Audio/Video, Home Theater

Roland makes the Edirol R-09 which works nicely for recording live music events, recitals, and rehearsals. It’s also handy as a songwriter’s sketchpad, ensuring that no moment of inspiration is lost. But the R-09 has many valuable uses outside of the music world as well. Students can use it to record lectures. Broadcasters and journalists can throw away their antiquated cassette recorders and use the R-09 for in-the-field interviews.

I would use the Edirol R-09 to help write the next great classic cowboy song… I’ve had this in my head for some reason:
Blue shadows on the trail,
Soft wind blowin' through the trees above,
All the other little cowboys,
Back in the bunkhouse now, so
close your eyes and dream...

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Edirol R-09 WAVE/MP3 RecorderRead More »

The venerable Mvix player and enclosure took a quantum leap forward in ability and coolness. First, it’s a drive enclosure…you have to supply your own hard drive…, but you can put any size 3.5″ IDE hard drive. Any size. What size you got? Trust me, that’ll fit. Second, it connects to your network either via Ethernet or 802.11b/g/pre-N MIMO. Third, it’s a media player that connects to your HDTV via composite, component, s-video or DVI.

What you want more? Okay, how about it’s massive file support? It can do Mpeg-1/2/4, VOB, WMV 9, DivX, and Xvid. It’ll play your MP3’s, WMA’s, AAC’s, Ogg files, or straight-up WAV and AC3. It can do it all from its internal hard drive, an external USB drive, or even stream off of your other computers over the network.

More? Wow, you’re greedy! Okay, it will also display your photos for you, showing you a happy little slideshow while you listen to your music files.

Last, but not least, it will do all this while upsampling to 1920 x 1080i.

Hey, quit drooling on your keyboard. The Geeks have a review coming soon along with the official launch of Mvix Community… go ahead over to the community and sign up to learn more about the Mvix player and to check out the latest on the product.

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Mvix Wireless HD MV-760HD Media CenterRead More »

If the this diminutive H4 audio recorder had it’s own infomercial it would be one of those 30 minute jobs listing features out the yin-yang. But because you’re a good friend we’re ditching the marketing mumbo-jumbo and cutting straight to the chase. Basically the H4 is a portable field recorder that does everything you would expect, plus a bunch of other things you didn’t. Of course you can record straight from the two built in studio-quality electret condenser microphones direct to .wav or .mp3 format with bitrates up to 320kbps. Perfect for recording those live shows. But you can also jack-in some external-mics or an electric guitar or two and do your own impromptu digital 4-track recording… then monitor the whole mess with the built-in headphone jack. You can even connect the H4 to your computer with USB and record directly to your hard drive.

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H4 Pocket-Size Digital Audio RecorderRead More »

We’ve all seen the huge boxes that stores 100s of your CDs, so you don’t need to keep popping discs in and out of your CD player or even your 6-disc changer. Well, DVDs are all the rage, and unlike bulky VHS tapes or even huge Laserdiscs, they have a form factor that allows for mass storage and access in a box that is just a little larger than today’s typical AV receiver. The Sony 400-disc DVD player not only up-scales DVDs to 1080p, in many different formats (DVD-RW/-R/+RW/+R), but also CDs (including CD-RW/-R), MP3 CDs, JPEGs on disc, and even VCDs and SVCDs.

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Sony 400-Disc DVD/CD ChangerRead More »

Home multimedia streaming devices are all the rage, and manufacturers are falling over themselves to create something to fit the category. Here’s another one: the Logitech® Wireless DJâ„¢ Music System. This one doesn’t require a home network. You plug a little transceiver into a USB port on your computer, install some software, then plug a receiver into your stereo system with RCA jacks. Then you can use the remote control to pick the music on your PC that you want to play on your stereo. Cake.

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Logitech Wireless DJ Music SystemRead More »

This as-expensive-as-a-small-car vinyl turntable doesn’t have a USB connector like the Ion iTTUSB Turntable so that you can digitize your record collection, because that would be defeating one of the points of it. The ELP Turntable doesn’t use a standard needle to read those grooves in your vinyl records, but a laser. I can just hear Dr. Evil now… Japan’s ELP Corp is banking on music afficionados, audiophiles, wanting to hear their music in all of its audio glory, and getting to preserve their records from further damage by needles that wear and scratch the vinyl surfaces. Did I mention that it comes with a remote control?

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ELP Laser TurntableRead More »