Smart soundbars are an interesting idea. They’re like smart speakers, except they work with your TV, so you can use your voice like a remote control. Neat! In January, Polk wowed CES attendees with its new Command Bar. Put bluntly, this smart device is a big honking soundbar with an Amazon Echo Dot stuffed inside of…
Sleeping on the weekends is rough. My apartment is across the street from a bar that grows only louder and more crowded in the height of summer, so a good Saturday night snooze is usually out of the question. Raucous drinkers, the thump of the bass from the building, and the sound of my air conditioner create a…
August 2018 rolled in with a bang, literally, as explosions rocked Caracas, Venezuela on Saturday during a speech by President Nicolas Maduro—and government officials later said bomb-carrying drones were to blame. If the accounts of an attempted assassination using unmanned aerial vehicles is confirmed, the New York…
If you’ve ever sat down to watch your Roku-powered TV and thought, “Boy I wish I had some Roku-powered speakers to enhance this experience,” you are in luck. The set-top box maker just announced a new set of speakers that work exclusively with Roku TV televisions. It’s kind of a curious move for the company, but it…
If your smartphone of choice has forced you to upgrade to wireless headphones, you probably hate having to swap them out for a corded pair when you want to play your Nintendo Switch with a little privacy. The portable console doesn’t come with Bluetooth, but a tiny dongle called the Genki does, theoretically making it…
An instructor of mine once compared mixing a song to baking a cake. The various tracks are the ingredients, and once everything is mixed and baked, as with a cake, those ingredients can’t be deconstructed. Or can they? AI researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have created an app…
There are two ways of listening to music: you can shut everything out and focus purely on the tunes, or you can use music to enhance other activities in your life. Headphones and earbuds, especially those of the noise-canceling variety are quite good at the first; you just put some on, turn up the volume, and let…
The internet is always there, vast and accessible, from wherever you happen to be—until it isn’t. Maybe you’ve got a long flight ahead of you and need some reading material, maybe you just want to store something for safe-keeping. Whatever your reason here’s how you can download just about anything you come across on…
Work ceased for several minutes at Gizmodo Media this afternoon as everyone stopped to listen to a four-second sound file of someone either saying “laurel” or “yanny.” No one could agree. I heard “laurel.”
Released in 1979, the original Sony Walkman completely changed how people listened to music. Your tunes were free to go anywhere—and sound like complete garbage. The quality of music on cassette tapes can’t compete to today’s digital formats, but if people still like the sound of crackly records, surely there are …
Ahead of Avengers: Infinity War’s official release in just a few weeks, China’s Brando has revealed the penultimate collectible for fans of Thanos’ rise to power. Why buy a simple life-size replica of his infamous Infinity Gauntlet when you could buy this superior life-size replica made from actual copper, with…
Loving your new Google Home Mini? Hating its tinny sound and lack of auxiliary output options? Well Google appears to have heard your lo-fi cries of anguish, and responded by adding a way to control your third-party Bluetooth speakers using your Google Home device. Nice work! It only took a whole year.
3D audio in headphones that envelops you like a surround sound home theater is an elusive thing. The market is dominated by products for gamers, who play content that’s mixed for surround sound, and who want to hear the crunch of opponents in the bushes behind them as it’s a matter of life and death (in a game at…
Despite conflicting reports, the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation is obviously the best starship that Starfleet has ever built. That alone makes this Enterprise Bluetooth speaker worth the $80 asking price. But sweetening the pot is a secret feature that turns the device into a soothing, Star Trek…
How many times have you seen this: A guy or gal walking down the street with one earbud in, while the other hangs loose around their shoulders and neck like some ridiculous techie bolo tie. If you’re like me, it’s a daily occurrence, and a sad symptom caused by design that doesn’t quite work.
The new, modular Technics SP-10R turntable plays records just like any other turntable. But, according to Technics, it plays records really, really, really well. It better since it’s priced at $10,000 and up depending on just how you configure it. But the introduction of yet another Technics tribute model—or…
If you’re like me, you know Sennheiser as that sleek German company that makes dependably terrific headphones and microphones. That’s about to change.
There are currently two major annoyances with wireless headphones: the Bluetooth can cut out in areas with a lot of signal noise, and battery life is mostly terrible. Qualcomm thinks it’s packed a better solution to both of those issues into a new chip.
If the term “smart sound bar” seems unusual, that’s because it’s brand new. TCL just announced the first in a new class of gadgets that act a little bit like a smart speaker and a little bit like a remote control that’s powered by your voice. As the name implies, the new TCL Roku Smart Sound Bar is powered by the…
