Grace Notes

They say you get what you pay for. With budget audio products, that’s rarely a good thing. Finding a pair of true wireless earphones for under $50 is a rare thing, and finding ones with acceptable sound quality is even rarer. I had a chance to check out the TaoTronics SoundLiberty 53 earphones that retail for $45. Let’s see what just under fifty bucks gets you these days.

When you’re going truly wireless, your only option is to use Bluetooth, so it has to be the best quality that Bluetooth affords. The new Cleer Ally earphones use Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX, so for the moment, they're pretty much as good as it gets.

When Dirac Research releases a new product, it always causes our ears to perk up. The company that made great strides in reference room-correction software has just released Dirac 3D Audio, an software solution that delivers 360-degree surround sound via any standard headphone or gaming headset.

I’ve always wanted to be a hipster. However, the reality is that I’m too curvy for skinny jeans, I like having brakes and gears on my bicycle, and I prefer Nespresso’s convenience to single-origin third wave pour-over coffee. And while I appreciate vinyl, I equally appreciate the convenience and portability of digital music files. How do I get my music both ways? With the Denon DP-450USB turntable that easily creates WAV or MP3 files from my beloved vinyl collection, I can get my music however I want. Totally hip.

After SiriusXM purchased Pandora for $3.5 billion in February, there was a bit of speculation about how each company would benefit each other. Today, the first evidence of the collaboration launched with the unveiling of Pandora NOW, the first Pandora station available on the SiriusXM platform featuring the most-played music currently trending on Pandora.

Get ready Detroit. Dust off your guitar, warm up those vocal chords. No, American Idol isn’t holding auditions. The music streaming service TIDAL is now accepting applications for a $1 million grant program designed to discover and develop new musical talent in Detroit.

It’s quite tragic; a Stradivarius violin creates arguably the most beautiful musical sounds created by man, but it’s only a limited time before the instrument goes to sleep, to be silenced forever. After producing brilliant sounds and melodies for centuries, the tone of the violin changes and it becomes too fragile and delicate to play; effectively the instrument is silenced in deep slumber. Fortunately, phase one of an ambitious project has just wrapped up in an attempt to save the sound of a precious few of these string instruments for generations to come.