Tag Archives : sound
How to Check Google+ Notifications from Google Chrome
Another Google+ tip. Chrome extension, to be precise. You can now add a small notification checker extension in Google Chrome which displays your new notifications number and will take you to Google+.
Not just this. This extension now also supports desktop notifications and sound. Google+ Notification Checker is a very simple Chrome extension that displays the number of unread notifications in Google+.
Download Google+ Notification Checker
You can download this Chrome extension from here: Download Google+ Notification Checker
Filed in: Google, Tips & Tricks
SoundBite hearing aid transmits sound through your teeth and bones
The SoundBite is a hearing aid for people who have single-sided deafness. Rather than amplifying sound like a traditional hearing aid, however, this one transmits it wirelessly to a unit attached to the wearer’s molar, sending vibrations through the teeth and jawbone.
It’s a pretty interesting solution, and apparently is much better than the previous solutions for single-sided deafness. And since it doesn’t require surgery, it’s a completely non-invasive treatment. With clinical trials showing patients getting 80 to 100 percent of their hearing back, it should become the [...]
Filed in: Tech News
‘Color a Sound’ turns projector transparencies into sheet music
Boy, something like this would have made class a lot more interesting — and musical. Blair Neal’s “Color a Sound” uses transparent sheets (just like teacher used to use) sliding across an overhead projector to act as sheet music, while the different colors and shapes of markings act as the notes. You control the tempo yourself with a crank, and the projector-boombox can even change to making drum beats for something a little funkier.
Check out “Color a Sound” in action in the video below.
Filed in: Tech News
Sylvania combines speakers and light bulbs, oddly
While Sylvania isn’t the first to combine light bulbs and speakers, the idea is sound. Okay, sorry. But consider the placement of a couple of lamps in your living room. Wouldn’t those locations also be suitable for speakers? Yes? Then MusicLite is for you.
Each one of these fixtures has an array of LEDs on board that emit as much light as a 65-watt incandescent, while cranking out 25 watts of sound at the same time. The speakers are all connected wirelessly, and can be placed 90 feet away from each other. Hide a subwoofer under the couch, and you’re ready to rock.
Too bad you’ll [...]
Filed in: Tech News
Review: MK Sound S150 THX Ultra
The only trouble with truly durable performance-bred professional items is that they don’t need upgrading or replacing too often. Which might be why Miller & Kreisel, renamed MK Sound after a restructuring a while back, now sells regular consumer speaker systems.
These S150 THX cabinets aren’t to be underestimated, though; they’re big boxes that sound rich, sweet, damned loud and breathtakingly dynamic.
In the jungle
The children’s ‘toon Madagascar is a great test disc, with the surround mix provoking a lovely sense of Africa, and this MK Sound array revelled [...]
Filed in: Tech News
Guide: How to make a USB soundcard
Everyone has dreamt of being able to save the day by swooping in and helping that damsel in distress out, by plugging in that vital USB sound card when the sound fails on her laptop in the middle of an important product briefing. Haven’t they? Just me then?
Daydream aside, the useful nugget of information we have to part with today, is that cheap throwaway USB headset you have lying at the bottom of a drawer can offer a useful life-enhancing function: working as a USB sound card.
The fact is, to connect and work via the USB it has to offer the analogue to digital conversion done by a [...]
Filed in: Tech News
Review: Astin Trew AT2000Plus
‘Designed in Britain’, says the literature for the Astin Trew AT2000Plus – though construction is actually Chinese.
Wherever it was put together, though, this amp offers some impressive material value for money. Indeed, it seems to tick an unusually large number of boxes.
Valves, multiroom capability, front-panel MP3 input, balanced input and output, high-grade coupling capacitors (along with some fancy cable, contributing to the ‘plus’ bit of the model name). If Astin Trew wants this to look like the amp for everyone, its doing well so far.
As always, the big question [...]
Filed in: Tech News
How to get a 3D HDTV for $100
Unless you live in a cave, you know that 3D TV is coming, and that to watch it you’ll need a new — and pricey — TV.
Or will you? As our friend and Sound & Vision alum John Sciacca observes in this blog post, there may be an alternative for cheapos.
The answer is to get a 3D-ready DLP TV for cheap, then bank on an announced (but still to come) device that will magically make your TV compatible with the new 3D Blu-ray standard. The device is expected to cost about $100. So, for example, if you picked up the Mitsubishi WD-65737 for about $1,000 (used models sell for about that [...]
Filed in: Tech News
Review: Amphion Helium 510
This ice-cold, sharp-edged, black-on-white two-way standmount loudspeaker sounds smooth, evenhanded and essentially neutral. The baby brother of the larger Amphion Helium 520 floorstanding loudspeaker, the 510 also includes the best bits of its elder sibling, the key component being the ‘waveguide’ surrounding the tweeter.
A variation on the horn theme, with a truncated throat and a very wide flare, it loads the tweeter and has several benefits. One is that it allows the crossover point to be an octave lower than usual (at around 1.6kHz), which moves it below the most critical part [...]
Filed in: Tech News