Gear4 CDB-50 Portable iPod/CD Speaker System Review
Call it a next-gen ghetto blaster or a boom-box for the iPod generation, there’s no question that Gear4′s latest iPod speaker system looks like a revival of the sort of tape-based, mobile music system you would have found in teenage bedrooms throughout the 1980s – including mine! Of course, the glossy, piano-black finish is a little more classy than the old, dark-grey plastic favoured at the time, and the sweeping lines and graceful curves are a long way from the straight lines and peculiar ribbed areas adopted by the likes of Sony, Sanyo and (if you were really unlucky) Alba, but you can definitely see where the inspiration for the CDB-50 must have come from.
I sort of like the retro styling. My better half said it looked like a handbag, then asked if it came in a duck-egg blue, which (I’m guessing) means it might have some cross-gender appeal. Whatever you think, at least it’s not yet another indistinguishable iPod speaker dock.
Nor are the CDB-50′s retro leanings confined to its design. Remember CDs? You know, the round shiny things you slot onto your PC so that you can listen to them in Windows Media Player/Winamp/iTunes/Songbird or transcode them across to your favourite MP3 player? Well, the CDB-50 can play them too. Still listen to honest-to-goodness analogue FM radio? The CDB-50 will play that too, and there are no fancy pants digital presets, just a good, old-fashioned tuning dial. You can even ditch the mains cable and power the CDB-50 from eight – yes eight! – of those whacking great C-size batteries. Frankly, Gear4′s latest seems to have one foot in the present, and one foot firmly in the past. For some of us, that’s no bad thing.
The unit is fairly compact, at around 40 cm wide, 22 cm tall and 11cm deep, but heavier than you might think at just under 2.2Kg without batteries installed. Build quality is actually pretty good considering the price, and while I don’t think the finish will last long in the wild without scratching, the CDB-50 isn’t the sort of thing you’d be terrified about taking into the garden or (heaven forbid) the local park.
In terms of controls, Gear4 has kept things reasonably simple. You’ll find a four-way input selector switch and a volume dial on the left side, the radio tuner and band selector on the right, and controls that double up for your iPod and the built-in CD player on the front, above a basic LCD status screen. On the top there’s just the CD eject button, a pull-up antenna and a bass boost control.
It seems to me that the CDB-50 has been designed not to frighten those who might have had a portable CD player in the past and are now moving on to the iPod equivalent. If you used one of those, you can certainly use one of these. A tiny remote control is also provided, which allows more control over iPod menu navigation than the very basic onboard controls. However, it also feels fairly cheap and rather nasty and might as well have “please lose behind the nearest sofa cushion” written on the back.
Your iPod sits in a cradle between the two sets of speakers at the front, and three adaptors are provided to give support for iPods ranging from the iPod classic and iPod video to the third and fourth gen nano and the first and second gen touch (the iPhone isn’t listed in the compatible devices). For those of you who aren’t members of the Apple faithful, an auxiliary 3.5mm jack is hidden behind a flap at the back though – to be perfectly honest – I doubt you’d buy the CDB-50 if you didn’t have an iPod to go in it.
Despite descriptions I’ve seen of the CD drive as slot-loading, your old discs clamp onto a more old-fashioned sprung spindle that hides beneath a locking flap on the back. As well as the basic transport controls (play, skip, etc) you can program tracks or select random play. Woohoo! “Is this really how we used to do things?” you might ask, but if you still actively listen to CDs you’ll find these things comforting, and the only mild disappointment is that the CD player will only play straight audio CDs, not any MP3 compilations you might have knocking around.
Whether you’re using your old CDs or your newer MP3s, there’s one other way in which the CDB-50 reminds me of my old eighties boombox; it doesn’t actually sound all that great.
Don’t get me wrong – the sound is good enough for background listening at reasonable volumes, but if you want Hi-Fi sound from a compact box, the CDB-50 is no miracle worker.
At low volumes the sound is okay, but everything seems boxed in around the mid-range, with no sparkle at the top end, and very little in the way of bass. Here’s where that bass boost button actually comes in handy, pushing the bottom end up so that you can hear, say, the bassline in Rilo Kiley’s Under the Blacklight. All the same, it’s a dull, muddy kind of bass, and not the sort of thing that makes you want to play Massive Attack or DJ Shadow. Vocals and acoustic guitars seem to stand up better, as a blast of Don’t Let it Bring you Down from Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall proved, but throw anything heavy, complex or dynamically rich at the CDB-50, and it really does struggle to cope.
At higher volumes things improve slightly, and you’re actually better off switching out the bass boost if you want a crisp sound. Tracks from Bat for Lashes’ Two Suns album begin to come alive, and slick, pop productions from Take That or Justin Timberlake develop a little punch. Nonetheless, there’s always that slightly plastic, boxed-in quality to the sound. The bass doesn’t really cut through. The treble never shimmers or reveals much detail.
Listen to Aimee Mann’s You Do from the Magnolia soundtrack and the vocals come through rich and clear, but the details in Jon Brion’s idiosyncratic production are buried. Rockier tracks from Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mastodon are all mid-range mess with no dynamics, and you can forget about classical; the CDB-50 just doesn’t have the subtlety or definition to cope. In general, if something sounds good on the average car stereo, then it’s probably going to sound good on the Gear4 CDB-50. If it’s the sort of thing you’d rather listen to on headphones or on your stereo back home, then it will probably just about sound okay.
This isn’t a disaster, for the simple reason that at £70 I don’t actually expect an iPod Speaker dock to sound incredible, and just about okay might do for a spot of kitchen listening when I’m doing the washing up. All the same, were I spending my own money I’d stretch my budget a little further to something like the Klipsch iGroove SXT or Gear 4′s own BassStation. It might not have the portability or the cool retro styling, but give me sound over image any time.
Philips BDP3000 Blu-ray Player Launches
We’ve already given the BDP3000 the briefest of mentions in our BD Live Blu-ray Player Preview but now that it has been ‘properly’ announced by Philips those of you who prefer reading the novel to the Cliff’s Notes (or more likely Wikipedia, more recently) will doubtless appreciate some further info.
Click to enlargeAs you may already know the BDP3000 – a BD Live-compatible Blu-ray player – is the little brother to the excellent BDP7300 but priced to compete better with the budget market inhabited by the likes of the Sharp BD-HP21H with its £169 (estimated) price tag. On the BD Live front it should be mentioned that there’s no local storage, but a USB port is present for adding it should that be desired.
In addition to Blu-ray playback – with 24Hz support – the BDP3000 will upscale DVDs to 1080p and decode DivX video files. On the audio front one compromise is evident as though Dolby TrueHD decoding is supported the same cannot be said of DTS HD Master Audio. Whether those on a budget – and therefore more likely to be considering the BDP3000 – would have a sound system to warrant such codecs is debatable, so consider that merely an observation rather than a criticism.
It’s a pretty short feature list, but at given the price point Phillips is aiming for and the consideration that most buyers will never want for any more capability it’s hardly a bad one. Feel free to grab a BDP3000 of your own if you agree, as it’s available now.
Creative Unveils Android, Multi-touch Zii MP3 Player
Could this be the device to slingshot Creative back into the heart of the MP3 player scene?
The recently docile company has announced the ‘Plaszma’ – yet another criminal attack on our children’s attempts/ability to spell, but also an iPod touch rival which calls upon the power of its much hyped Zii chip and Google Android.
The result of these tempting ingredients is startling. The Plaszma features a 3.5in 10 point multi-touch screen with customisable gestures, enough raw processing power to output 1080p high definition video and OpenGL ES compliance that can take advantage of its remarkable 42 million textured pixels/sec fill rate. Beyond this are two cameras – a front facing VGA and a rear facing ‘HD camera’ capable of capturing high def video footage (720p/1080p unknown).
Surprisingly we are just getting started too since you’ll also find WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth with 2.1 and EDR for wireless music streaming, an ambient light sensor and an accelerometer. Internal storage will offer anywhere from nothing to 32GB and this can be augmented via a 32GB compatible SDHC expansion slot. Even the sound quality should be something out of the ordinary with Creative’s proprietary X-Fi audio processing.
And we haven’t even touched upon Android. Creative will give users a choice to either run its own custom Plaszma OS or Google’s open source platform – the latter being far more exciting to my eyes. The Opera 9.7 web browser will be there for your surfing needs too.
Omissions? There aren’t many but HDMI would have been nice instead of composite and its seems current technology flavour of the month the digital compass has been skipped over. We also don’t know what kind of battery life the Plaszma will provide. That said the whole package weighs just 108g (7g lighter than an iPod touch).
nterestingly, Creative is taking a very different approach to market with the Plaszma. It will target developer communities and manufacturers and sell to them in bulk with prices starting from just $199 (£140) for a Plaszma without internal storage in volume quantities. From here the players can be customised and sold to the public which means Creative takes a step back in the distribution chain. So fingers’ crossed there will be substantial interest.
Could the Zii ultimately do for Creative what webOS did for Palm? Potentially…
Link:
Press Release
Pioneer DVD Home Cinema Range
Pioneer is bolstering its already comprehensive AV range with three new DVD home cinema systems. The additions consist of two 5.1-channel systems, the DSC-590 and DSC-585 (pictured) and the 2.1-channel DSC-FS30.
The DSC-590 and DSC-585 differ in the type of speakers on offer, tallboys with the former and satellites with the latter with the DSC-FS30 featuring slim, height adjustable speakers in addition to the same subwoofer as shared by all three systems. Dolby Digital and DTS audio decoding is supported across the line-up and the DSC-585 and DSC-590 also include a “Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration system” which adjusts the systems’ speaker outputs to suit the installed environment.
DVD up-scaling to 1080p is possible, and all three players support DivX video. A front-mounted USB port on all three systems facilitates the playback of media files with mp3, WMA and AAC audio supported. CDs can also be ripped to mp3 files on a USB storage device. All three systems can be upgraded with a Bluetooth module, making it possible to stream content from a laptop, mobile phone or media player using A2DP.
The DCS-590, DCS-585 and DCS-FS30 will be available in August, with pricing to be given nearer launch.
Link:
Pioneer.
Vizualogic RoadTrip Universal Dual Headrest DVD System
Product Summary
The good: The Vizualogic RoadTrip Universal Dual Headrest DVD System installs so easily in an afternoon. A built-in DVD player and SD card slot allow the RoadTrip to operate as a standalone system. Integrated FM transmitter and AV outputs and inputs expand the system’s flexibility.
The bad: Slightly grainy quality to video. IR remote headphones have a very short range. Instructions for installation are inaccurate in a few places. SD card media playback doesn’t support video.
The bottom line: The Vizualogic RoadTrip Universal Dual Headrest DVD System is a simple and inexpensive way to add rear-seat entertainment to any vehicle with removable headrests using only basic hand tools.
- Reviewed on: 07/22/2009
The Vizualogic RoadTrip Universal Dual Headrest DVD System is quite easy to install, requiring no custom fabrication or permanent modifications to the vehicle. We were able to install our system in an afternoon using only a pair of screwdrivers, a set of hex key wrenches, needle-nosed pliers, a wire stripper, and a set of wiretaps.
The appeal of the Vizualogic system, beyond its installation, is that it is a completely self-contained system. The system will even operate in a vehicle that doesn’t have a radio. Just pop a DVD into the integrated player, don the included wireless headphones, and enjoy.
Design
In the box, you’ll find two black headrests with integrated 7-inch LCD touch-screen monitors. If black doesn’t suit your vehicle’s interior, the unit also ships with a pair of tan and a pair of grey covers that can replace the black. While the two headrest units look identical, only one of them houses a DVD player and an SD card slot behind its screen. Pressing on the touch screen’s bezel causes the screen to release and open forward, revealing the media slots.
A hideaway module has connections for wiring harnesses for each monitor, power connections, a single set of RCA inputs for video and stereo audio, two sets of RCA outputs for video and audio, and an FM antenna.
The unit also ships with an IR remote controller that should be familiar for anyone who has used a DVD player, and two pairs of wireless headphones that operate using infrared signals received from the monitors. The headphones feature a power switch with settings for Off, A, and B, and must be set to the proper channel for the driver- or passenger-side monitors. Each set of headphones also includes a volume control dial and a hidden battery door for the two AAA batteries required to power them. Batteries are included.
Wiring harnesses for the monitors, power cables, zip ties, and headrest post shims round out everything one should need to install the Vizualogic RoadTrip.
Features
The Vizualogic RoadTrip has all of the features that one would expect from a DVD player, such as the ability to display subtitles or switch between multiple audio tracks and video angles. Most of the DVD playback functions are activated using the included IR remote.
The touch-sensitive screen can be used to call up menus to adjust the image quality, volume, or to navigate DVD menus or file trees. The interface is a bit clunky and, with light text over a translucent background, can be a bit difficult to read. Because the unit lacks any physical controls, the touch screen is the only way to interact with the RoadTrip if you lose the remote.
The SD card slot is hardly mentioned in the supplied documentation and no mention is made of the formats that it supports. Through trial and error, we were able to view JPEG photo slideshows and play back MP3 files, but we weren’t able to find a supported video codec.
Performance
Installation is actually quite simple and requires only basic hand tools and a little know-how. More than enough cable is supplied to make the connections for the monitors and for power, which will come in handy for installs in larger vehicles. However, the included installation instructions are inaccurate at certain points. For example, it’s stated that the riser posts are adjusted by loosening a screw with a Phillips tipped screwdriver, but upon closer inspection we found that a hex key was required.
Once powered up, we were quite pleased with the standalone nature of the Vizualogic RoadTrip. Everything that you need to get started is in the box; just pop in a DVD and start watching. We feel that the SD card is definitely under-utilized in the RoadTrip and we would have liked to see more types of media supported, specifically video.
Video quality is only OK. The colors popped quite well, but video had a grainy quality with slight ghosting on the motion if you looked hard enough. The video is easily watchable in daylight, but direct sun will cause a good deal of glare and washout on the matte finished screens.
Audio quality from the RF wireless headphones was good, as long as we stayed directly in front of the monitor and had the proper RF channel selected. Moving too far to either side of the monitor or losing line of sight caused the audio to drop, at best, and to be harsh static, at worst, so you won’t want to get too far from the back seat with them on. Physical volume control directly on the headphone allowed for quick and easy adjustment.
Audio quality from the integrated FM transmitter is about as good as can be expected from any FM transmitter, which is to say not very good at all. The audio quality may be better in rural areas with fewer stations or in parking structures that block weaker signals, but during our testing in the San Francisco area we were unable to acquire a clear signal.
A better way to use your vehicle’s speakers would be to use one of the sets of RCA outputs to connect to an aftermarket stereo. The single set of RCA audio/video inputs allows for an additional source to be connected, such as a video game system.
In sum
We ran into a few snags during our installation of the Vizualogic RoadTrip, but we feel that anyone with an intermediate level of experience with car audio could install the system in almost any vehicle with removable headrests in an afternoon.
The system’s all-in-one design earned it high design points, but we had to ding a few points for an unintuitive remote controller and touch-screen interface. Multiple sets of audio/video outputs and inputs and the SD card slot’s media playback function add to the RoadTrip’s flexibility, but the omission of obvious functions–such as video playback from SD cards–prevents the Vizualogic system from achieving too high of a features score.
With an MSRP of about $999 and a street price of about $700, the Vizualogic system isn’t exactly cheap. However, when you consider the cost of purchasing and installing all of its components separately, the Vizualogic RoadTrip represents a pretty good value.
Devotec Unveils First Solar Powered Bluetooth Speaker
If the name ‘Devotec’ is familiar that’s because it has established a solid rep as a manufacturer of solar chargers for, well… just about everything! This however is clearly the next step in its evolution.
The ‘Solar Sound’ capitalises on all the company’s solar experience to create the first solar powered wireless Bluetooth speaker. So how practical is it?
In short: very. The speaker is fitted with a 150mA solar panel which at full charge can last up to eight hours on medium volume or four hours at full volume while recharging just involves leaving it in any form of light. Recharging takes between 12 and 24 hours for the solar panel or just four when hooked up to the mains.
n terms of compatibility the Bluetooth standard means it will work with virtually any Bluetooth equipped handset or MP3 player and since it has A2DP bass response will be improved if the connecting device sports the same. Audio can be controlled either directly from your device or using the touch button controls. Furthermore, if Bluetooth doesn’t appeal a 3.5mm headphone jack will come to the rescue. Finally, making the Solar Panel even more flexible is the inclusion of an integrated mic which means it can be used as a hands free car kit when driving.
As for sound quality, given the Solar Sound is designed to be very portable (165 x 55 x 55m and 260g) it won’t be shaking any walls but a pair of 2W speakers should be plenty enough for some peaceful garden listening or audiobook enjoyment.
If all this sounds rather tempting then the price shouldn’t put you off at £59.99 and it’s available from the company’s site from today. Let’s hear it for the sun!
NaturalPoint TrackIR 5 Review
While there’s no doubt that a percentage of the hardcore games market has abandoned the PC for the Xbox 360 and PS3, there are a few niches where the big old box will always reign supreme. For fans of simulations, for example, consoles will never really make the grade. Only a certain kind of PC gamer has the thirst for ultra-realistic portrayals of aviation, air-combat or racing, but it’s this audience that’s most willing to put no-compromise, no-holds-barred accuracy above gorgeous eye candy or immediate enjoyment. These are the people who have kept the likes of Simbin (GTR), Bohemia Interactive (ARMA: Armed Assault) and 1C (IL-2 Sturmovik) in business, and who continue to support smaller independent simulations like rFactor, Live for Speed, X-Plane and Condor. These are also the people who are prepared to shell out for additional gadgets and gizmos that will make the experience more lifelike, whether fully-featured, force-feedback steering wheels and joysticks, mock-up racing cockpits or triple-monitor adapters. If you’re one of them, then there’s a good chance that you’ve already heard of NaturalPoint, and heard of TrackIR.
Now in its fifth iteration, TrackIR is a system designed to turn real head movements into virtual head movements. It works with a number of games that provide a virtual cockpit view, and it effectively uses your head as a kind of mouse-look, or like the old ‘coolie hat’ controller on a proper flight-sim joystick. Turn your head left, and your view in-game rotates left. Turn right, and your view rotates right. Tilts of the head up and down work along similar lines. However, TrackIR goes further. In games with full support for all six degrees of movement, you can raise your head up and lower it down, lean left and right or move backwards and forwards, and your view adjusts accordingly. And as the system exaggerates small head movements into big ones in-game, you never have to turn so far that you can’t see the screen. It might not be quite as convincing as being surrounded by a bank of monitors in a serious, commercial simulation, but it’s certainly more immersive than the usual static view.
The actual kit consists of two main pieces; a USB infrared camera which sits on top of your main monitor, where it’s held by a simple adjustable mount, and one of two ‘TrackClips.’ The first is a passive clip with three reflective areas which hooks onto the brim of a baseball cap. The second – the TrackClip Pro – is an active unit that clips onto the left-hand side of your gaming headset and communicates with the camera and computer via USB. In either case, setting up TrackIR isn’t much of a problem; you install the software, connect the camera and the TrackClip, and it pretty much works. The only thing you may need to do is download a patch or an update for any games you want to play with the thing, though some – like Arma: Armed Assault II – work right out of the box.
There are a few practical issues in terms of everyday use. First, the passive clip had a tendency to fall off my own hat (though this might be the design of my hat), while the alternative TrackClip Pro is rather cumbersome and weird looking. Get it out at the average LanParty and it might look like you’ve tried unsuccessfully to spawn antlers. Also, I had to either sit lower than my usual sitting position or raise the monitor in order to get the camera and clip to work correctly. In my comfy gas-lift office chair, that’s not a problem, but there’s a chance it might be for you.
A utility is provided for setup and calibration, and you can use this to get a feel for how the system works. There’s a sphere view to give you an idea of how the tracking works in relation to your head movement, while 3D wireframe models of a human head help you check how your movements will be reflected in-game. There are easy adjustments for smoothness and speed of movement, and you can create custom profiles and set them for use with specific TrackIR supporting titles.
Here’s where there’s some room for disappointment: while there is a facility to make TrackIR function as a no-frills mouse-look, the technology really only works with games that have been designed or patched with the system in mind. Looking at the list you’ll see a number of big brand names – ARMA and ARMA II, Flight Simulator X, GTR2, Race 07, Tom Clancy’s HAWX, Colin McRae: DIRT, Race Driver: GRID and others – but the list is mostly restricted to serious sims. TrackIR would lend itself to other games – Far Cry 2, Battlefield 2 and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter spring to mind – but they won’t work correctly unless NaturalPoint can convince the developers to do the work required. The company is clearly working hard to do so, but while budgets stay tight and the technology remains niche that might be an uphill struggle.
And that’s a shame, because where it works TrackIR can be very impressive indeed. I tried it with a selection of games, including X-Plane (the popular hardcore indie flight-sim) Colin McRae: DIRT, Arma II, Race 07 and Future Pinball. While the technology takes a little getting used to, it definitely adds a new layer of immersion to the experience.
It’s in racing games that it’s initially most appealing. With Logitech G25 steering wheel in hand and Race 07 on the screen, at first the TrackIR feels like a distraction – just another thing to stop me getting my Seat around Monza in one piece. After a few practice laps, however, something changed, and I started using the virtual cockpit view to peer towards the next corner or even improve the view as I spin the car into it – a bit like I might in a real car. It also adds to the excitement of pushing through the pack once race day comes; there’s nothing like flicking your head left to peer at a rival as you pass, even if there’s only a fraction of a second to spare as you speed your way into the next turn.
DIRT is a little more challenging, if only because the view through the windscreen with the helmet cam (the only view TrackIR suports) is already quite restrictive. Again, though, TrackIR adds an extra sense of immersion to the game. Checking left and right and trying and peer around oncoming corners is pretty cool and surprisingly useful, as is being able to look out nervously at the occasional steep drop off to your left. It also makes you wish the game put more effort into animating your co-driver. When I turn right and take a look as we’re ploughing towards a steep, tree-lined bank at 60mph, I really expect to see a little emotion on the guy’s face.
Of course, TrackIR was originally designed with flight simulators in mind, and a quick run on X-Plane gave me some indication why. Not only is it very easy to glance down and check the instruments, just as you would in a real plane, but it also makes it easier to check the views out from all the cockpit windows without having to mess around with the coolie hat or hotkeys. It’s also easy to see why TrackIR might give you an edge in combat flight sims, where all-round awareness can be a factor on who survives a dogfight, and who ends up spinning in a smoking mess towards the ground.
Future Pinball isn’t quite such a showcase for TrackIR, but the hardware does add something when you play a table. Just as in real pinball, you need to flick your gaze rapidly between the flippers at the bottom of the table and the various targets, switches and hotspots nearer the top and while this sometimes proved a challenge for the tracking mechanisms, producing a small amount of lag, there was again something more lifelike about the experience. It won’t change your life, but it’s cool nonetheless.
However, it’s Arma II that really sells TrackIR for me. I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of the game or the realistic military sim genre; once you go beyond, say, GRAW and GRAW2, I find the extreme difficulty levels and rather unforgiving gameplay a bit aggravating. Nor is Arma II the easiest game in the genre to get to grips with, hampered as it is by less than intuitive controls and some rather long-winded game mechanics. All the same, TrackIR makes the game absorbing and exciting enough for me to get over these issues for a while. The look mechanism has cleverly been isolated from control of direction and targetting, meaning the mouse remains in control of your heading and your sights, even when you have your head turned to face a completely different direction. As a result, you find yourself racing through the brush in some godforsaken Soviet land, sneaking peaks left and right to check on the whereabouts of squad mates, and using your head to maintain a greater awareness of your surroundings and any lurking dangers therein. And when helicopters speed overhead or the bullets start whizzing over your shoulder, frantically scanning around just adds to the game’s taut atmosphere. If only NaturalPoint could bring TrackIR to Battlefield or Call of Duty, I suspect the results would be fantastic.
It’s also worth pointing out that TrackIR works with multi-monitor setups, and while I had to make do with a single 22in screen, I suspect that having a large horizontal view to work with should only add to the sense of immersion.
All very good, then, and if you’re heavily into your sims and you already have the flightstick, the steering wheel and the triplehead setup, then TrackIR probably is the next logical step. However, it’s not a cheap step, and given the relatively small number of games supported – and many of them quite obscure – this leaves me with a quandry. At £140, does TrackIR represent good value for money? Just about, but it could do with being a little cheaper – even compared to most yokes, steering wheels and flight-sticks this is a pricey bit of kit, and the aforementioned products will typically work with a much larger number of games. And while it’s easy to see where the money has gone with a G25 steering wheel or a flight yoke, throttle and pedals, nothing about the TrackIR makes it feel all that expensive.
But games support is really the crucial issue. The best thing to do is take a look at the[linkout:http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/03-enhanced-games/enhanced-games-all.html list of supported games. Run down the list and see how many of them you are still really serious about playing, and how many you’ve forgotten, never known about or left behind. If you’re still putting serious hours into one, two or more, then buying the TrackIR kit makes sense. If not, then a better monitor, a new controller, a new graphics card or maybe just a few more games will probably get you more for your money. For serious sim-heads, then, TrackIR is an attractive if pricey proposition. For the less committed, it’s an interesting technology, but one that needs a smaller price tag and a longer list of supporting games to convince.
JBL Duet III
Product Summary
The good: Attractive, modern design; decent clarity and sound quality.
The bad: The Duet III’s are a little short on bass; no auxiliary input for a second audio device.
The bottom line: While the JBL Duet III speakers just don’t have a lot of oomph to them, they look good and offer decent sound.
Specifications: Type of speaker: PC multimedia speakers ; Dimensions (WxDxH): 4.6 in x 4.6 in x 12 in ; Color: Black
Price range: $149.99
- Reviewed on: 07/13/2009
CNET reviewed the JBL Duet II PC speakers earlier this year and had some good things to say about them, though we did think they were a little short on bass. Now we got our hands on the step-up model, the Duet III, which offers the same design but the speakers are blown up in size by about 25 percent.
The package includes zeppelin-shaped speakers measuring 4.6 inches by 4.6 inches by 12 inches (the Duet IIs are 10.5 inches tall). Their fronts have a metallic silver mesh (read: cloth) covering the speaker grilles while their backs have a glossy black finish. They’re attractive, modern looking, and go particularly well with iMac models that feature an aluminum finish.
The speakers themselves are fairly lightweight–the left speaker weighs in at 1 pound, 3.5 ounces and the left at 1 pound, 6.5 ounces–but they’re not totally unsubstantial. JBL has conveniently placed a volume control on the top of the right speaker that when turned all the way to the left, shuts off the speaker.
As Jasmine France noted in her review of the Duet IIs, the Duet series has kind of a funky cable set up. She describes it as such: “Coming off the left speaker alone, you have three cables: one for power, one to attach to the right speaker, and one for the audio source. The right tower features just one cable to connect it to the left. On the plus side, the overall length of 7.5 feet should be plenty for most setups.” The speaker-to-speaker cable connects with a standard RCA plug, so you could even theoretically extend it further. Meanwhile, the audio source cable, which terminates in a silver-plated 3.5mm straight plug, measures 66 inches.
We didn’t mind the Duet’s cable system as much as she did, but it’s too bad that the speakers don’t have an auxiliary input for second audio device. In other words, to use the audio source cable with another device, you have to unplug it from your computer. A lot of PC speakers offer both an audio source cable for connecting to your computer, as well as auxiliary input for attaching a second device (or second computer).
The Duet III exhibited similar traits to its smaller brother. Overall, the speakers offered decent clarity and sounded good, but they were a little short on bass and just didn’t have much oomph to them, even at higher volumes. That said, because their bigger size, they do offer slightly more bass than the Duet IIs and sound better overall. We liked their sound but weren’t wowed by it. (Bass aficionados should consider a 2.1 speaker package that has a dedicated subwoofer–and, of course, even more wires.)
These PC speakers would be hard to recommend at their list price of $149.99, but Amazon has them on sale for $85, which is nice discount (see Editors’ note below). By comparison the Duet IIs sell for about $75 at Amazon, which isn’t bad either. However, if you were choosing between the two, we’d say step up to the Duet IIIs. The extra $10 is worth it.
Editors’ note: To get the discount at Amazon (as of July 13, 2009), you have to add the product to your cart for it to show up with the reduced price.
How to: Get the most out of your subwoofer
I recently participated in a Podcast focusing on subwoofer performance with Home Entertainment magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Geoff Morrison, Director of (loudspeaker company) Revel Products, Kevin Voecks, and Brent Butterworth, a freelance writer for a number of magazines including Sound & Vision.
Voecks immediately zeroed in on the importance of placement, which is absolutely crucial to getting the best out of any sub. I’d go so far as to say an average sub, perfectly placed and set up, will outperform a great sub that’s been carelessly placed and set up. That’s because the sub’s interaction with room acoustics can play havoc with sound, all too frequently resulting in boomy, uneven bass.
True, you can get away with that to a degree if all you’re trying to do is add oomph to movie soundtracks, but a muddy-sounding subwoofer will muddle the sound of music. Some call it “one-note bass,” and subwoofers that sound like that bug me.
You don’t get to hear much from me on the Podcast for quite awhile, so I’ll cut to the chase: Buy the biggest subwoofer you can stand. Or to put it another way, there’s no way a 1-foot cube sub will ever outperform a substantially larger, but less expensive, sub (say 15 inches tall by 15 inches wide by 20 inches deep or larger) when it comes to pitch definition and bass clarity. Just want boom? The mini subs will be fine. Want musical bass? Get a bigger sub.
Pure Move DAB/FM radio review
The Pure Move DAB/FM radio is very portable and offers good sound quality for the size
Pure’s new palm-sized DAB/FM portable radio, called Move, has been designed with outdoor use firmly in mind. It’ll happily pop in your pocket, but it also has a rear-mounted, hinged stand when it needs to be standalone.
Perhaps the most notable feature, however, is the incredible battery life. Use the supplied Li-on-equipped ChargePAK and the Move will provide over 40 hours of portable DAB listening from a ten-hour charge. A power adapter is included, too.
Move covers both digital and analogue bands, with full DAB III reception and decoding up to 192kbps. It offers ten presets each for DAB and FM and has a useful number of additional features for its size (width 15cm height 8.5cm, depth 2.7cm) and price.
These include a 3.5mm auxillary input, headphone output and something called textSCAN, which allows users to pause and control DAB scrolling text – useful should you need to ‘name that tune’. FM benefits from RDS and there’s also a USB input for future updates via PC.
Build quality is excellent: the fascia boasts a brushed-aluminium finish which fronts a soft-touch rubber main chassis. A central toggle switch controls volume, station search/select and textSCAN and there is a further pair of two-function control buttons that delve into menu, presets, info and DAB or FM operation.
Move’s key-press-activated, orange-backlit LCD display is small, but legible and can be left permanently on if required. It displays 16×2 characters, plus a number of function icons. As part of Pure’s EcoPlus family, the company claims an impressive 0.95-watt power consumption for Move, which might make you feel better in your main hi-fi is ‘always on’.
Sound quality
Hi-fi it ain’t, but let’s get some perspective here; as palm-sized, ultra-portable radios go, Move has a very appealing sound quality, if in the classic ‘tranny’ mould. It’s 50mm drive unit gives a typically small-scale bandwidth that eschews the frequency extremes and instead favours the all-important speech band.
Legibility with the spoken word is, therefore, very good. With headphones attached – we used our real-world reference Sennheiser HD 650s (£400) – the sound comes alive and shows the strength of Pure’s electronics expertise; lets not forget that with the Evoke-1, Pure started the whole DAB thing off.
Go back to the internal speaker, however, and the lack of bass is inevitable. Orbital’s Halcyon (from the new hits album, 20) at 128kbps on DAB had plenty of midrange drive and high-frequency bite, but was notably bass-shy. That said, Move has to be put in context – it’s a 280-gram radio after all.
A move to Radio 3 in FM (test location five miles from the Wrotham mast in Kent) and things step-up, as you might expect. The gulf between FM and DAB – even at 192kbps – becomes obvious, especially with the HD 650s. Following a tune with the Move is easy, but speech is where it performs best.
For the money, Move is certainly fair value, especially when considering the built-in proprietary ChargePAK. In fact we’ve yet to come across a better-equipped, better-built radio with these tiny dimensions. It might not be bargain territory, but the superb construction, great feature count and two-year warranty certainly makes it worthy of a Best Buy badge in our eyes.
