Audio

In-wall speakers. Everyone has heard about them and many can easily identify them by the hundreds of little holes in the grill on the wall or ceiling. Flush they are, but hidden they aren’t. But it’s better than having a huge box hanging off your wall or standing from the floor, right? […]

Solutions come and go for easily liberating iTunes Music Store purchases from their DRM shackles. The slow and tedious brute force method continues to work, requiring you to play back individual tracks one-at-a-time and recording them with software like Audacity. Saving the resulting files in your favorite DRM-free format, like MP3, WMA or even uncompressed […]

I love chick harmonies! And I love this album, Here We Go Again, Patty & Abigail’s debut disk on Play Like A Girl Records. Lyrically-driven, the songs on this album are a blend of pop, soft rock, blues, and alt. country. My pick hit is “Time To Fall,” a yearning ballad replete with soulful violin […]

Walt Mossberg recently wrote a very level piece on DRM that’s ironically locked behind the Wall Street Journal paywall. His take on CD DRM - if a CD has it, don’t buy it. Glad to hear mainstream folks like Walt finally speaking out on something the rest of us get labeled the lunatic fringe for […]

Jason Dunn of Digital Media Thoughts writes:
I’ve just emerged from a scuffle with DRM, and I’m one for two in the battle. Here’s what happened: recently I went out shopping with my wife, and among other things, I bought five new CDs. I love music, and am happy to support the artists whose music I […]

Shanna Underwood’s moody voice is absolutely captivating on Shanna & the Hawk’s same-titled debut release. Throw in Haakon “The Hawk” Kallweit’s edgy vocal harmonies and electric guitar, Rob Sylvain’s crying dobro, Pip Walter’s sighing steel, Mark Cousins’ straight-ahead drums and stand up bass by Kris Day, and you have a sound that fits just about […]

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) has announced that Yahoo! Music Engine, the highly popular software application that lets listeners manage music, create playlists, purchase downloads as well as listen and search for songs, will be available with music cards that feature SanDisk TrustedFlash. With these music cards, users will be able to directly subscribe to the Yahoo! […]

One of the things I like about podcasting is the convenience of getting information on the go. I don’t need to focus my attention on a screen to read information with podcasting. I don’t necessarily need to remain keenly attuned to every word in a podcast, although, if the information is compelling enough, I’ll sit […]

High-Quality, DRM-Free, Digital Recordings Available Just Hours After the Band’s Live Shows at PEARLJAM.COM
Beginning with Pearl Jam’s sold out concert at the Gorge in George, Washington on September 1, the band will begin releasing high quality digital downloads of their live shows exclusively at pearljam.com. The digital downloads will be available for most of the […]

The iPod offers a great user experience on the hardware side and integrates nicely with iTunes, but there are certain things I don’t like about the way iTunes works on Windows. It’s not that other media player apps don’t have flaws, I simply find certain aspects of iTunes to be clunky. Finding the perfect alternative […]

MP3 in 2005 is like the cassette tape in 1990. Everybody has a bunch of them. They still produce good enough sound despite more efficient compression standards. And it’s hard to discount the switching cost of re-acquiring all your favorites in a new format. For a variety of reasons, you may find yourself in the […]

What the heck is a 5-star song anyway? And if a song is bad enough to rate only 1 star, why didn’t you delete it from your hard drive ages ago? My favorite songs are the ones that fit the mood I’m in right now; whenever right now happens to be. Music is an emotional […]

If you’ve been around the Lockergnome universe for a few years, you may remember the Mississippi swamp tune, Lockergnome in Blue. If you haven’t heard it before, this may be your only chance to download it. My good friend Steve Robinson wrote and recorded that little ditty in all of about 10 minutes sometime during […]

Gnomie Mark Tar writes:
I just set up a Pluto home system (Smarthome + media server). It’s really cool and works great with Squeezeboxes. Just plug the Squeezebox into an ethernet jack. When it sees the Squeezebox request an IP address, it automatically installs the SlimServer and sets everything up on its own. There’s no software […]

Sonos Update Adds Support for Podcasting and Power Scroll Feature.
Sonos, Inc., the developer of the award-winning Sonos Digital Music System, today announced the immediate availability of a software feature update that gives Sonos customers more ways to control their digital music and more content to listen to in every room of the house. Version […]

Sometime ago I wrote a rather lengthy tutorial on streaming audio files from a desktop PC to a WiFi enabled Pocket PC, effectively creating an in-home radio station playing your favorite tracks. Of course that stream also works for any other computers connected to your network as well, but what if you want to stream […]

There are plenty of reasons you might want to transfer music tracks from an iPod to your PC. If your hard drive fails, your iPod may be your only backup. If you purchase tracks from iTunes Music Store, Apple explicitly permits transferring those files to up to 5 computers. You may want to transfer your […]

The growing proliferation of subscription music services like Napster To Go and Yahoo Music is creating some confusion for customers wanting to burn CDs from tracks they either purchased or think they purchased rather than merely subscribing for temporary access. In a recent email, I was asked why a CD burned using tracks purchased at […]

Audible.com is one of my favorite sources of great audio content. From audio books to on demand NPR programming to audio versions of some of the best magazines on the market, Audible offers a great selection. It’s currently my longest running subscription to anything digital. Audible isn’t without flaws. Their proprietary file format isn’t compatible […]

While the crowd is busy going wild over Apple’s decision to use Intel processors for the next round of Mac hardware slated for who knows when, here’s something more immediately useful for any Mac owner. Recording audio or editing home movies requires a great deal of processor power and as much memory as your Mac […]