Archive for March, 2012
A Review Of Wireless Speaker Kits For Your Home
Latest-generation wireless audio products such as iPods, iPhones and wireless surround sound products promise to cut the cord while delivering crystal-clear audio. We will look at some of the most recent products to find out which applications they work for.
Some products come with wireless already built in while others, in particular streaming audio products, often have optional wireless capability. Newest touch-screen iPods and iPhones already have WiFi and Bluetooth built in.
Bluetooth is fairly common as a low-cost wireless solution. However, Bluetooth does have some drawbacks. These weaknesses are often overlooked but will have an impact on high-quality audio applications.
1) Short range
The range of Bluetooth devices is typically only 30 ft. This excludes Bluetooth from multi-room applications.
2) Limited data transmission capacity
Bluetooth will apply audio compression since it does not reliably offer a high-enough data rate for uncompressed audio. Audio compression will degrade the audio quality to some extent. High-quality audio transmission typically does not tolerate this type of degradation. Therefore Bluetooth is normally not used in high-end audio products.
3) Audio delay
The audio will experience a delay of at least 10 ms mostly due to the audio compression which is a problem for real-time audio applications but less critical for MP3 players.
4) No support of multiple headphones
Bluetooth cannot stream to multiple headphones at the same time. This may be a problem in cases where several people want to listen to the same Bluetooth transmitter.
Another common protocol is WiFi which supports uncompressed audio but also has problems simultaneously streaming to multiple receivers. It is convenient for streaming music from a PC due to the high availability but is normally not used in wireless headphone products due to the relatively high power consumption of WiFi. Read the rest of this entry »
Best Cheap Tablets Are Not Always Bad Gadgets
I know there’s a tendency for people to catalogue cheap products as bad products. It’s true that most of the time you do get what you pay for, but cheap must also mean affordable, or value, which is something consumers seem to be very interested in, especially when we’re talking about the best cheap tablets under the 200 dollars mark.
Since the introduction of the first Apple tablet, the iPad, consumers either bought it without hesitation or looked for more affordable alternatives, which didn’t come in an encouraging manner up until recently, when Amazon launched its own 7 inch slate, with a complete philosophy, that of selling their services after making the tablet sale.
This is why Amazon could afford to charge only 200 bucks for its Kindle Fire tablet, which meant losing money with each item sold, but don’t feel sorry for them, as they’ll get every penny back with the selling of apps, Prime membership, Kindle books and every type of content you can imagine.
So the Kindle Fire is one good example where cheap doesn’t equal bad. Now, if we’re talking about your typical Android tablet under 200 you have to keep in mind that a lot of these products are not worth your attention. But how can I know which one is worthy of my consideration? Here are the things you need to know or check out before making a purchase:
- Check the software version: you need to have the latest (Android 4.0 ICS in this case) because these small manufacturers usually don’t do updates, so you get stuck with what you’re buying Read the rest of this entry »
Hot MP3 Players
MP3 Player News
A portable mp3 player is the easiest way to take your favorite music with you anywhere you go and anytime. Mp3 players are more compact than a CD, and you don’t have to take with you an entire box of CDs because the memory of an mp3 player can be up to 5 GB. Even if the capacity is huge sometimes, portable mp3 players are very small, design to fit in a small pocket, and sometimes fashionable as you will see in this mp3 player review.
If you decide to purchase an mp3 player, there are many models to choose from, and you should get familiarized with their features. Using an mp3 player review can help you to make your choice, as mp3 players are grouped into main categories by their memory type in any mp3 player review. Also, there are many more features that can make the difference between mp3 players.
Mp3 compatible CD players were the first mp3 players sold in stores. At that time they were considered very useful because an mp3 player can store up 10 times the amount of songs an audio CD can. The preferred mp3 players in any mp3 player review are those with flash memory. Mp3 players with hard drives or micro drives, have the largest capacity from all mp3 players.
Categories of mp3 players
Usually, mp3 players are grouped by their capacity and their ability to read different file types. The most common file types used to store music are mp3 and wma, and the physical support for data can be flash, micro drive, hard drive, or CD.
Flash memory mp3 players are the most popular. The most recent players have flash memory between 256 MB and 4 GB. If we consider the fact that the average length of a melody is 3 MB, it results that actual flash memory players can store between 80 and 1200 melodies. Flash memories have no moving parts, so the players can be easily manipulated without the risk of damaging it.
Micro drive mp3 players have much more storage space than flash memory players, varying from 5 GB to 10 GB. Hard drive mp3 players have the largest amount of memory for multimedia files. Mp3 compatible CD players became pretty old-fashioned due to their size. The CD can easily crash if you drop the CD player from your hands and the capacity of a CD is just 700 MB. You should check also for discounts if you want to save some money.
Nowadays many of the mp3 players also have lots of other interesting functions. A newer mp3 player can also FM radio, agenda, possibility to sort and group melodies, recording and playback capabilities as well as many others.
Other Features of MP3 Players
The newest mp3 players have wide color screens where you can play DVD quality movies. We can’t finish this mp3 player review information without speaking about other important features of mp3 players, like voice recording or FM radio tuner and sometimes even TV tuner.
An mp3 player with 5 GB of memory can record up to 40 hours of high quality sound. In the last two years, mp3 players have become the most common device for listening to music. Very small, portable, and with a large storage capacity, an mp3 player can also be fashionable. Read the rest of this entry »