The CES show is just inundated with headphones and earbuds. Seems the only way some people think to break through the clutter is to add celebrity endorsements. One company, tucked away in the back of the convention floor is taking an entirely different approach.
While it’s always a party at CES, this year was something special for Audio-Technica. They’re here celebrating “50 Years of Passionate Listening” with five limited edition headphones and phono cartridges debuting here.
Sound bars are a great solution to an age-old problem – how to add a decent-looking and decent-sounding system to enhance the clean, minimalistic look of your flat-screen TV. The problem is that they can sound pretty crappy – mainly thin and tinny unless you add a subwoofer. And there goes that nice, clean minimalistic look.
The 2012 Grammy Awards — "music’s biggest night" — was certainly a unique evening of entertainment. As Reba (when did she lose her last name?) pointed out, it brought together so many different aspects of the music industry. Where else would you find hip-hop newbies rubbing elbows with old-school crooners?
When I first saw the AfterShokz headphones at the 2012 International CES, I knew the company was onto something. Instead of going in or over the ear, these use bone conduction technology, borrowed from the Navy SEALs. AfterShokz rest in front of the ear, and use the jawbone to convey sound into the middle ear. I had a suspicion my father —a retired electrical engineer with a background in aeronautics, an audiophile from way back, and one of the original gadget gurus —would love them.
A Princess of Mars was the first serial novel published by adventure writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Tarzan guy) almost exactly 100 years ago. It’s a classic tale: Civil War veteran is mysteriously transported into the midst of two warring cultures, of course, with a beautiful woman to be saved. Hmm, countless sci-fi films and more than a few Western flicks have borrowed that theme. Most recently and notably, James Cameron has said that A Princess of Mars (which he read as a child) was his inspiration for Avatar. Here’s the problem: Once so many others have copied it, the original feels — oddly enough — derivative. Despite all that, Disney gambled that Princess had enough life left to kickstart a new franchise.
If you’ve ever tried to jazz up a party with the speaker built into your iPhone, you know how pathetic that can sound. These days, everyone is coming out with portable speaker systems (don’t call them boomboxes!) for MP3 players, but they all require one thing: Power. Now, we all love power, but AC power isn’t always available where we want to party (eg. poolside or the beach).
By any measure, Disney’s enjoyable Mars epic John Carter was a fiscal fiasco, netting only $72 million in the US and $282.4 million total worldwide, barely clearing its $250 million price tag. Ouch.
It’s no secret that here at Sound+Vision, we’re fans of Slacker Radio — I’ve been singing their praises since they first launched. Now there’s a new reason to love Slacker. While it’s easy to create your own stations personalized for your own tastes in music, Slacker has just announced a new free station, Bass and Beats, that is designed to showcase “the best low frequency tracks ever.”