Sep
28
Briefly: iAudio X5 bass fall-off pt.2, Apple vs the labels pt.124, PVP landscape, Firmware for Zen Micro & iPod shuffle, BPM analyzer
- What the iAudio X5’s line-out bass fall-off (try saying that fast) sounds like (with sound clips; we’ve mentioned this deficiency last week)
- Apple Head Calls Labels ‘Greedy’ For Suggesting iTunes Price Hike (we’ve covered this before, but I’m only posting this for the following: “Speaking on condition of anonymity, one label executive said Jobs’ desire to keep pricing at 99 cents had a very simple explanation: “It helps him sell iPods. When he started iTunes, he broke through that psychological barrier that consumers had and made a lot of dough doing it, but it seems like he has a monopoly and he’s become the Wal-Mart of the Internet, and he wants to retain that monopoly. [...] Music is art; it’s not a commodity,” the source said. “Things that are more relevant command more money. The idea of saying it should all be 99 cents is absurd. Variable pricing is the norm in the music business and every business—even the iPod business.”) [via]
- PVP land: what’s the current landscape looks like? (we’ve got predicted sales of a mere 1.2M media players worldwide this year; the problem is the lack of mainstream content and slow downloads)
- Creative Zen Micro Firmware update 2.20.05 is available (2.34MB; Audible and PlaysForSure improvements, increased battery life thanks to decreased standby mode to 4 hours; note that installing this firmware will erase all the content on your Zen Micro, so please backup first) [via]
- New iPod Software 1.1.2 for iPod shuffle (bug fixes for the Shuffle; note that the iPod Updater 2005-09-23 contains the same software versions as iPod Updater 2005-09-06 for all other iPod models, so no need to bother if you don’t have the screenless device)
- MixMeister BPM Analyzer (determines the exact BPM of any song and writes that info in the BPM tag field; free, small at 667kB, takes a few seconds to analyze each track, supports MP3/WMA/WAV) [via]
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
- Review: FixTunes (September 14, 2006)
- Apple Lossless offerings from the iTMS not likely—for now (June 28, 2006)
- Review: Datasafe oomi (June 7, 2006)
- HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (May 11, 2006)
- Batteries 101 (May 8, 2006)
- Presentation: iPod Hi-Fi, plus a few thoughts (March 2, 2006)
- Presentation/Review: Creative Zen Vision:M (December 9, 2005)
- Review: Alegria Audio Ling bookshelf speaker system (November 9, 2005)
- HOWTO: Put together a $3K audiophile CD player for $555 (October 20, 2005)
- HOWTO: Build the CMoy pocket amplifier (October 16, 2005)