New Products

Puro Sound Labs, maker of wireless headphones for kids, today announced a wireless headphone for adults that monitors volume and reports the level in decibels (dB).

I know you don’t want to be the guy or gal who gives questionable—OK, useless— presents. Apart from the awkward head-nodding and forced smiles, the act of giving a bogus gift reflects badly on you, as in: I ran in Target a quarter to five on Christmas Eve and grabbed the first [tie/sweater/gloves/underwear] I saw. Don’t go there! We’ve already screened a dozen gifts for you at prices starting as low as 30 bucks. All you have to do is find a match for that special person(s) on your list. How hard can that be?

If you’re French, you don’t just build a speaker, you build a French speaker—one that takes design seriously. So seriously that you might end up with a speaker that looks nothing at all like a traditional (boring) speaker. La Boite Concept made a name for itself in Europe with the imaginative High-Fidelity Laptop Dock, a small desk featuring an integral sound system and high-quality USB DAC. The Cube is an extension of that concept that would seem to be ideally suited for small living spaces.

Klipsch is hailing its new flagship in-ear headphone as the brand’s “most revealing” in-ear design to date.

Imagine if you could focus sound the same way you beam light from a flashlight. Think of the possibilities. You could direct sound to Bill, and Betty, who’s sitting right next to him, wouldn’t hear a thing. Sort of like headphones without…uh… the ’phones.

It might take a minute to process what you’re looking at. Those squiggly figures are not pieces from a life-size puzzle, and you won’t find them in the gift shop at Muir Woods (or some other rustic destination). Nope. What you see is the brainchild of Sia Rezaei, who had been building speakers as a hobby until he took on the challenge of making “some awesome desktop speakers” back in 2010.

Walking the aisles of last week’s CEDIA Expo I stumbled upon the Whisper II TV lift from Touchstone of Exton, PA.