The BEST Demonstration of the Motorola Roadster 2 Bluetooth Speakerphone's Sound Quality Currently on the Internet

Fact.
While writing up my review of the Roadster II for YourTechReport, I scoured the Youtubes trying to find a decent video of the Roadster in action where you could actually hear the audio quality of this little wireless speaker.

Alas, none could be found, so I shot my own! Here I put the Roadster up against my current speakerphone favorite, the Nokia Lumia 900. I was pleasantly surprised...

Shopping for gadget-y things like the Motorola Roadster II, the Nokia Lumia 900, or the Moto Droid RAZR MAXX through my Amazon affiliate links helps support this site at NO additional cost to you!

Blue Microphones At CES

I've been really hard on Blue in the past. I can't say I love the Snowball as a recording solution, but the company has made a lot of progress with the Yeti line of mics.

Meeting some of their company reps at their booth in CES, I was happy to find they were game to chat some audio, after they made fun of my "SomeAudioGuy" badge of course.

I was excited to see they had a Spark Digital on display. As we start relying on tablets and smartphones more and more for mobility work (I didn't bring a laptop this year to see if it could be done), hardware solutions are going to be vital.


The Spark Digital is the first portable solution I've found that can connect to a laptop via USB OR directly to an iPad via the Apple 30 pin dock connector. As we were on the show floor I obviously couldnt demo it, but it looks like it could be a fantastic mobile solution.

I'll be following up with Blue to see if i can demo the mic at their studio soon, and I'll make sure to give you guys the 411. More info on the Blue Spark Digital.

Support SomeAudioGuy by shopping for Blue Microphones on Amazon!

Traveling With the Zoom H4n - It Doesn't Look THAT Dangerous...

Traveling with tech can be tricky with conventional items like cellphones and laptops, but what do you do if you're traveling with more specialized equipment like the Zoom H4n (and it's taser inspired styling)?

I received this story from voice talent Mike Rock (renowned commercial actor and voice of the Chelsea Handler Show).

Have you ever tried to travel (by air) with your Zoom H4? If you haven't, you're in for a treat. The x/y mic positioning makes it look like a taser to the TSA people. I have been delayed by several minutes (trying to not exaggerate here- but the first time it happened it felt like an hour). After that first time, nearly missing my flight, I hatched a plan. I take it out of my bag, and out of the little padded camera case i bought for it, put it in a bin usually just with my shoes, and I rubberband the manual right to it.

Yet still, 6 out of about 8 times the TSA people have gotten verrrrry serious with me once it gets through the xray machine. Twice I've been made to sit in the isolation room while 4 or 5 TSA people examine it, and they would not let me talk to them or show them the manual they had removed from it, and handed back to me...

I get nearly similar scrutiny for any mic I've traveled with, and have learned to take it out and make it really available to them in order to save a bit of time but the Zoom is a special instance. I'm going to write to Samson about it.

Then a week later...

I heard back from a guy at Samson / Zoom -- I had told them the story and asked them this:

"Have you got any promotional materials for the H4 on cardstock or glossy paper? I would like to create a heavy-duty laminated information flier to attach to the unit for travel. I'm imagining something akin to the quality of a laminated backstage pass or namebadge. Really, I could use any full-color advertisement for the H4 and laminate it myself at kinkos... Let me know if you can offer any help."
All they said in their reply was "send us your mailing address" So, I assume they're sending me some fliers or something. Well, that or a private jet so I can avoid TSA altogether...Fingers crossed!!!

I'll keep you all posted on Samson's response.

So what gadgets have gotten YOU hassled by the TSA or other law enforcement?

***UPDATE 07/29/2010***
Mike just wrote me back with Samson's reply:

Mike,

Please be more specific about what you are looking for? I have a
Zoom t-shirt or a Zoom Banner, which one?
Thank you,
Samson Literature Department

I think Mike should just schnag the T-Shirt, and print out his own travel card from info on the Samson site...

Voice of KITT, William Daniels, Provides Voice Over for Mio GPS! NOW WITH VIDEO!!!

This is such a perfect idea, I'm AMAZED no one thought of it sooner.



William Daniels is providing the voice over for turn by turn directions on a specialty "Knight Rider" branded GPS unit by Mio.



Gizmodo is reporting that the unit will go for $299 when released.





If ANYthing could unseat my current TomTom unit with John Cleese's voice, it would be this.



KITT giving you turn by turn?!?! COME ON!!!



Oh-Oh WAIT!!!



Whattabout a KARR GPS voiced by Peter Cullen!?!?!?



OMG!



I've gotta go write the Media Relations people over at Mio RIGHT NOW!



***EDIT 6/23/08***

A Youtuber by the name of "knightrideronline" has posted a video demonstration!



It's KEEN!

Olympus Releases LS-10 PCM Stereo Recorder

Gizmodo got the scoop!

Olympus is taking all of their experience in making PCM recorders, and delivering a fairly impressive pocket sized stereo recorder.It even looks cool!

The feature set is pretty impressive, boasting 24bit/96kHz PCM recording, wav/mp3/wma support, 12 hour recording life on 2 AA's, built in stereo mics with a line in, 2GB of built in storage with an SDHC card slot for additional storage, and support for both Mac and PC.

Great sign me up, so what's the down side?

Well it's currently being priced out at $399. That's a lil steep. I can only hope it's sold for less when I look them up on Zzounds. At $399 it's hard not to compare this recorder to kit like the Zoom H4 or Microtrack II (each easily found online for $299).
While the LS-10 handily trumps the Zoom and MT in storage and battery life, it doesn't offer Phantom Power, so no powered mics without a separate 48v power supply.

Sound quality had better be top notch to warrant the premium (I will gladly test this if Olympus would like to send me one, *wink*nudge*wink*)...



Olympus Official Site

***UPDATE 8/19/08***

New Media Gear has a great review of the Olympus LS-10.

More End of the Year Top Ten/Best Of Lists

I'm a SUCKER for top ten lists...

ExtremeTech's List of Ten Worst Technologies and Trends of 2007

Gizmodo's Top Ten list of gadgets that will get you fired from your office job

ExtremeTech's Top Ten Tech Tips of 2007

Consumerist's Top Ten Products of 2007

Kotaku's Most Commented stories of '07

Enjoy!

Wired delivers the Top Ten Love!

What can I say? I'm a sucker for top ten lists, and Wired's got a bunch of them for us.
Top Ten Gadgets
Top Ten Gadget Let Downs
Top Ten Videogames
Top Ten Vaporware
Top Ten Earth "Hacks"



All in all, I'm totally there. I only have two issues.

1. The kindle being on both the the TT gadgets AND the TT Heartbreaks.
2. The Tesla being on the Vaporware. Living in LA and driving by the Tesla store that's being built (Santa Monica and the 405, not cheap), kinda shows a bit more promise than true Vapor.

Makeshift Field Recorder - Your Digital Camera

While working on an animation project, I really needed some wide open sounds, ambiance, street sounds, basic background stuff. Field recording. I tried using my phone's memo function (not great), and I tried using a hand held voice recorder (also not great and surprisingly expensive for very little storage). It started to look like I would either have to lug my laptop, soundcard and mics somewhere (inconvenient and I don't like calling that kind of attention to myself), or I'd have to drop $300+ on something like a ZoomH4 or Microtrack, and I didn't want to do that.

I was getting really frustrated, until I realized I had a gadget ready to help.

If you're anything like me, you probably have a ton of gadgets and kit lying around for those "just in case" situations, and if you're a lot like me, then you probably also collect hobbies. Over the last year I've really gotten into photography, and by "really gotten into" I mean I like to take pics of my dog sleeping and stealing the remote.



While I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to use the photo features of my camera (a Powershot S2), I haven't spent very much time on it's other settings. My camera actually has a pretty decent camcorder setting with, wouldn't you know it, built in stereo mics and a wind filter. Digging into my camera's manual a little deeper, I found it has a stand alone sound recorder setting, with a TWO HOUR limit per recording (and I can record several times over on my 2GB memory card, WAY more than I would ever need for ambient noise). The recordings aren't compressed either, and are a standard 16-bit .wav which can be edited in any standard audio editor.

What's great about cameras, is that they also have pretty standardized accessories. My $9 mini-tripod became a great stand to minimize bouncing and bump noises, and in a pinch can be used as a makeshift short boom. You could even go mono-pod if you wanted to.





On my camera, the lens doesn't engage when recording sound, so I left the lens cap on, and recorded totally anonymously. No one was the wiser, and I got exactly what I needed.
Get it? Batman. Cuz I'm all teh-stealthy-recording-McBat-guy.

The only drawback I could find was the fact that these mics are WIDE. They pick up EVERYTHING. I had to sample a couple different street sounds as I was picking up people's conversations. You certainly wouldn't want to use this if you needed something tight and directional, but if you need something wide, it's worked better than any other gadget I've tried so far (short of actual field recording kit, picture not of me).




To wrap up, I wouldn't recommend going out to buy a camera just to do this (you'll end up spending almost as much as you would've on an H4 or Microtrack), but if you already have a digital camera with a camcorder mode, than your bang for buck is WAY higher than buying something else (like a crappy voice recorder), and should totally hold you over until you need to buy something more sophisticated.

Enjoy!

Win an iPod from Gizmodo!

Not much to post here on this one.
Just get over to Gizmodo to throw your hat into the ring to win an iPod classic and an energizer Energi to Go Charger.

Here's the link!

Considering Sound Design...

We live in a world infested with noise pollution. We live in a world of bad neighbors, loud cars, crappy leaky headphones, gadgets, airplanes, hustle and bustle.

Rob Scovell over at VOIP and Other Stuff... takes a brief second to examine the situation with our gadgets and the noises they make. I for one agree, that little to no thought really seems to go into why devices make the noises they do. Watch a meeting grind to a halt as Hawaii 5-O starts blasting out of some guy's crotch and you'll know what I mean.

"I'll never forget one meeting I had once at Waikato University. We were sitting around discussing something or other and there was a beep. It came from the table of the chap whose job it was to do innovative things with PDAs and other small devices. When it beeped, he jumped, started looking frantically at the collection of gadgets in front of him, and said, "Whoooaaaaa! What was that?! What am I meant to be doing?". Was it a phone call? A text message? An appointment reminder? Or was a device announcing that its battery was going flat?

That was the first time I thought about sound design. Not design that is sound, in the sense of a bridge being sound, but design of appropriate sounds for appropriate situations. I thought about it briefly, but it never really went to the front of my mind."

When I got my 6700, I IMMEDIATELY turned off all of the stock sounds and put in my own. Song samples that don't sound like songs (the beginning of Baba O'Reilly is an excellent ringtone), simple subtle sound effects (like a TARDIS whoosh), all of these really serve to shape how I used my phone, and helped to deliver information quickly. Ringtones are invaluable in that I know who is there before I even look at the screen.

So read the rest of his article, and at the end he links out to another great read by Max Lord, on the tailoring of sound effects for devices and situations.
someaudioguy some audio guy voice over vo voiceover sound effects design floey adr dubbing production


I wish my crotch played the theme to Hawaii 5-O...

YO ADRIENNE!!!!

From Uberreview,
I just can't help it. I love these things. Same with the hulk smash gloves, and Homer Simpson slippers that go "d'oh" with every step you take, I've been a sucker for these toys since my first Darth Vader voice changer.


"Each glove has a sound chip which activates on contact, so you will hear the Rocky Film music, punching sounds & voice clips"

SWEET!
Imma gonna go punch a Russian in the FACE!
someaudioguy some audio guy toys voice over audio production

Could it Maybe Be You?

I can't really say why, but lately I've come into a rash of friends and clients breaking their gadgets. From phones, to Palms, and ipods too, I invariably hear the same thing "It broke on me". Yet I see the same use out of almost all of them. Devices never in cases, shoved into pockets and purses, banged around, but it's the gadgets fault when wear and tear catches up to them. While kit gets slimmer and "sexier" is it really an insurmountable chore to use a screen guard or case for a $200-$600 gadget. Laptops start at $600, and you almost never see someone walking around with one bare (and when I do, I secretly want to see them trip).
Gadgets, technology, ipod, care, maintenance, annoying, friends, mp3 players, cellphones