and the icons are very clear and attractive. You can assign a function to the Shortcut button, which is one of the Zen’s handiest features.

My biggest complaint is that the buttons aren’t very responsive; it often took me a few taps on the same button to get something to happen, particularly with the Back button. Also, there’s a noticeable lag with most functions, except for browsing content, which is speedy enough and helped by the ability to jump to a specific initial letter. Then again many times I get early units for review, so hopefully Creative will tighten that up as production goes on.

Audio performance is excellent, with no audible flaws on any of the test tracks I listened to. I selections by Stevie Wonder, Interpol, Stravinsky, McCoy Tyner, Led Zeppelin, and John Coltrane. Interestingly, the player supports AAC files as well as WMA, protected WMA, MP3, WAV, and Audible; it’ll work with tracks from the iTunes Plus music store, but not Apple’s DRM-laden offerings.

Despite supporting 16.7 million colors, photos and videos look a bit washed out on the Zen’s 320 x 240-pixel screen. I transferred photos via WMP 11 with no problems, but videos require conversion to WMV format, which WMP handles automatically. The resulting video was passable, though there’s a lot of blotchiness in large dark areas, and the screen doesn’t give you “true” blacks. If you stop a video and go to some other mode, you can jump right back into your movie where you left off.

You can transfer videos in Windows Explorer via drag and drop, but they’ve got to conform to the Zen’s fairly stringent size requirements, unlike its more flexible big brother the Zen Vision:M. Videos can’t be bigger than 320 x 240, and they’ve got to be in MPEG-4 (SP), DivX, or XviD formats. All of the videos I had lying around (mostly in 640 x 480 resolution) needed to be transcoded.

Creative rates the non-removable battery’s life at around 25 hours of audio and 5 hours of video per charge. Those are respectable numbers, giving it roughly the same playback times as the “fat” iPod nano. Expect about 15-18 hours with normal use, unless you watch lots of video.

Voice recordings are in WAV format and sound very clear despite their low bit rate. The on-screen mic levels are handy, though you can’t adjust sensitivity. The FM tuner works very well and had little or no trouble picking up even weaker stations around New York City. You can also sync the Zen with Microsoft Outlook so you can read your calendar and task list, and it has a built-in alarm clock.

Creative’s DJ feature is great if you have a tough time deciding for yourself what to listen to; it picks out things like Album of the Day and Rarely Heard, and you can set it to one-touch access via the shortcut button. Of course, the player works fine with online music subscription services (Rhapsody et al) too, in case FM radio or a virtual DJ aren’t enough for you.

Creative has been coming on strong with aggressive pricing — $249.99 for 16GB, $199.99 for 8GB, and $129.99 for 4GB are damn fine deals. Having a sexy player in my pocket with twice the storage of an iPod nano plus FM radio, voice recording, an SD slot, and AAC support is pretty bitchin’. There are even a handful of accessories for it from Creative, including an armband and a few cases.

It’s a shame they didn’t make the Zen Mac-compatible or give it sweet earbuds like Sony did with the Walkman A818, but the screen size makes for almost-comfortable video watching and it’s…well… shiny. But if you don’t care so much about video, expandable storage, or AAC, you might as well go for the Zen V Plus, which is just as shiny but smaller.

Once upon a time, you and every one of your friends had a Sony Walkman cassette player. It was portable and let you do things with your music you could never have done with, say, LPs or radio. You could listen to whatever, whenever and wherever you wanted without lugging around a lot of equipment. It even managed to persist through most of the CD age. 15 years later, along came digital music, and the iPod became the new standard for taking your music with you.

In the 80s, most of us never saw the end of the road coming for the Walkman, and now that the iPod enjoys similar ubiquity, it sure does give me a sense of deja vu. So much so, in fact, that I asked our own Futurist, Seth Porges, if he could fathom a post-iPod era. He predicts, “Pretty soon, the idea of a dedicated MP3 player like an iPod will be obsolete — we’ll just be able to plug into whatever happens to be laying around, whether it’s a USB thumb drive or our fridge.”

What’s Rotting the Apple
Ultimately, Apple’s downfall may come down to Steve Jobs’s own hypocrisy, as well as how Apple deals with other companies. After all, unilateralism doesn’t win you any friends — or any wars, either.

By now, Jobs’s infamous open letter to the music industry, Thoughts on Music, has become the stuff of legend, a clarion call for interoperability. The public perceived it as the impetus for major labels forays into DRM-free downloads.

His Steveness said in his letter, “Convincing [major labels] to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.” But to continue locking the iPod to iTunes sure smells of a two-faced attitude. Even worse, new iPods (touch, classic, and nano) are now compatible only with accessories like speakers and even cables that have an Apple authentication chip built-in.

Is this really embracing interoperability “wholeheartedly”?

Stopping developers from unlocking the iPhone certainly isn’t helping Apple any, though in that case, the company is at least beholden by contract to AT&T (in the U.S.) to fight interoperability. And across the pond in Europe, the company is busy defending itself against an antitrust suit in over iTunes pricing and its locked-down player/software combo — a battle that seems to be getting uglier every week.

Finally, the iTunes Music Store is having some pretty serious issues, with Universal excluding it from DRM-free downloads and NBC pulling its shows off the store (at least, they said they would). Now you can get your episodes of The Office for nothing right off NBC’s Web site, albeit with plenty of needless restrictions.

Ironically, Sony is closing Connect, its ill-fated online music store, by next March in favor of a Windows Media-based platform for its music players — in favor of interoperability. Go figure!

What’s Not
Luckily for Apple, the stock options backdating scandal (for which Jobs was subpoenaed just the other day) is unlikely to hurt the company’s image among consumers. But that wasn’t so with Sony — a former CEO was even demoted over the invasive rootkit DRM debacle. Unfortunately, Apple may be headed for a similarly dark place if it turns out that the company follows through on its implied threat to turn unlocked iPhones into expensive paperweights.

Also unlikely to hurt iPods in the long run are hardware glitches like faulty iPod touch screens, the 1G iPod nano’s scratching problems, and crooked 3G nano screens. Apple’s been pretty good about addressing those issues quickly.

Nothing Lasts Forever
With the Walkman cassette player, technology simply rolled onwards and crushed it beneath its wheels. But the Walkman brand couldn’t possibly have had a better head start in the digital music world, and it was steamrolled flat by Sony’s short-sightedness and draconian hardware/software limitations.

The iPod will one day be trampled by the march of tech, too. Apple better hope it can keep up and rule future music-listening paradigms with less of an iron fist if it wants to hold onto its dominance.

Mike Kobrin is a freelance audio technology writer for CrunchGear and many other publications. Every Friday, he writes The AudioFile, a weekly column about digital music and audio gear. Feel free to ask questions, air grievances, or just be a loyal CrunchGear commenter in the Comments section below.

(Thanks to Make for the image above!)

Creative made a bold move by integrating its X-Fi sound enhancement technology into a set of noise-canceling headphones, and it paid off. The Creative Aurvana X-Fi gives more expensive models like the Bose QuietComfort 2 and Sennheiser PXC-450 a run for their money in sound quality and comfort. The integrated sound-enhancement features really set it apart from the crowd, too. They’re not cheap (they list for $299; less at e-tailers), but these killer cans will keep the noise out and your music crystal-clear on your next flight.

The X-Fi’s bear some resemblance to Bose’s QuietComfort2, with its metallic beige earcups and big leather pads, but the similarities end there. The battery compartment, which holds a pair of triple-A batteries, is on the left earcup. On the right cup, there’s an eighth-inch jack for plugging in the included audio cable to your MP3 or CD player, as well as a power switch and buttons for noise cancellation, the X-Fi Crystalizer, and Creative’s CMSS-3D virtual surround sound. All the buttons light up with blue LEDs when active, and there’s a small volume wheel on the edge of the cup.

These headphones don’t fold up, though the earcups swivel 45 degrees, so they lie flat in the included semi-rigid nylon case. Creative gives you a 4.5-foot extension cable, plus dual-mono and quarter-inch adapters for airplanes and home stereos.

The pads on the earcups and headband are made of memory foam, which gently cradle your head; in fact, after about half an hour, I no longer noticed I was even wearing them. In fact, next to the Bose QuietComfort2, these are the most comfortable noise-canceling cans I’ve worn.

The buttons are easy to operate by touch, though I kept having to remove the headphones and look at the LEDs to see which features I’d activated. Radio-style push-buttons might have worked better. You get roughly 9 hours of playback time with the Crystalizer and 3D Feature on from a pair of alkaline AAA batteries (I used regular Energizers), and you can expect about 10 to 12 hours with only the noise cancellation and Crystalizer on. That’s not bad, considering the batteries are easily replaceable, though the Bose QC2 and QC3 last for 40 and 20 hours, respectively, indicating the hit on battery life from Creative’s sound-enhancement features.

Overall, the X-Fi’s sound better than I expected when powered off or on, though the detail and midrange definitely fill in when the power is on. The noise cancellation doesn’t add any serious hum, but a very brief high-pitched sound comes through the headphones when you turn it on. The Crystalizer, however, does add an appreciable hiss. The CMSS-3D feature generally doesn’t work well for music, and only benefits certain types of movie scenes.

Now to the fun part… listening!

Movies
I watched a few scenes from The Matrix on my laptop with the X-Fi’s, and the Crystalizer clearly helped sharpen up things like dialogue and ambient noise. The CMSS-3D feature spread out the sound in the lobby shooting spree scene so I could hear all the individual gunshots clearly. But in other scenes like the “bullet time” sequence, it just made the sound flat. Dialogue seems to be in the right place in the mix with and without the 3D feature, but over I prefer it off.

Music
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring sound spacious and full, though you can hear the noise-cancellation circuitry’s slight hiss in quieter passages. This won’t be a factor in noisy environments, but it could be an issue if you’re looking to silence an already quiet room. They handle the dramatic dynamics very well.

Acoustic jazz like Sonny Rollins’ “Blue for Philly Joe” from Newk’s Time sounds well balanced in the mids and highs but with exaggerated bass. (I used my iPod’s Bass Reducer setting to correct this, and it improved the sound a lot.) Benefits nicely from the Crystalizer.

Balance and detail is excellent on bossa nova classics like “Corcovado” from Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto’s Getz/Gilberto. The strange panning of Astrud Gilberto’s voice all the way to the right on “The Girl from Ipanema” can be rectified by turning the 3D feature, which basically reroutes part of the signal (her voice) to the opposite ear.

On Count Basie’s “April In Paris,” recorded in 1957), the horn-heavy big-band arrangement becomes a little harsh with the Crystalizer on. The bass is a bit tubby, and my iPod’s Bass Reducer didn’t sound so great on it.

Tracks like Interpol’s “Evil” and “Slow Hands” from Anticswith driving bass and loud drums sound punchy and exciting on the X-Fi’s. Modern rock seems to fare best on these cans.

It handles the ridiculously aggressive bass lines like the ones on Stevie Wonder’s “Maybe Your Baby” and “Sunshine of My Life” with room to spare. Bring those high-hats up a bit with the Crystalizer, but leave the 3D off.

Creative’s stuff generally finds its way online for well below list price. So if you can find the Aurvana X-Fi’s for less than the $299 MSRP, you’ve got yourself some rockin’ noise-canceling cans for less than the cost of their designer-brand counterparts. If you’re looking to save a few more bucks, and can live without the sound-enhancement features, check out Audio-Technica’s ATH-ANC7, which can be found for half off the $220 list price online.