speakers - page 3

Huge Pumping Speaker Reminds Us How Cool Sony Used To Be

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Remember back in the 1980s and some of the 1990s, when Sony made the coolest stuff around? Tiny Walkmans, awesome Hi8 video cameras and even some decent slimline (PC) laptop computers. Then it all went wrong, when Apple reinvented the Walkman as the iPad.

I’m not trying to say that the new Ultra Premium Hi-Res Bluetooth Speaker is about to turn the company around, but it is a reminder of what we used to love about Sony.

Allo, The All-In-One Bike Speaker And iPhone Mount

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Here we go: Just as the spring eases into the seasonal throne and forces winter to curl up and pretend to be a footstool for the next three months, along comes the Allo, a combination bike mount and speaker for your iPhone. It’s a Kickstarter project, but as the expected delivery date is May, you should get one in time for summer.

BassJump 2: The Tiny Subwoofer That Greatly Improves Your MacBook’s Sound [Review]

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As laptop speakers go, those built into Apple’s MacBooks aren’t bad — particularly if you have a MacBook Pro. But they can be so much better. Plug Twelve South’s BassJump 2 into one of your USB ports and you have a mini sound-system that dramatically improves your MacBook’s audio performance.

BassJump 2 by Twelve South
Category: Audio
Works With: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro
Price: $69.99

Whether you’re listening to music, watching a movie, or just enjoying a podcast, the BassJump 2 subwoofer gives you significantly richer and fuller sound that you won’t believe is coming from your MacBook. There’s no need for expensive external speakers that take up too much room in your bag, or headphones that limit the experience to just one person.

The BassJump 2 is priced at $69.99, and Twelve South calls it “an essential road tool for listening to and editing tracks on the tour bus, hotel room or anyplace else your music takes you.” Now, I’m no musician or music producer — but I definitely agree.

Grace Encore, The Wi-Fi Speaker From the ’80s

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Black-ash finish? Check. Big four-inch woofer? Check. Plenty of knobs and dials and even a built-in screen? Check, check, check! If you were to glance sideways at the Grace Encore (GDI-IRC7500) Stereo System whilst simultaneously taking some experimental military drug that altered your perception of time, you’d think that the Encore was from the 1980s.

FAVI Radio-Free iPhone SpeakerStand Is Perfect For The Kitchen

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The FAVI may look kind of dumb, but I have a use-case for it right now: Whenever I play music or podcasts in my kitchen, I use a Bluetooth speaker. This means first getting the speaker to talk to the iPhone, and then it means finding a safe spot in the kitchen where my iPhone won’t get killed by spills.

The FAVI solves both these problems, by being a stand which connects wirelessly to your iPhone when you set it down on the cradle.

Snail Speaker: Guess What It Looks Like

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We’ve seen several horn speakers here on Cult of Mac, and made at least as many schoolboyish horn jokes. But to my knowledge this is the first speaker that looks like an acoustic amplifying horn, but is in fact just a regular novelty speaker. It’s also probably the only gadget we’ve featured that has “trendy” as a bullet point on its feature list.

And finally, it looks like a snail.

iLoud Bluetooth Guitar Speaker Rawks [Review]

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iLoud by IK Multimedia
Category: Speakers
Works With: Anything
Price: $300

To save time, here’s my advice: If you have an iPad or iPhone, a guitar and $300 to spend, then spend it on the iLoud. It’s a small, portable Bluetooth speaker that is way louder than any other Bluetooth speaker, and it lets you plug in your guitar and use your iPhone – wirelessly – to add effects using an app like IK Multimedias’s AmpliTube.

More importantly, the iLoud rocks.

Bem’s Retro Radio-Style Speaker Separates Into Stereo Sections

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Bem’s upcoming Wireless Speaker Duo is great in all kinds of ways. First, it looks like an old-timey radio, complete with rounded edges and simple bent-metal handle. Second, it has proper playback control buttons on the top. And third, it contains two speakers which can be popped out and separated to make a stereo pair, before being returned to the base for charging.

Eton’s Solar-Powered Rukus Speakers Now Bigger, Badder And More Efficient [CES 2014]

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The aerodynamic Rukus Xtreme on the left, Rukus II on the right. Photo: Eli Milchman.

 

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LAS VEGAS — Eton has improved the wedge-shaped, solar-powered Rukus Bluetooth speaker it introduced just over six months ago, and are now calling it the Rukus II; they’ve also built a second, bigger, badder (and more expensive) version they’ve naturally dubbed the Rukus Xtreme.

Braven’s Wi-Fi Vibe Station Turns Your Bluetooth Speakers Into A Multi-Room Sound System [CES 2014]

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CES 2014 bug Cult of Mac favorite Braven is showing off a wireless speaker at CES this year. It’s totally not what you’re expecting, though: The Vibe System is a range of hybrid Bluetooth/Wi-Fi speakers that can be used individually – hooked up to your iDevices – or in multiroom concert, Sonos-style. And being from Braven, it all runs away from mains power.

SpeeCup, A Bluetooth Speaker That Sits In Cupholders [CES 2014]

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CES 2014 bug If there’s one thing the fine citizens of the United States love in their cars it’s cup holders. God knows why a car needs like 20 places to stow a bucket of coffee or soda, but it does. Which means, ironically, that the average U.S car has an average of 16[1] cup holders empty at any one time.

Thankfully, the SpeeCup is here to fill up at least one of them, although given the amount of free cup-holder space available, it seems almost silly to combine a speaker, a Siri-enabled mic and a cup-shaped vessel into just one single gadget.

Kanto YU2 Media Speakers: Astounding, Room-Wrecking Sound From Small Speakers [Review]

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YU2 by Kanto
Category: media speakers
Price: $229

Kanto’s YU2s seem to come from a time when speakers were solid, simple structures; proud temples to sound that said of their owners, Hey, I’m serious about music, and I know what I’m doing. Aesthetics were important, of course, but unquestioningly took a backseat to sound. Sound was king.

If you haven’t heard of Kanto before, that’s OK — the Canadian outfit just sprouted up in the Vancouver suburbs around five years ago. The YU2s are Kanto’s latest speakers, the smallest of their lineup of a half-dozen or so, and they’re designed to fit unobtrusively on a bookshelf or desk and play music from your computer or mobile device.

The YU2’s performance during our review, however, was nothing short of astonishing — and they could very capably substitute for larger speakers in a variety of roles.

Hidden Radio 2 Has Touch Controls, Bigger Bass, Stereo

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In our original Hidden Radio review, we said that the little twist-to-open Bluetooth speaker looked great, but sounded a little tinny and lacked any way to control playback and iPhone volume from the unit itself.

These have bother been fixed on the new Hidden Radio 2, but the speaker (and radio) [UPDATE: The Hidden Radio 2 no longer contains a radio] still looks as great as ever.

Atoll’s SoundPad Looks Too Good to Be True

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Atoll’s SoundPad is a smart cover for the iPad Air with a set of built-in speakers. It costs $130, and snaps onto the iPad with Magnets. It’s flexible, and it connects to your iDevice via Bluetooth. And that is all the information available, which makes me a little suspicious.

Wren’s Awesome V5 AirPlay Speaker Now Available In BlueTooth

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Wren’s V5AP is still one of my favorite AirPlay speakers, but recently I’ve been kinda off the whole AirPlay thing thanks to an the crazy East German walls of my apartment building. These walls are too crumbly to let me drill a proper hole for even a coat hook, but somehow thick and dense enough to confuse even a strong dual-band Wi-Fi signal. To recap: AirPlay speakers just won’t stay connected.

Thankfully, Wren now offers a Bluetooth version of the big, booming V5, called the V5BT, and it promises to be pretty good.

The iRecorder, An iPhone Speaker Styled Like a 1980s Cassette Player

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Remember back when a button was a button, and not a skeuomorphic touch-screen fake complete with drop shadows and gradients? Me too. Back in the 1980s and beyond, kids had tougher fingers thanks to all the button-pushing that went on, not like the kids of today with their weak twiglets which threaten to snap if they squeeze their in–0line remote’s play/pause “button” too hard.

Which is my way of saying that you can keep your pathetic modern-day children from playing any music by simply loading your iPhone into this retro-tastic iRecorder.

Edifier Unveils Tech-Packed, Curvacious Luna Eclipse Bluetooth Speakers

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Edifier is a lesser-known company with roots in China, and a design lab in Vancouver, British Columbia. While Edifier speakers have seen table time in Apple stores in the past, they seem to be making a bigger push here in the States within the last year or two.

Their latest set is the e25 Luna Eclipse, Bluetooth-equipped speakers stuffed with some trick tech and 74 watts of power per channel — at the upper end for a set of desktop media speakers.