Arctic Cooling has recently entered the noise isolating earphone market.  I reviewed the Arctic Sound E361 earphones which proved to be a great solution that I carry daily in my away game bag.  The E352 earphones match the E361 in build and quality and add a touch of style with an attractive wooden chassis.  The E352 do not include a microphone, so these will have to be used for audio only, no iPhone for me.

Click through the break to see how the Arctic Sound E352 earphones stack up. Continue Reading

With my family in Austin, and my work in the San Francisco Bay Area, I both travel a lot, and spend a lot of time on my own.  As a result, I listen to music, podcasts, audio books, and watch a lot of movies and TV on my iPhone (and soon, hopefully, an iPad).

As such–and because I simply can’t stand ear buds–I’m pretty much constantly on the search for some decent headphones.  iFrogz, makers of cases and headphones (and ear buds) for iPods and iPhones, among other things, obviously felt I was suffering, and so into this mix they tossed me a pair of their new Comfort Series headphones, the CS40 (in black, because I’m, ya know, a guy.)  What did I think about them?  Read on!

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So, you’ve got your new Strat, your supply of pics, your cables, your cool shades, and your rock-star haircut.  You’re ready to start whacking away on your axe and compose this century’s answer to “Gloria” or “Satisfaction” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.  (Or even “Baby Got Back.”)  Problem is, your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/mom stole your amp, or worse, didn’t even allow you to buy one (or worse, took it away and hid it).  Now what?

USB Fever’s USB Guitar Link Cable, that’s what.  This little doohicky allows you to plug your guitar directly into your laptop (either PC or Mac), turning it into an amp, or a recording studio if you like.  Plug this baby in, plug in your headphones to the audio jack on your laptop, and deafen yourself to your heart’s content.  Because let’s face it:  we all have laptops these days.

Available from USB Fever for an MSRP of $39.99.

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Image courtesy of V-MODA

There’s some old saying the goes along the lines of “you’re only as good as the people around you.”  I feel the same way towards the relationship between my iPod or my iPhone and the headphones I use with each.  I may have the largest, most comprehensive music collection on the planet loaded on each of them but unless I’ve chosen a pair of headphones that allow me to listen to the music in decent quality what good is it?

I’ve carried a pair of V-MODA Vibe Duo headphones religiously for the past year or so.  They have a regular place in my left pant pocket not matter what I’m doing.  I find their feel and sound quality to be excellent and Dan agreed when I lent them to him during CES this year.

When Judie was contacted by V-MODA and subsequently reached out to the Gear Diary team to see if anyone was interested in reviewing their newest offering, the Remix, I jumped at the chance.

The Remix combines super quality audio performance along with the one thing that’s missing from my daily drivers (the Vibe Duo.)  A three-button remote, which allows users hands-free access to answer calls and control their music library.

So are the Remix headphones poised to oust the Vibe-Duos from my left pocket?

Read on to find out.

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Tired of poor fitting ear buds that are always failing out of your ears?

Yurbuds, makers soft rubber tip earbud enhancers that slip over existing earbud-style headphones, now has an iPhone App which is meant to help with this annoyance.

“Size yur Ear!” for the iPhone allows consumers to easily submit photos of their ear and purchase custom-sized earbuds directly from an iPhone or iPod touch. The Yurbuds earbud enhancers, when sized using the “Size yur Ear!” iPhone App, are guaranteed not to fall out, remain comfortable for hours and deliver exceptional sound quality.

The application also offers a video tutorial that teaches users how to use the application to ensure the proper custom fit is achieved.  It all seems quite simple.  All you do is launch the application, take a picture of your ear and hit submit and purchase.  Your Yurbuds ship the very next day.

The iPhone application is powered by yurbud’s patent-pending yurScan technology to determine a person’s yurbuds size via the camera feature of the iPhone application.  Yurbuds worked closely with top audiologists and Metaphase Design Group to develop an earbud enhancer that locks gently in the ear while avoiding known pain points.

The App is available for free in the iTunes App Store here and the Yurbuds sell for $19.99 here.

Sometimes you just need the ability to capture the wall of live sound.   Whether you’re a music fan looking to preserve the roar of this weekend’s concert,  a way to save all those boring thorough class lectures, or you’re just looking to capture that sweet whissssssshhhhhh of the ocean’s waves during those too few-and-far-in-between trips to the beach, you’re going to want to check out the new Alesis PalmTrack.

The portable audio recorder will do much more than just “fit the bill.”  The PalmTrack captures 24 bit audio,  shows real-time meter levels and features automated recording so you’ll literally never miss a beat.

Read on for the full features, specs, photos and pricing for the only audio recorder you may ever need.

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I sure remember it.  If you lived through the 1980s I’m guessing you do too.

The “Mix-Tape.”  Whether you made one yourself or had one made for you, it contained songs that reminded you or your crush of the time you’d spent together.  I think I still even have one of these tapes in a shoebox in my basement, although I don’t own a cassette player with which to play it on.

Well times have changed.  And here’s the 2010 version of that old icon, the “mix-tape.”

Suck UK makes this clever way of presenting a mix tape to your modern crush.

You can store 64MB’s of tunes on the drive USB thumb stick, which is about one-hour of high-quality digital music, just about the same experience you’d get on a standard cassette tape.

The drive fits in the gift case that resembles a tape’s jacket and you can then jot down the playlist and whatever other messages your heart desires.

It works on both Mac and PC and is available for $20 here.

Earphones have become a part of all of our gadget lives.  Most of our gear comes with earphones that are mediocre at best.  Third party replacement options can be overwhelming with prices ranging from tens of dollars to thousands.  I enjoy great sounding audio, but cannot justify spending over $100 on earphones that will be tossed in my gear bag and used everywhere.  Arctic Cooling has entered the sub $100 market with a complete lineup of Arctic Sound earphones.  I was provided with the E361 and E352 models, and the E352 review will be coming soon.

The E361 earphones are noise isolating in-ear buds that sport an aluminum chassis and large coil drivers to provide an affordable audio solution.

Find out how they stack up after the break…

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I’ve enjoyed watching the ways that Monster Cable has found to collaborate with various musicians like Lady Gaga, Puff Daddy Puffy P. Diddy Diddy and Dr. Dre to create custom headsets and earphones. The new designs are funky and fresh, but their stylish exteriors cover earphones that many are saying sound fabulous. Their latest design, in collaboration with Vivienne Tam, marks the introduction of something lovely: the new Butterfly High Fashion In-Ear Headphones, which will go along perfectly with her “Butterfly Lovers” Digital Clutch.

Butterfly is a unique collaboration between Monster, a leader in consumer electronics, and renown Fashion Designer, Vivienne Tam. In stunning champagne gold and solid metal housing, Tam’s butterfly adorns the headphones reflecting her aesthetic for exotic imagery. Monster’s exclusive technologies deliver crisp, clean, refined sound so you hear all the intricate nuances of your favorite music. Butterfly, a headphone that sounds as extraordinary and beautiful as they look.

Fashionistas will have to wait until early April to get their hands on a set, and at that time they can expect to pay ~$199.

Monster & Vivienne Tam’s Butterfly High Fashion In-Ear Headphones

It’s not a big secret.  The ear buds Apple provides with all of its iPods & iPhones aren’t great.  Okay I was being kind, they suck!  They do a decent job of providing sound but they often fit poorly.  Apple used to provide the ear buds along with two sets of those foam covers which help keep the buds seated in your ear but they stopped doing so.

While traveling last week I came across the Whoomp Ear Bud Enhancers by Comply.

The Whoomps claim to better the fit of your iPod or iPhone ear buds along with offering a softer more comfortable fit and a boost in bass.

So do they live up to their claims?  Click on through to find out.

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We live in a rather unusual house architecturally speaking. Built using post-and-beam construction, it may not look like a barn but it is built in the same manner. This means there are no joists or other type of space between one level and the next. The ceiling of the downstairs rooms is the floor of the upstairs rooms. Between one floor and another are just 6 inch thick boards. And every 8 feet there is a solid beam spanning the depth of the house.

We love the house and its unusual look and feel. But during renovation it has posed numerous challenges. You see, you cannot drill through the beams lest you undermine the very structure of the house. And there is no crawlspace between the floors for running wires and pipes. As a result, when we wanted to redo the master bathroom and move the shower to a different side of the room there was nowhere to run the pipes. (If the house were built using standard practices the pipes would simply be run in a crawl space between the floors but that isn’t an option.) The result was that we created a false floor to the bathroom that raise the floor up to 6 inches and allowed us to run the necessary piping.

The unusual architecture of the house also poses a problem with regard to wiring music from one room to the next. Like pipes we are unable to run the wiring from one side of a beam to another because we do not want to drill through the very structure that holds up the house. That was why I was excited to try out Eos’ new Converge sound system. It lets you take music from one room and easily stream it to any other room in the house simply by using receivers that are part of the same overall system.

Let’s take a look.

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Sometimes you just want to place your speakers in a different spot than your audio source.  The Aperion Home Audio Link just might be a option.  Let’s see how it works.

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Going green and buying electronics usually don’t mesh very well.  Thinksound set out to create great sounding headphones that were also friendly to the environment too.  Not an easy task to say the least, but one the company took very seriously.

Thinksound’s lineup currently consists of two eco-friendly headphones.  The company was kind enough to send me both to review.

Does being “green” mean you have to sacrifice sound quality?

Click on through to find out, but here’s a hint, in a word, nope….

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^{“Where’s that durn micro-USB got to? How am I going to find a new one?!!”}

So earlier this week, I lost my micro-USB charge/sync cable for my Mophie Juciepack.  “Oh no,” sez I.  “I’m heading back to Austin in just a few days; how the heck am I going to charge my Mophie?”  (In desperation, I went to Radio Shack, but I digress.)

You know it’s happened to you, but maybe with a different piece of nerdware.  Your iPhone sync cable has fallen apart.  Your splitter has gone on the fritz and you need a new one.  It’s time for a new interface card.  Or whatever.  You need that important but often-hard-to-find component.  Where the heck can you find it?

StarTech is happy to help.  Their new ConXit Connection wizard is an online tool that helps you find just the component your looking for.  And without having to put down your Skittles and leave your comfy Aeron desk chair.  Just choose from a couple of drop-down lists, click the search button, and bango:  micro-USB (or whatever) heaven!

So if you’re as loss-prone as me when it comes to electronic components, you might think about surfing on over.

More info after the jump.

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Mobile World Congress will be kicking off in about a week, and the new device frenzy has already started. One of the items shown will be the Inbrics M1, an Android-based mobile internet device (MID) with a “3 screen plus” media convergence platform”. We’ve been hearing about the M1 since late last year, and it also made a CES debut. Now what some have called “possibly the ultimate Android device” may be that much closer to actually being available for purchase.

The M1 has everything you could want in an MID, including Wi-Fi 802.11, an AMOLED touch screen that slides to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, Bluetooth, 3G or WiMAX, a 3-megapixel camera on the back, a VGA camera on the front, 16GB of internal memory and a MicroSD card slot.  The device also serves as a conduit or controller that pushes all of your digital “stuff” (pictures, videos, music and more) to other devices in your home (TV, laptop, etc) via Wi-Fi.

I like the M1’s inclusion of Android, a sliding keyboard, a largeish AMOLED screen in what looks to be a nicely sized and stylishly done mobile device. According to a CES press release, “The company plans to introduce the MID M1 in the U.S. through cable companies and both fixed and wireless carriers. It will be available in the U.S. in 2010 or early 2011.”

I think that if they can get a carrier for it in the US during 2010, they might have a shot at doing well.

The Inbrics M1 Mobile Internet Device