Tag Archives: Audio

Forget Wifi or Bluetooth, Pair Directly With Your Phone’s Speaker

Posted on by

[Kedar Nimbalkar] hyperbolically advertises the ultimate cell phone speaker dock. It costs a dollar. It doesn’t need you to pair with it via Bluetooth or WiFi. It pairs extremely fast, 0.000000000001, he clarifies. It may also look like a broken laptop speaker with a stomped wall wart soldered to it, but who can keep up with industrial design trends these days?

He shows us the device in operation. He starts playing some music on his phone’s speaker. It’s not very loud, so he simply lays the phone on the dock. Suddenly, all the audio fidelity a Dell Lattitude from the …read more

Continue reading Forget Wifi or Bluetooth, Pair Directly With Your Phone’s Speaker→

Death To The 3.5mm Audio Jack, Long Live Wireless

Posted on by

There’s been a lot of fuss over Apple’s move to ditch the traditional audio jack. As for me, I hope I never have to plug in another headphone cable. This may come off as gleeful dancing on the gravesite of my enemy before the hole has even been dug; it kind of is. The jack has always been a pain point in my devices. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky. Money was tight growing up. I would save up for a nice set of headphones or an mp3 player only to have the jack go out. It was a clear betrayal  …read more

Continue reading Death To The 3.5mm Audio Jack, Long Live Wireless→

KEF and Porsche Design Team Up to Build Seriously Stunning Audio Gear

Posted on by

They certainly aren’t cheap, but KEF’s new noise-cancelling headphones, Bluetooth speaker, and wireless earbuds should sound as gorgeous as they look. The post KEF and Porsche Design Team Up to Build Seriously Stunning Audio Gear appeared first on WIRED. Continue reading KEF and Porsche Design Team Up to Build Seriously Stunning Audio Gear→

A Beautiful Turntable With A Heart Of Concrete

Posted on by

On the face of it, playing a vinyl record is a simple process. You simply mount it on a turntable rotating at the right speed, and insert a needle into the groove. A learning exercise for youngsters used to be a passable attempt at a record player on the kitchen table with a pencil, a large cork, a sharpened matchstick, and a piece of paper. It sounded awful, but it demonstrated well how the audio was recorded.

If you have ever looked into the operation of a more conventional turntable though you’ll know that a little more care and attention …read more

Continue reading A Beautiful Turntable With A Heart Of Concrete→

A Real Turn Off

Posted on by

[Newbrain] had a small problem. He’d turn off the TV, but would leave the sound system turned on. Admittedly, not a big problem, but an annoyance, none the less. He realized the TV had a USB port that went off when it did, so he decided to build something that would sense when the USB port died and fake a button press into the amplifier.

He posted a few ideas online and, honestly, the discussion was at least as interesting as the final project. The common thread was to use an optoisolator to sense the 5 V from the USB …read more

Continue reading A Real Turn Off→

From Audio, To 3D Printed Sculpture, And Back Again

Posted on by

Have you ever wondered what a song looks like? What it feels like in your hands?

Those odd questions have an answer that has taken shape over at [Reify], which has developed a way to turn sound waves into 3D-printed sculptures. These visualizations made manifest can be made from any audio — speeches, the ambience of a forest, classical music, a rocket launch — and rendered in coconut husk, plastic, bronze and more.

[Reify]  also works in reverse — they are developing software that allows the observer to scan the sculptures and play back the audio that created it. It’s …read more

Continue reading From Audio, To 3D Printed Sculpture, And Back Again→

Smart Watch Hack Lets You Use Your 3.5mm Headphones With An iPhone 7

Posted on by

As you may have heard, the iPhone 7 is ditching the 3.5 mm headphone jack in the name of progress and courage. Whatever your take on that, it leaves the end user out in the cold if — for instance — their preferred headphones still use the old format. Here to save you from an untimely upgrade is YouTuber [Kedar Nimbalkar], who has modified a Bluetooth Smartwatch to incorporate a 3.5 mm jack to allow continued use your current headphones.

After opening up the smartwatch [Nimbalkar] removes the speaker, solders in a 3.5 mm headphone jack and clips out an …read more

Continue reading Smart Watch Hack Lets You Use Your 3.5mm Headphones With An iPhone 7→

Electrostatic Loudspeakers: High End HiFi You Can Build Yourself

Posted on by

If you have an interest in audio there are plenty of opportunities for home construction of hi-fi equipment. You can make yourself an amplifier which will be as good as any  available commercially, and plenty of the sources you might plug into it can also come into being on your bench.

There will always be some pieces of hi-fi equipment which while not impossible to make will be very difficult for you to replicate yourself. Either their complexity will render construction too difficult as might be the case with for example a CD player, or as with a moving-coil loudspeaker …read more

Continue reading Electrostatic Loudspeakers: High End HiFi You Can Build Yourself→

Electrostatic Loudspeakers: High End HiFi You Can Build Yourself

Posted on by

If you have an interest in audio there are plenty of opportunities for home construction of hi-fi equipment. You can make yourself an amplifier which will be as good as any  available commercially, and plenty of the sources you might plug into it can also come into being on your bench.

There will always be some pieces of hi-fi equipment which while not impossible to make will be very difficult for you to replicate yourself. Either their complexity will render construction too difficult as might be the case with for example a CD player, or as with a moving-coil loudspeaker …read more

Continue reading Electrostatic Loudspeakers: High End HiFi You Can Build Yourself→