Audio - Page 19

Years ago, the speakers that I had connected to my computer for gaming and movie watching were the JBL Creature II speakers. I liked the way the speakers sounded and they looked really cool too. They always reminded me of the ghosts from the Pac Man cartoon when I was a kid.

The online music store Spotify has fessed up to having it security breached. While that alone is alarming the fact that the personal data for thousands of its subscribers has been grabbed makes things worse.

According to a statement from Spotify, passwords, registration information such as your email address, birth date, gender, postal code and billing receipt details were potentially exposed.

Spotify was quick to let people know that they do not keep credit card numbers. This means that at least subscriber credit cards were safe.

Read more here.

Auzentech has just announced that it will begin selling its HDMI 1.3-native PCI Express audio combo card in September of this year. Personally, I can't wait for it to come out. I use my PS3 to play Blu-ray movies and it does a reasonable job however it can only send out audio via PCM and not bit stream which is an exact non downsampled audio stream.

Logitech has just released a rather fancyful Mobile Speaker System dubbed the "Pure-Fi". This highly compact and slimline unit comprises 2" high-excursion drivers and dual 2" pressure drivers which are said to be capable of filling a large office/home with rich clean bass and treble.

Theo from TG Daily managed to visit the ASUS office in Fremont, California to check out the company's upcoming sound card products.

During his visit he learnt about ASUS' upcoming plans while paying close attention to the Taiwanese company plans to shake up the sound card market well and truly. ASUS is readying two HDMI sound cards, the Xonar DX and Xonar AV1.

Razer has announced a new gaming keyboard and a new headset and both look really sweet. Let's start with the keyboard, which goes under the Razer Lycosa name and features some gamer specific features such as a non-slip rubber finish and backlit keys. More specifically, the W, A, S, D keys can be lit up on their own without the need of the rest of the keyboard being lit up.

The keyboard also has a set of touch sensitive media playback controls which Razer has christened the TouchPanel. So rather than having an array of extra keys above the function keys, there's a small touch sensitive pad around the keyboard LED's where these controls are located.

Logitech has announced a new set of 5.1-channel speakers called the G51 which are targeting gamers. The cool feature here is that the G51's can turn a stereo source into 5.1 surround sound. Although don't expect this Matrix mode to be as good as the real deal, as audio up-mixing is never as good as the real deal. However, it will get you in-game music through all your speakers, something you don't always get.

Logitech is also using something they call Frequency Directed Dual Driver to create a 360 degree sound field that is meant to eliminate odd sounding surround sound created by poor speaker placement. The G51's are rated at 155W RMS, which is the real deal, so you could have the neighbours over if you're note careful.

The day has come that you never expected would arrive, someone has been made enough to build a dual tape deck that connects to a USB port. Ion Audio, the company behind the USB record deck came up with the idea to make a tape deck, since its USB connected record player has been a huge hit.

The imaginatively named Tape2PC comes with MixMeister's EZ Tape Converter which does the dull stuff for you and sticks your recordings into iTunes. Aparently the Tape2PC doesn't even need any drives to work, it's all plug and play and off you go.

SteelSeries has announced a new headset, the SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset. The difference between this model and the previous models is that the new model is that it uses a neckband instead of an over head design. The design is quite eye catching and it comes in white and black. As this headset is targeting gamers, it has been designed to be comfortable even after hours of usage.

The extra padded ear cups should allow for the extra comfort needed by good gaming headsets and the built in retractable microphone means that there's no risk of damaging the mic when you take the headset with you to a LAN party.

The new Sibera headset was fine-tuned with the help of professional gamers, DJ's and rock musicians according to SteelSeries. Hopefully this should allow for some excellent sound quality, both in games and for other uses. The new headset will be available some time in Q3 and no price has been announced as yet.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-e has finally arrived, although it's only an OEM card so far as it doesn't come in a retail box. It looks rather basic with support for 7.1-channel analogue outputs and optical S/PDIF in and out. This card doesn't seem to have support for any of the upgrade options that the current X-Fi cards have and the audio processor looks like it comes from the newer entry level cards.