Top stories

Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

World’s Biggest iPod Speaker Available for Pre-Order

wall_of_sound

Powered by good old valves, the Wall of Sound iPod Speaker claims to the most powerful iPod speaker available.

It’s for “people who believe that music should be listened to loudly,” the company’s website says. “It looks frightening, and it IS frightening.”

Handmade by a company called by Brothers of Stockholm, the first edition of this monster speaker is sold out, so the company is taking pre-orders for a second gen speaker. Only $4,495.00 — sign up here.

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leander Kahney.

11 comments

    It’s not as impressive when you convert to inches and notice that it’s a Nano iPod in the dock.

    H 37.4″ W 49.2″ D 11.8″
    Weight 224.8 lbs
    125Watts

    Not worth $4495

    Tube amplified?!
    Has to be joke…

    Excellent for my Grateful Dead play list.

    LOLz

    Welcome to the 60’s… again. All we’re missing is the wood grain cabbies. And a sense of humor.

    Tubes are sweet. I have a buddy who runs his mac mini audio through a tube amp and it sounds superb!! It is too bad the price of admission is so high. :(

    Pre Ordered!!!!! Dont Show your ignorance if you Haven’t heard a Tube powered Amp and only know to chips today, its the difference between real Sugar and Corn Syrup.

    Yeah it’s big – but can it go to 11??

    $4,495.00 for an ipod speaker? Anyone? hmm… i thought so…

    Apparently there aren’t a lot of audiophiles in this forum. A tube amplified speaker is by far superior then any other kind of speaker on the market. A tube speaker is able to generate a deeper warmer sound and also will have a deeper more fully developed and richer sound with no sound distortion in both bass or treble no matter how loud its cranked then any off the rack conical driven speaker could ever hope to have. Any audiophile worth his salt will choose a tube amplified speaker over a mass market conical speaker.

    As for the price I don’t know anything about Brothers of Stockholm so I can’t really comment about whether their product is worth the money or not but a high end tube driven speaker can run as high as 10 000 plus a speaker and as low as 5000 on the low end. For a die hard audiophile 4500 for a speaker is a drop in the bucket so the price isn’t as outrageous if you look at it from an audiophiles point of view. As I said though I’ve never heard of this company before and I would have to actually hear the speaker to render judgment.

    If the company is trying to cater to audiophiles with ipods I think its a lost cause for the simple reason true audiophiles don’t use ipods to truly appreciate their music. They use full blown costly stereo system set ups that can run anywhere from 20 000 on the low end to well over 100 000 on the high end plus the playing media of choice is always vinyl. AAC and MP3 are dirty words in the audiophile world.

    If you guys want to see what I mean I suggest you check out the following site below as an example of what I’m talking about. McIntosh audio is my favorite system and I dream of one day having one of their systems in my home. They bring incredible bang for the buck in that a 20 or 30 000 McIntosh system can and has been able to outshine some of the more pricier systems which run as high as 70 000 bucks.

    http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/

    Can you “real” adiophiles tell how to drive 28 speakers (16 of them big bass speakers) with one tiny little tube amp? 125 watts total from that tiny amp? Or is there amp for each speaker? Gimme a break. And they advertise this “loud”?

    (shakes head)
    When I was talking about tube speakers I was speaking in general terms and not commenting specifically about the wall of sound speaker. Don’t be such a loud mouth and the next time you decide to post try reading the whole discussion thread so you don’t come off as a retarded 14 year old. Shheshhh

Add your comment

Name(Required)

Mail (required, but not published)

Website

Comment

Buy Inside Steve's Brain Buy from Amazon.com Buy from Barnes & Noble