Even the BeachSafe won’t save you if you leave it alone on the beaches of Barcelona, but it’s still a pretty neat idea. It’s a tote bag that folds out to make a seat for sitting on the sand. Slide your towel out of its compartment, fill that compartment with sand (for ballast) using the built-in scoop and secure the bag’s opening with a combination lock. It won’t stop anyone from making off with the whole thing, but I like the idea of a combo bag/seat, whether it’s safe or not. €60
Cult of Mac Deals has some stellar promotions lined up right now, whether you’re looking to up your storage or improve your audio recordingsby adding an external quality microphone to your workflow.
For a limited time you can get the Nifty MiniDrive, which lets you add up to 128GB of storage space to your MacBook Pro Retina for only $35.99 and a top-notch microphone in the form of the Blue Yeti can be yours for 20% off the regular price – just $117!
Listening to your favorite music through a good pair of stereo headphones can make it sound like you’re hearing it for the first time. With the Bluetooth-enabled Air-Fi Matrix2, take that experience anywhere.
Have you been looking for in-ear headphones that look and sound good? This Cult of Mac Deals offer brings you modern design that you can hear.
The New Spark Hi-Def In-Ear Headphones deliver full, resonating bass, intense mid-range, and clear, defined treble sure to bring a smile to any audiophile’s face. With precision acoustics, unique, modern design, and precise ergonomic fit, these headphones come ready to play and your going to love what you hear! And the pricing – only $37.99 – can’t be beat!
Last week, a speech recognition developer found a potential exploit in the Chrome web browser that could possibly let malicious web sites activate your Mac’s microphone and listen in on any sounds your mic might pick up around you. Even if you’re not actively using your computer, the mic could be active and conversations, meetings, and phone calls could potentially be recorded or listened in on.
Luckily, there’s a way to keep this from happening, because–however remote the possibility–it’s always a good idea to keep your private information, including real-world conversations, private.
Of course, if you don’t use the Chrome browser at all, this won’t apply to you.
Audio accessory maker Zoom launched its iQ5 microphone this week — providing a nifty, Lightning-connected solution for users looking to record high quality audio with their iOS devices.
The Earjax® Echo is a Bluetooth speaker that truly embodies simplicity and functionality. About the size of an 8oz can of soda, you can pair it with your phone, tablet, or MP3 player and take music with you wherever you go.
Time to come clean: I play guitar and sing in a disco band. I know, I know, the backlash against that kind of music has been going on since 1977. Trust me, I know.
But the way people respond to this still-valid, we-use-real-instruments form of music is so much better than the way they used to when I played guitar in modern or classic rock bands. In those days, the most reaction I’d see in an audience was a foot tap, or maybe–if I was lucky–a head bob or two. Happy, gorgeous people dancing their butts off? So much more fun.
iKlip 2 by IK Multimedia Category: iPad Cases & Accessories Works With: iPad 2, 3, 4 Price: $39.99
Now, playing in a cover band requires knowing a lot of music, like the chords for the 50 plus songs that we play. As I also take on half the lead singing duties, so I’m required to know the lyrics as well. I don’t do this for a living; I do it for fun and some beer and gear money. I don’t have tons of time to memorize all those songs, let alone the new ones we learn every few months. So I use lyric sheets. I used to use them on paper, but boy is that annoyingly old school and easily lost.
Now I use my iPad (and an amazing app called GigBook) to organize and keep track of my lyric sheets. And I also use the incomparable iKlip 2 iPad holder to attach that iPad to the microphone stand right in front of me.
And I’m not just a podcaster that sits at home and records on my MacBook Air with my Blue Spark Digital microphone. I’m a podcaster that likes to record on the go. That means I need to have something that allows me to record top-notch sound in a portable package.
So when I team up my iPhone with the iRig iMic, I’m able to do what I do…and do it well.
Nestled amid the gentle rolling hills of my old stomping ground of Westlake Village sits Blue Microphones, little more than a half hour north of Los Angeles. There’re actually two lakes in the area: beautiful Lake Sherwood, and the grubby, man-made boating pond of Westlake Lake. Neither, to my recollection, has ever had a reported sighting of a monster.
Blue Microphones’s new USB mic is named “Nessie,” which I guess means now the area has at least one lake monster. Only in this case it’s the good, super-friendly kind of monster.
If you’re active you know how many pairs of headphones you can blow through in a given year, so a nice extra set is always needed. This Cult of Mac Deals offer has just what you’re looking for – and at price you’re looking for as well.
These headphones combine high quality sound output with scientifically developed sound isolation that creates a music listening experience you won’t be disappointed with – especially for just $15.
Google has brought the new voice search features announced at Google I/O last week to its Google Chrome web browser for desktops. The latest version of the app (version 27) puts a little microphone icon alongside the search bar on Google.com which lets you find the things you’re looking for without touching your keyboard.
Apogee is the first name that pops into my head when I think “mobile, Mac-powered music-making studio.” Today, the company has revamped three of their user-friendly recording devices: the One, the Quartet and the Duet, upgrading their capabilities and making them all iPad-compatible.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Samson’s iQ5 is a Lightning-connected stereo mic which rotates to give proper left and right channels whether you’re shooting in landscape or portrait.
That’s right – Samson is enabling portrait-format video. Shame on them.
Just like Blue Microphone’s non-digital Spark, the new, Digital Spark microphone has been put together with an armful of we’re-not-playing-around components and features. Things like a beefed-up condenser capsule, a Focus selector that toggles between a low-frequency bias and a detail bias, and an adjustable desk stand with shock mount. But this Spark is built for iPads (or iPhones); though its USB connector means it’ll work just fine with your MacBook Pro, iMac, Sony Vaio, Samsung Galaxy Tab or anything else with a USB input.
Phiaton's PS 210: with the included lanyard, also makes a great necklace
The Phiaton PS 210 BTNC ($129) earphones—yes, they named them all that—have all the same functionality as your white Apple earbuds; you can chat with ’em, listen to tunes with ’em, even control your iPhone with ’em. But unlike your white-wired buds, they do all that wirelessly via Bluetooth, and include some sparkly noise-canceling technology that deliver audio to your ears sans a world of ambient sounds.
Discovering great headphones from a company that specializes in making bags was surprisng at first, when we reviewed Incase’s Sonic headphones late last year. A month later we were less stunned when we grunted in approval at their Capsule in-ear ‘phones during our budget(ish) canalphone shootout.
This time around we played with a new denim-clad version of the on-the-ear IncaseReflex headphones ($80) — which sit between the $150 over-the-ear Sonic and the canalphone Capsules — and came away with the impression that the Reflex may very well be the best bang-for-buck of the bunch.
The Tiki, from Blue Mic ($59), is a compact USB microphone designed to give you great audio for Skype calls and voice notes in rooms with even moderate ambient noise. And while Blue is known for creating mics that sound as good as they look, the Tiki’s beauty is only skin deep.
The website and accompanying YouTube channel might come off like a desperate hobo panhandling for cash, but the meat of the iConnectionKit team’s project looks very interesting. They’re working to enable the iPad camera connection kit on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
If you’ve spent much time podcasting, Skyping, recording any kind of audio on your Mac, you’ve no doubt found its built-in microphone woefully inadequate. Well if you’re ready to toss down some Benjamins for an upgrade, the Rode Podcaster Microphone ($230) is a rich-sounding, easy-to-use option you should consider.
If you caught our canalphone roundup a few weeks back, you’ve by now come to the accurate realization that there’s no shortage of real alternatives to those awful white buds bundled with each iPhone. But these two are a little different.
Like the five we reviewed that week, these two pairs of IEMs — the MEElectronics CC51 ($90) and the Thinksound ts02+mic ($110)— are higher-end, designed with superior sound quality in mind and cost around $100. But unlike the others, these two are from small, boutique manufacturers; they also both have housings made from exotic materials (the CC51’s is ceramic, while the ts02’s is wood), and eschew the inline volume controls of the pairs of reviewed in the $100 IEM week, instead making do with a single control button on their inline microphones.
Take a gander at the flock of reader comments under any canalphone review and one thing should become quickly apparent: canalphones are kinda flimsy.
The few chances we’ve been given to play with V-Moda’s creations have given us the solid impression that the company is paying much closer attention to the survivability of its canalphones; and that maybe they’re paying more attention to that factor than any other outfit. In fact, the three-button, microphone-equipped V-Moda Remix Remote ($80) seems like it should be the most bombproof canalphone in its range — and it hasn’t proved us wrong yet.
There’s nothing quite like the bliss of simply plugging a gadget into a slot and being rewarded with superb performance; and if the gadget happens to exude raw sex appeal, even better. Sounds familiar, right? Because that pretty much describes Apple’s entire lineup. It’s also a perfect description for the dynamic Samson Meteor Mic ($99).
In 2009, Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics (Blue) released the Yeti, a wonderfully talented little microphone that many, especially many podcasters, took notice of then proceeded to fall in love with. The Yeti was beautiful, dead-simple to use, and very Mac friendly. Yeti was also the first USB mic to allow users to record in any one of four different polar patterns (four I say!) making it incredibly versatile. And now, with the Yeti Pro, Blue is making their hit mic even better.
