Sunday, December 22

Tag: audio

Airchat Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Obsession
16Apr By adminNo Comments
Technology

Airchat Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Obsession

Ravikant said most of the funding for Airchat has come from his own fund, as well as from Jeff Fagnan, a founding partner at Accomplice Ventures. “[OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman threw in a check, kind of blindly,” Ravikant said. He communicated all of this to me in a public response on Airchat, after politely declining to respond to my DMs and insisting our conversation should happen in public. “It can’t be a side-channel, DM-based interview. That’s the old world that we are leaving behind,” he told me. (In the old world, as in the new world, conducting an interview synchronously is almost always … preferable.)So far the Airchat feed appears to be filled with tech enthusiasts, early adopters, venture capitalists, and journalists. There’s lots of Bitcoin posting. Winefluencer Gary Vaynerchuk is o...
Read More
Teenage Engineering TP-7 Field Recorder Review: Price, Specs, Availability, Features
7Apr By adminNo Comments
Technology

Teenage Engineering TP-7 Field Recorder Review: Price, Specs, Availability, Features

Recorders, generally speaking, are meant to sit in the background, quietly absorbing sound without contributing to it. They’re a neutral, inconspicuous product type almost by necessity. If you’re recording field audio, like trying to capture the perfect loon call out in the wild, you’d be better served by a proper shotgun mic to pinpoint the sound. Audio recorded directly in a studio sounds great on the TP-7, but again, you can handle that with some far less expensive yet still really good microphones.The device can also be tricky to navigate, with some menu diving required to access certain features that won’t feel intuitive right away. There’s also some kinks you’ll find if you’re coming from another type of recorder.As one example, I tried to feed music from Spotify through the TP-7 to...
Read More
Best MP3 Players, Portable Media Players and Digital Audio Players (2023)
21Dec By adminNo Comments
Technology

Best MP3 Players, Portable Media Players and Digital Audio Players (2023)

we’ve got nothing against your smartphone, not really. After all, it’s a handy GPS, a very acceptable camera, a brilliant internet portal, and probably quite a decent telephone. But you know as well as we do that it’s not much of a music player.How could it be? After all, the digital-to-analog converter, the headphone amplification, and all the other hardware that goes into delivering a great music player are nothing more than afterthoughts when a company is specifying a smartphone. It’s the same as the sound of your laptop in this respect—the design prioritizes loads of other things, and there’s an incredible amount of electrical activity and noise going on inside that basically scuppers the chances of it sounding in any way good. Even if you toss out those dreadful headphones that came ...
Read More
‘Millionaire’s Tax’ Money Brings Extra Road and Sidewalk Money to Haverhill, Other Communities
18Dec By adminNo Comments
Money

‘Millionaire’s Tax’ Money Brings Extra Road and Sidewalk Money to Haverhill, Other Communities

Haverhill and area communities are receiving big boosts in state aid for roadway and transportation projects with additional money coming from last year’s voter-approved “Fair Share” amendment, commonly known as the “millionaire’s tax.” Haverhill, which already receives about $1.5 million from the state in road aid—known as “Chapter 90”—is set to receive another $769,765 from the $100 million statewide allocation. Gov. Maura Healey said Friday in a press release the state is not putting any strings on the money. “This funding is particularly impactful because we are empowering cities and towns to decide how to use it to address their unique needs. We are grateful to the legislature for making this funding available and look forward to seeing how the municipalities will use it to stre...
Read More
28 Delightful Gift Ideas for Music Lovers and Audiophiles
11Dec By adminNo Comments
Technology

28 Delightful Gift Ideas for Music Lovers and Audiophiles

Whether you're trying to find a turntable so Mom and Dad can bust out their vintage vinyl collection, or you want to give the gift of great sound to a young music lover or a middle-aged audiophile, it can be tough to find great-sounding gear that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. That's where we come in. Each year, we spend hundreds of hours listening to the latest and greatest gear around, looking for the elusive products that bring the best possible sound for the money.These are our favorite gifts for music lovers, from affordable accessories to insane, tube-driven wonders. Looking for other cool audio gear or gift ideas? Be sure to check out our other buying guides, including the Best Cheap Headphones and Gifts for Beer and Wine Lovers.Updated December 2023: We've overhauled this guide wi...
Read More
3 Reasons You Should Buy a Stick Vacuum—And 3 Reasons They Suck
7Dec By adminNo Comments
Technology

3 Reasons You Should Buy a Stick Vacuum—And 3 Reasons They Suck

JILL KOCH, 39, bought her first cordless vacuum because it was pink. “I didn’t look at the brand, I didn’t look at the price. I saw the color and was like, ‘I have to have it,’” said the Cincinnati-based home organization and cleaning blogger. Koch, who owns almost a dozen vacuums, says her newest cordless stick, the Shark Wandvac, gets the most use. She finds its motor powerful enough to handle most tasks. But more important, because of its sleek look, “it’s not even weird to store it in plain sight,” she said. Whenever she sees something that needs cleaning, that vacuum is within reach. She can clear the mess, dump out its dustbin into a trash can, and re-dock the vacuum in a minute or two.Cordless stick vacuums aren’t new—British manufacturer Dyson released its first cordless stick vac...
Read More
Focal Theva No. 1 Speakers Review: Smooth and Creamy
6Nov By adminNo Comments
Technology

Focal Theva No. 1 Speakers Review: Smooth and Creamy

I spent a couple of weeks with the speakers, swapping them in after the B&W 606 S3. While they didn’t immediately wow me as I focused on evaluating TVs and other gear, they stepped in pretty seamlessly for my usual KEF LSX 2.1 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) reference system that includes SVS’s 3000 Micro subwoofer, which in itself says a lot about the Thevas’ sonic skills. They don’t offer the same thunderous bass, but the 6.5-inch drivers held their own down low across content.I spent most of my listening powering the speakers with a Naim Uniti Atom (8/10, WIRED Recommends) amplifier, which as it happens is owned by the same company as Focal. As you may guess, it makes for a fabulous pairing, though few would call it an affordable one. The Theva still sounded quite good with the cheaper Te...
Read More
After a Boom and Bust, the Chip Industry Is Regaining Its Health
1Nov By adminNo Comments
Technology

After a Boom and Bust, the Chip Industry Is Regaining Its Health

Updated Nov. 1, 2023 12:02 am ETThe global semiconductor industry is bottoming out, executives say, signaling a rebound in some areas of technology and providing relief for the U.S. government, which is spending billions on expanding chip production.In recent weeks, executives at Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics have expressed confidence that the worst is over for the chip industry, which had been in a prolonged slump.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Read More
10 Best Wireless Earbuds for Working Out (2023)
17Oct By adminNo Comments
Technology

10 Best Wireless Earbuds for Working Out (2023)

To stay safe on a run, you should remain aware of all the honking, revving, and talking around you. But sometimes, you want to shut the world out completely to enjoy your podcast, audiobook, or death metal playlist in perfect isolation. These buds can deliver both total awareness and total escapism—plus every notch in between—with a fully tweakable noise-canceling experience.The Reflect Aeros have many of the basic active noise-canceling features, like an ambient listening mode and the ability to turn ANC on and off. Additional controls live inside the JBL Headphones app, including the ability to adjust the level of noise canceling that’s applied when ANC is switched on, or to activate an adaptive noise canceling mode that automatically adjusts the level of canceling based on the noisines...
Read More