The major labels are acting funny lately, and it’s beginning to smell fishy. Warner is once again trying to buy EMI, Lala.com’s free streaming service (which offered mostly tracks from Warner) died of mysterious causes, and Universal appears to be backing away from iTunes. It all comes back to Steve Jobs in one way or another, and his legendary — and increasingly troubling — influence over the digital music business. In fact, the only person on the planet with more raw power than Steve Jobs may very well be Chuck Norris.
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Just in time for the Fourth of July, Coleman sent me a Cooler Radio — a full-size cooler with AM/FM/Weatherband radio. It’s also got an alarm clock, a line-input jack, and a pair of speakers set into the faceplate on the front. The cooler itself is pretty standard fare: a chest-style red plastic model that holds up to 46 cans of Pabst. (Other beers are not supported, at least in my cooler.) I took it for a spin outside, despite the awful NYC weather, and here’s how it went.
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Everyone loves a good picnic in the summertime: Gourmet sandwiches, wine, cheese, and the great outdoors can go a long way toward relieving 9 to 5 office drudgery. But there are a few ways you can take it up a notch with a bit of high-tech help, whether you’re trying to impress your latest squeeze or you’re just goofy for gadgets. Feast your eyes on these ideas for geeking up your next afternoon boozefest outing.
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According to iSuppli Corp, who are experts at figuring out exactly how much consumer electronics cost companies to build, the bill for the components that make up Apple’s 8GB iPhone comes to $265.83–a profit margin of about 55 percent. Of course, that doesn’t include important things like marketing and advertising costs, R&D costs, royalties, and licensing fees, all of which can take a hefty chunk out of Apple’s pie.
iSuppli’s report also said that Samsung components–the main applications processor as well as various flash memory modules–make up the largest share of any single company (about 30.5 percent of the hardware costs). Not too shabby, Sammy!
The company also forecasts 4.5 million iPhones sold this year, and over 30 million by 2011. That is, if activation headaches and other consumer complaints don’t drive it into the ground first.
Via iSuppli’s iPhone teardown analysis report.
The iPhone drops today. If you didn’t know, you’re probably dead and aren’t reading this anyway. If you did know, hopefully you’ve been reading our roundup of early reviews. One thing in particular has caught my eye but has been the subject of very little gratuitous blathering speculation: the iPhone’s headphone jack.
Think you’re going to use the iPhone as an iPod with your fancy aftermarket headphones? Think different(ly). But is this a missed moneymaking opportunity for Apple, or a sign of hidden secret just beyond the horizon?
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Yeah, the holidays are nowhere in sight and neither is my Capricornian birthday, but I’ve got the summer shopping bug — y’know, Christmas in July and all that. I don’t pull down six figures or anything (hey, I live in Brooklyn, not the O.C.), but I’ve got a decent budget to work with. So here are ten audio-tastic items that get my salivary glands lubed up in a jiffy, and each one costs $1000 or less. [Sigh.] I sure do wish I could afford ‘em all.
(Got sub-$1000 stuff that whets your willy? Get your ya-ya’s out in the comments section!)
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Portable digital video recorders are becoming an essential item in any traveling video geek’s arsenal. But Archos and Cowon aren’t the only companies pimping PMPs that help you pirate time- and place-shift your favorite TV shows and movies. The Blue Raven MediaMate 7000 sports a 7-inch widescreen LCD and up to 80GB of storage, as well as a $429.95 price ($379 for the 40GB model) that will hopefully be lowered before the way sexier Archos 705 WiFi drops in the fall. (Product page)
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A couple of years ago, Nick Comer-Calder designed an insane electric guitar case using leather, carbon fiber (err… that’s fibre across the pond), and silk, not to mention a high-tech suspension system. Well it’s no longer just a concept–you can now actually buy them… for a mere £3000 plus VAT.
He also makes a mean case for classical guitars (£3100), violins (£2800), and laptops (£2120). Yeah, you’re reading those prices correctly–double them for US dollars. I can see protecting an extremely rare and very expensive instrument in one of these bad boys, but a laptop? (Yeah, man, I’ve got this vintage Apple PowerBook Duo in pristine condition and with a really low serial number… worth millions.)
Many of the best musical instrument cases come from the UK (I’m partial to Wiseman horn cases), but sometimes they’re worth the outrageous expense. This one’s debatable.
Product page [Calder Originals via Music Thing]
MusicGiants isn’t the most well-known online music download service out there, but they’ve been pumping out WMA Lossless files since 2005. Until a couple weeks ago, all of the super hi-res files were locked down with Windows Media DRM, but no more! Right now you can only get Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full DRM-free in truly bit-for-bit identical quality to a CD, but by this fall, MusicGiants will release lots more titles that you can pirate share at will. (The company hasn’t done an official press release yet, but MusicGiants CEO Scott Bahneman recently spilled the beans to Stereophile.)
It sure makes the iTunes Music Store’s 256Kbps AAC files look pretty wimpy, and it even trumps 7 Digital’s DRM-less 320Kbps MP3s. Will you hear the difference? If you have a super hi-fi audio rig at home then it’s a good bet you will. If you have an iPod, then no, because the iPod can’t hang with any WMA format.
That officially makes MusicGiants’ files the highest-resolution DRM-less downloads around. Which begs the question: When will Steve Jobs let us download Apple Lossless files on the iTMS? Another question: When will more portable players support WMA Lossless?
MusicGiants Floats High-Rez Files without DRM [via Stereophile]
Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Few companies in the MP3 player business grasp this important principle, and it continues to bite them in the assets.
iRiver and SanDisk are feverishly trying to keep up the pace of feature bloat, while Archos and Creative are increasingly focusing on video players. Meanwhile, Sony is getting ready to throw in the towel, and still others (okay, Microsoft) should probably start thinking along the same lines.
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Don’t want your music-loving 8- to 11-year-old running around with an iPod? SanDisk targets “tweens” with its new Sansa Shake — a kid-friendly player that stores music on Secure Digital memory cards and runs on one triple-A battery. Best of all, it’s pretty darn cheap, at just $39.99, including a 512MB SD card. Older kids may not be impressed by the Shaker’s size and features, but I had a tough time getting it back from two 8-year-olds I lent it to.
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In my Brooklyn neighborhood, I’m surrounded by Christians, Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews, Rastafarians, Santeria initiates, and the occasional Sikh. The MP3 player market must have similar diversity, right?naïveriffic! Well, not quite… in fact, I was disappointed at the dearth of religious zeal wrapped in a shamelessly commercial product–though Kosher cell phones do give me some hope.
This week, I’m temporarily gettin’ religion, thanks to a photo someone forwarded me of an actual prototype of a crucifix-shaped MP3 player. No, not just a silly first-gen iPod shuffle cap — a real live (and snazzy looking) Jesus-pod. But WWJLT? So where’s my Ankh-phone, or my DAP of David? The possibilities abound for enterprising zealots.
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Confusion about HD components and interconnects has spawned so much misinformation from all sides — including retailers, journalists, manufacturers, and forum-posting electrical engineers — that it’s time to set the Blu-ray discrecord straight. Monster Cable is the current target of somewhat misguided accusations because of this lack of understanding. The issue is: Does a better HDMI cable give you a better picture on your HDTV?
The answer is that a high-end cable has absolutely nothing to do with improving the quality of your HDTV picture in the way that audiophile-grade cables can improve the sound of your high-end home stereo. For the most part, high-end cables are about future-proofing rich people’s custom installations and supporting technologies that aren’t even available yet.
Does that mean Monster is justified in selling hyper-expensive cables to the rest of us? Of course not. That falls under consumer responsibility; you wouldn’t buy expensive racing tires for the family minivan. But does that justify people being up in arms about claims Monster is not making? No.
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Apple’s latest blow to other online music download services is iTunes Plus — tracks encoded at 256Kbps in AAC format with no copy protection restricting usage. Big deal? Maybe not as big as many people hoped, thanks to some glitches and limitations, but it’s still a huge step in the right direction for downloaded music. But is Steve Jobs following the right path by shunning the subscription model in favor of a deceptively open download model?
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HD Radio isn’t exactly spreading like wildfire. But if you’ve experienced it, you know it offers clearer sound and more channels than regular analog radio, and for nothin’ — except the extortionate rather high price of HD-capable radios. Cambridge SoundWorks’ 820HD Radio is a bit closer to affordable, with a list price of $299, and it’s pretty slick-looking too, but I’m pretty sure that not enough people are hip to the concept yet for it to really take off at that price. Maybe they should be.
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My favorite trend in MP3 players and music-phones is the inclusion of a slot for a ridiculously tiny microSD card. There’s just something really cool about taking a 2GB memory card out of my LG Chocolate phone and putting it into my SanDisk Sansa e280. But high-capacity memory cards also have the potential to resolve thorny issues related to digital music sharing — especially across your own devices.
MP3 players have had expansion slots for years, but until now they supported a max of only 2 extra gigabytes on top of the built-in memory. Well, according to a new spec, those fingernail-size microSD cards can now hit up to 32GB–enough to warrant rethinking the role of flash memory in an MP3 player. Luckily, cell phone and digicam makers provide plenty of inspiration!
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iPod clock radios are a dime a dozen, but renowned speaker maker Cambridge SoundWorks supercharged theirs with beefy sound and a built-in CD player. The all-in-one CSW Radio CD 745i has sophisticated looks (in black or white), thanks to a bevy of on-board controls. We got our hands on one and nightstand-tested it for a week, and it was no letdown. The features, compactness, sound, and power offset the few minor quirks to make this a satisfying way to make your iPod rock out with its clock out, even at the hefty MSRP of $399.
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Is the recording industry officially losing control over digital music? And more importantly, what new restrictions will it use to combat the rampant piracy that’s sure to follow? Also: Digital music still has one major drawback: no resale market. But imagine there was a way to capitalize on the potential for used MP3s….
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The new Cowon D2 is a pretty geeky-looking PMP that fits squarely (ok, rectangularly) in the palm of your hand, ready to play 30-fps video, photos, and music at the touch of a virtual button. With up to 4GB of internal flash storage plus an SD card slot–and a 50-hour battery life–the D2 can keep you mindlessly occupied for hours on end. That doesn’t include the time you’ll need to get familiar with the touchscreen-driven interface, though.
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This Sunday is Mothers Day. (Sorry if I just made you snarf your coffee.) As usual, I’ve left it till the last minute to get my mom something. And naturally, now that she finally understands what it is I do, she’s slowly getting more interested in portable audio. So I think this is the year I splurge and get her some solid, simple, affordable audio gear, but I’ve got to do it quickly. And I need bread left over to pay my exorbitant Brooklyn rent. Here’s my plan of action…
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Hardcore audiophiles are generally immune to sticker shock for high-end audio gear like $50,000 speaker-based rigs. But now you can get the same level of sound for a lot less if you build a sound system around headphones. The Desktop Balanced Amp is the flagship model in HeadRoom’s compact Desktop line. It ain’t cheap, but it gives you truly face-melting sound when paired with a set of high-end balanced headphones.
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Ultimate Ears continues to make a very strong push into the consumer headphone market. The company’s most aggressively priced and most compact in-ear headphones yet, the UE metro.fi 2, are a very good buy at just $79.99. If you’re looking to save a few bucks over pricier models like the UE super.fi 3 Studio or Creative Zen Aurvana, these are highly recommended, with great comfort and well-balanced sound.
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Please, world, take a break from thinking about the iPhone. Believe it or not, there are other cool devices coming very soon that will combine music and communications. The difference is, they aren’t convergence devices in the conventional sense: They communicate and interact with each other instead of trying to swallow each other whole. I may sound like a hippie, but it seems to me all your gadgets should get along — it’s way more secure than having your one vulnerable super-gizmo.
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When the original iriver Clix came out, it made waves with its clickable faceplate navigation, but it was chunky and expensive. The second-generation model completely eliminates those issues with a slimmer design and pricing that’s competitive with that of the iPod nano. It’s got all the features you’d need in an MP3 player, as well as sound quality that even picky listeners will dig — a worthy iPod alternative!
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As part of HiFi week here at the ol’ Crunch, I’m detailing my favorite mobile high-end audio rig. I’ve spent a lot of time finding the right balance among portability, sound quality, and budget — which means don’t go freaking out about how your home setup is so awesome and can be taken with you as long as you have a portable generator and a power conditioner, not to mention a gazillion dollars.
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