Gentleman MP3 Player

Want a cool MP3 player that will perfectly match your tuxedo? Some player with wireless earbuds would work, but you still have to carry the player in your pocket. In order to look as elegant as possible, you can’t really use any of the rectangular players currently on the market. You have to go with something more discrete. Something like the Gentleman MP3 Player.

This player will certainly fit three piece suit, as it resembles a pair of cufflinks. According to Gizmodude, it integrates a single line LED that displays the name of the track that’s playing. It almost looks like a miniature tag that would display your name, in this sense.

But how exactly are we to operate this player? The device has an ingenious design that will provide you with the perfect disguise. All you have to do is clamp it to your tie and add a considerable amount of flash memory. It looks like you play/stop the music with the aid of your tie. But how do we skip to a desired song?

Anyway, no one is going to figure out if you’re a metal fan or a Mozart enthusiast, unless they can manage to decipher that tiny LED display.

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Creative Zen X-Fi

It seems that iPod Touch and MS Zune will soon have a strong competitor. This one comes from Creative in the form of a wireless music player with Wi-Fi media sharing capabilities called the Zen X-Fi.

<-234x60 Half Banner - left->From what we can see in the pictures already circulating on the Net, the player features a chrome-and-black plastic look, with a nine-point directional pad. X-Fi will also come with an SD card slot and a built-in speaker.

The final specs are not known as of yet, but there’s s number of leaked specs that present the nine-point pad as an alternative way to type text in instant messaging programs such as Windows Live or Yahoo Messenger with the aid of a phone-style typing schema. The device will also use wireless data transfers to share media between home networked computers and access an Internet-based media pool, called a Public Home Server.

The player is named after Creative’s X-Fi audio technology, because it comes with some of the features found in the X-Fi audio cards. These include the restoration of lost data in compressed music files to create concert-like audio effects. In order to benefit from the X-fi technology, users can use the Crystalizer to make audio richer and clearer, and the Expand option which repositions the music to sound like it’s coming from in front of you, simulating listening to a live performance on stage.

No word on pricing and availability.

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EDIROL UA-25EX

Want to make the jump from wacky karaoke to professional singing? Sure, you can go through that American Idol stuff, but in case you really make it to the big stages, make sure your sound team is going to use the best audio hardware. Like the new EDIROL UA-25EX 24bit/96kHz USB Audio Interface.

<-125×125 Button - right->The direct successor of the UA-25 adds pro-grade microphone preamps, a newly developed analog compressor/limiter and ground-lift functionality for studio and stage. EDIROL, a subsidiary of Roland, claims that this is the first audio-interface product to include a ground-lift functionality which is very useful for live and home recording. The UA-25EX is Mac/PC cross-platform compatible and supports WDM, ASIO 2.0, and Mac OS X Core formats. This way, professional sound engineers as well as average users can enjoy low-latency audio performance on both platforms.

The device also comes bundled with Cakewalk Production Plus Pack CD-ROM, including the popular SONAR LE recording/composing application.

Here’s a list of the connectors you’ll be getting:

Front PanelInput
- Jack L, R: XLR type (balanced, phantom power +48 V), 1/4 inch TRS phone type (balanced)
- Input Jack R: high impedance is supported
- Headphone Jack: Stereo 1/4 inch phone type
Rear Panel
- Digital Input Connector: Optical type
- Digital Output Connector: Optical type
- Output Jack L, R: 1/4 inch TRS phone type (balanced), RCA phono type
- MIDI Connectors: IN/OUT
- USB Connector: B type

For more details, check out EDIROL’s official page.

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Singing Tesla Coils

I remember seeing some Tesla coils singing last year. I mean don’t get any weird ideas… they don’t have a voice of their own. They can only be used as plasma arc speakers. Plasma arc speakers have been around for some time now, but they are very pricey. Tesla coils are much larger versions, producing some cool visual effects with the emitted sounds. It’s almost like having a Winamp visualizer included in the coils for each sound emitted. The visual part is represented, of course, by those electric arcs bursting into cool patterns every time the sound frequency changes. ArcAttack took a couple of Tesla coils and transformed them into world’s first Singing Tesla Coils High-Voltage DJ system.

<-180x150 Small Rectangle - right->ArcAttack is among the first AV-DJ groups to use such intriguing sound-producing methods. The two Tesla coils they use can produce sounds similar to those original analogue synthesizers which were very popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

The following clip was shot at Flipside 2008 by Sean Savage. It depicts the ArcAttack team playing “Popcorn” on their High-Voltage DJ system. Keep in mind that this is no music-synchronied light show, as the arcs themselves are playing the synthesizer part and if you get too close to them you might be “rewarded” with some nice toasty wounds.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheesebikini/2571801909/

For more clips check out the ArcAttack official site.

Additionally, you might want to take a look at these two clips that present some other singing Tesla coils:

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MacGyver Watch

Back with another one of those block rockin’ beats… erm, I mean cool and feature-packed watches. This time, the watch is said to be the exact copy of MacGyver’s fancy timepiece that helped him escape some nasty situations during his televised adventures.

The MacGyver watch is not another iteration of the Swiss army knife, but knows some audio tricks. It sports a 5-mode audio equalizer, 3-D stereo sound, built-in voice recorder, integrated USB cable, and thumb drive to store and transfer data. Skullcandy is responsible for the integration of the music player into MacGyver’s watch. The company is also known for their audio-integrated lifestyle products, such as backpacks with built-in speakers and snow helmets with iPod controls, so the MacGuyver watch comes is no surprise.

Other features include MP3 and WAV playback, USB 1.1 flash storage, an automatic power-off battery (what’s the use?). Furthermore, the watch is shock proof/static proof and packs a built-in microphone/voice recorder in case you want to go the spy way.

If it doesn’t let you hook up some Sennheiser headphones, it ain’t that good. But they don’t specify that, so if you want to try and see this for yourself, you have to spend $199.

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