Each year when I check out the news from NAMM I look at cool new stuff as well as what is happening with companies I already known and love. Mackie Designs is one of those companies. For a long time they were a mixer-only company, and about 20 years ago when I was transitioning from trying to use my Tascam Portastudio as a pseudo-mixer into having a real home studio, the Mackie 1202 provided everything I need in a well made, high quality package at a budget price – and it is still going strong today for myself and my son!

At Winter NAMM they introduced a great looking new mixer based around… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Alesis is a company that came out of Rhode Island in the digital boom of the mid-80′s and after ups and downs continues to be a force of innovation in the music hardware arena. They have three cool new iPad-related products introduced at the Winter NAMM show worth highlighting.

Alesis AmpDock

•The first professional guitar processor to use your iPad or iPad 2 for signal processing
•Works with GarageBand, AmpliTube, JamUp, and virtually any audio or CoreMIDI app
•Includes a rugged pedalboard controller with program, effect, bypass, volume and continuous controls
•Guitar Input 1 and switchable Mic/Line/Guitar Input 2; professional outputs, and MIDI jacks
•Kickstand allows for stable positioning on top of guitar

We know that Dan is a big fan of the Sonos Wireless HiFi system based on his reviews last year of the PLAY:5 and PLAY:3, as well as his recent video showing how easy it is to set up the system. One thing that holds some people back from a Sonos system is the cost associated with it. Even though these are high-performance systems, the initial entry cost may be high enough to cause some hesitation in the purchasing process. (Though Dan has said to me that it is well worth it.) Well, Target is sweetening the deal for a limited time, so if you haven’t yet made the jump and are interested, read on.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Back in November we brought a pair of on-ear headphones to your attention that look great, sound good and don’t break the bank. At under $70 for each pair eskuché’s 33i and Control-i headphones are worth considering if you’ve been looking for a pair of on-ear headphones that include an in-line mic.

We’ve had both of them here for the past few weeks and have used them to listen to a variety of music. In this lightening review we will take a quick look at both, give you some of the upsides and some of the potential downsides and then give you a chance to win each.

So without further ado here

Back in February of 2010 I reviewed the ZAGGsmartbuds. At the time, this was my conclusion

So are the ZAGGsmartbuds worth their $79.99 price? Absolutely. They are comfortable to wear for extended periods, sound very good and, thanks to the Hangin’ Tight system, have what is probably the best cable-management system I have used. At under $80 I would say that they are not only worth their price tag but that they are a good deal to boot!

The ZAGGsmartbuds have an MSRP of $79.99 and are available directly from ZAGG. And right now ZAGG is including a free dual USB car charger with purchases of over $40.

What I Like: Love

The MacBook air isn’t designed to be an entertainment device. The anemic speakers on it make that point quite clearly. Sure, they work well enough, but I would be hard-pressed to call them anything more than functional. The speakers on the iMac are far better but even they still fall a bit short. That’s where Twelve South’s BassJump 2 Portable subwoofer for MacBook comes in. Let’s take a look.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

We had some great accessories to give away beginning last Friday. We figured it was a great way to mark the formal start to the holiday shopping season. Below you will find the prizes we had to give away, links to read the reviews or buy them directly and, of course, the winners.

All winners have 24 hours to email their name, the prize they won and their address to contests@geardiary.com.

 … Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Is it more important to have headphones that look good, sound good or are priced right? eskuché doesn’t think it needs to be a choice and their $69 33i and Control-i headphones are here to make the point.

Here’s a quick look at both and what the company has to say about them. We’re hoping to have some in hand for review shortly.

First up are the eskuché 33i headphones. As the company explains,

The 33i looks to one of our first headphones, the 33 1/3, for its chassis, and merges it with the improved structural components

It’s a loud, loud world out there.  In a world where they can spend a million smackers to build a single mile of acoustic wall along highways, you know noise is a problem in the modern world.  You got your jackhammers, your freeways, your trains, cars, buses, lo-riding jerk weeds blasting music out of their four-wheel boom boxes . . . it’s loud.  Loud, I tell you!  And you!  Yeah, you!  Get off my lawn!

Ahem.

Anyway, Crescendo Hearing Protection wants to help.  They’ve got a full line of hearing protection items that cover a whole bunch of needs–musicians, industrial workers, and whatever else you can think of.  So if the blasting-sound nature of modern… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

One of the best purchases I’ve made in recent months is the JawBone JamBox. Thomas got one over a year ago and almost convinced me to join him at the time. I didn’t and now know that I should have trusted him. The device is small, well-made, sounds great and has the added benefit of a built-in microphone so you can use it as a speakerphone too. I love it!

So how could a competitor try to one up the device? We got word today on one such attempts and, truth be told, it looks great. The device, devices actually, come from SPAR (www.SPAR.com) and is called the ZEPHYR. The ZEPHYR comes… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

From the Editorial Staff of Gear Diary: Is there someone in your life who loves music? If so, here are five gifts with which you can’t go wrong.

First off, Sonos. Dan hasn’t stopped raving about the Sonos wireless music system he installed a few months ago. Sonos is the best way to get lots of music in lots of room at a fairly affordable price. Better still, the system can grow with you as you add more and more components. You can read our reviews here, here and here.

The Play:3 is just $299 in our Amazon Affiliate Store. The Play:5 is $100 more at $399

It is time to announce the winners of the Music is Good for Your Soul Giveaway contest!!!

As a reminder, the giveaway includes:

• A copy of the Levin-Torn-White CD
• JLab Wave
• AudioEngine W1
• AudioEngine W2

The winner of the entire giveaway is:

Andrew

The winner has 24 hours from the time this post goes up to send us an email with contact/shipping information and the words “Gear Diary at 5 Giveaway: I won [name the item]!” in the subject to this

Image courtesy of Synology

You can’t be too cautious these days about backing up your data. Time and time again friends, family and co-workers come to me about trying to recover pictures, music and documents on a failed or virus ridden drive. Some even have their small business data lost when the main computer goes down.

My first advice to anyone is that they should get themselves some sort of backup device, whether it be Desktop Attached Storage or Network Attached Storage and some good software to automate the backups. I have wanted to upgrade my 2TB external drive to a Network Attached Storage Device, but had a really hard time deciding which one to… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

A few weeks ago we took a look at the Monster Cable iSport waterproof headphones. They are pricey but sound great and are, in fact, truly waterproof. They are machine washable!! If you don’t need the same level of audio quality but still want waterproof headphones JLab’s Wave headset is worth a look. While the Wave is not machine washable it IS waterproof and has the huge advantage of not requiring a separate mp3 player. You see, the Wave IS the mp3 player. It MAY look like a pair of in-ear headphones connected by a ridged neck wire but the Wave headphones house 2GB of storage and the mp3 player. That makes the Wave… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Headphones… We’ve check out a bunch. Some have impressed us. Some… Not so much. So when a new pair of headphones come on the market we want to check them out. And when they come from a company we know we are even more interest. That’s the case here with the new offerings from Able Planet.

Judie introduced Able Planet to Gear Diary readers in this post way back in 2008. Mike looked at pair of their gaming headphones in this post. And Judie checked out a pair of their headphones with active noise cancellation here. I met with the company at CES 2010 and was impressed by their approach. Now… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...