Tag Archives: StreamingAudio

Eyes-on with LG’s streaming Smart Sound Bar

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Eyeson with LG's Smart Sound Bar

Among the many, many things that LG is unveiling at CES this year is the curious addition of a sound bar with built-in video streaming. That still sounds like a contradiction of purpose to us, but the Smart Sound Bar, also known as the NB3730A, is more fascinating once you dive into the details. The large-sized bar pumps out 300W across its 2.1 channels, and its WiFi takes internet audio and video from CinemaNow, general internet radio, Netflix, Pandora and Vudu. Bluetooth audio is built-in as well. It's ultimately built for those who don't have an online-capable TV, Blu-ray player or media hub at their disposal -- a group whose ranks are thinning quickly, but certainly still exists.

We got a quick glance at the Smart Sound Bar for ourselves. From a design perspective, it's simple to operate and thin, if not exactly short. This won't be a good fit for that small TV in the basement, then, although it's perfect for that big wall-mounted set. We'd like to tell you how well it works in real life, but expo conditions dictate otherwise: LG unfortunately lacks an internet connection for the sound bar on demo, and an extra-crowded booth isn't the ideal environment for gauging audio quality. If you're mostly wondering whether or not it will fit into the living room decor, however, we've got a gallery for you below.

Gallery: LG Smart Sound Bar eyes-on

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Pure unveils Jongo for low-cost multi-room audio, revamped Pure Connect app

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Pure unveils Jongo for lowcost multiroom audio, revamped Pure Connect app

Many consider Sonos the main game in town for mobile-friendly, multi-room audio. Pure wants to give us at least one major alternative. Its new Jongo speaker line delivers multi-speaker streaming for radio, podcasts and Pure Music subscriptions across the home through WiFi, rather than a proprietary network, and includes Bluetooth for those who want to skip the network altogether. The system promises to cut the traditionally high costs of spreading sound throughout the home, as well: the inaugural Jongo S340B portable speaker (at left) coming in the first quarter of the year should cost $229, or about $70 less than its stationary Play:3 rival. An A140B audio-to-WiFi bridge (bottom) and a 100W S640B flagship speaker (top) should fill out Pure's plans when they ship later in the first half of the year, although there's no immediate pricing for a point of reference.

In tandem with the hardware, there's a matching refresh of the Pure Connect app. The software update brings in the control of Jongo speakers that you'd expect, but it also promises simpler navigation, tie-ins with Audioboo's user-recorded spoken word content and a dedicated discovery area to find music beyond the beaten path. Android and iOS users should have access to the app during the first quarter. Pure Music, a music store and a social listening component should reach the app in the near future, although Americans will have to wait until sometime in 2013 to use the service that their British and German friends have today.

Gallery: Pure Jongo @ CES 2013

Ben Gilbert contributed to this report.

Continue reading Pure unveils Jongo for low-cost multi-room audio, revamped Pure Connect app

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Source: Pure

Google Music matching explicit songs with clean ones, but contains a stopgap fix

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Google Music graffiti Android

Early iTunes Match adopters will remember the unintentional bowdlerization of their music libraries: they'd listen to their scanned music collection on a second device and lose all the colorful language. As we're quickly learning, Google Music's newly added scan and match feature isn't exempt from that problem, either. Those streaming matched copies of explicit songs through the newer service are getting clean versions, with no obvious way to preserve the filth. We've reached out to Google for comment, but in the meantime, here's a potential solution -- choose the "fix incorrect match" option and Google Music will typically upload the raw tracks. Hopefully, the service will match the correct tracks by the next time we want an unfiltered experience for our ears.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Droid-Life

Amazon Cloud Player arrives for Roku boxes, Samsung Smart TVs

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Amazon Cloud Player app arrives for Roku, Samsung Smart TVs

So you've embraced Amazon Cloud Player to the point where you want it at the center of your living room. Amazon is more than happy to oblige with newly launched apps for both Roku media hubs as well as Samsung Smart TVs. The two apps will stream Amazon MP3 purchases and uploaded songs for everyone in the living room, although they share the same limitations: uploading music is clearly off the table given the lack of local storage, and we'll have to manage that party playlist elsewhere. When both apps are free perks of an existing service, though, we won't grouse too loudly.

Continue reading Amazon Cloud Player arrives for Roku boxes, Samsung Smart TVs

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Source: Amazon (1), (2)

Trent Reznor teases Beats-backed streaming music service, wants a personal touch

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Trent Reznor gives clues to his Beatsbacked streaming music service, wants a personal touch

Dr. Dre isn't the only musician to collaborate with Beats on projects deeper than one-off headphone models. Nine Inch Nails and How To Destroy Angels creator Trent Reznor tells The New Yorker that he and Beats are developing a streaming music service, codenamed Daisy, that should go beyond just automatically suggesting related songs like with Pandora. Alongside algorithm-based picks, Daisy should introduce "intelligent curation" from humans to make musical connections that wouldn't otherwise take place. We'll know more when the service goes live early next year; we're presuming the recommendations will involve more than just another spin of The Downward Spiral.

[Image credit: Nine Inch Nails and Rob Sheridan, Flickr]

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Via: Pitchfork

Source: The New Yorker (subscription required)

Sonos for iOS adds direct device streaming, takes PCs out of the equation (hands-on)

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Sonos for iOS adds direct device streaming, we go handson

Sonos has been steadily reducing our dependency on the computer as the cornerstone of its multi-room audio system, but there's been one link left to cut: local music. Outside of an AirPlay workaround, a PC of some sort has always had to stay awake to stream a personal collection. If you're an iOS user, it's now possible to go truly PC-free. A 3.8.3 update for Sonos' apps plays music stored on an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch directly through the system, with no hoop-jumping required. Local content is put on equal footing with pure internet sources, too -- the software can mix local tracks with those from Amazon Cloud Player, Spotify and other internet services as part of the same playlist. There's no official word of direct device streaming for Android, although we wouldn't be surprised to see it follow before too long.

We gave the update a quick spin of our own, and it works largely as you'd hope. There's a logical hierarchy for browsing music by categories; songs, albums and podcasts play almost as soon as you've added them to the queue, even if the Sonos app is in the background. We heard slight hitches when playing tracks meant to play seamlessly -- this may not be a dream Dark Side of the Moon setup -- but grouped speakers stay just as nicely in sync as they have in the past. The Sonos upgrade is more than good enough to save a walk across the house for a favorite tune, and that's really all we need.

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Source: App Store (iPad), (iPhone)

Code hints Microsoft may add direct music playback to SkyDrive

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Code hints Microsoft may add music playback to SkyDrive

Microsoft has been busy streamlining SkyDrive to make the most of our time in the cloud, but it hasn't yet cut out the middleman for audio playback; if a song wasn't obtained through a channel like Xbox Music, it won't play online in Microsoft's universe. LiveSide has made some code discoveries suggesting the storage service could at least partly remedy the problem with a web-based music player. We don't know much of how it would work, although the presence of interface elements hints that Microsoft is at least committed to development. The real dilemma is an absence of clues as to when (and if) playback will ever go live -- and there's nothing that would reveal whether or not SkyDrive is the heart of an upcoming option to upload personal tracks for Xbox Music streaming. If the music player mentions reflect more than just experimentation, however, the Redmond team may soon have a more direct answer to the likes of Amazon Cloud Player or Google Music.

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Via: PCWorld

Source: Liveside.net

Apple revamps Apple TV firmware, iOS Remote app to play nicely in an iTunes 11 world

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Apple revamps Apple TV firmware, iOS Remote app to play nicely in an iTunes 11 world

If you're the early adopting type living in an Apple ecosystem, you probably upgraded to iTunes 11 almost as soon as the bits reached the servers. You might not have noticed that Apple gave its iOS Remote app and Apple TV firmware shots in the arm to match. Of the two, Remote 3.0 is the larger update and brings a simpler UI that also takes advantage of iTunes' new Up Next feature to add or prune out songs in ongoing playlists on a host computer. iPad owners reap the most rewards -- the album view now expands in place to quickly drill down to a specific track. Apple TV viewers aren't quite so coddled, although they too get Up Next support for iTunes 11 (and iTunes Match) as well as the usual rounds of speed-ups and bug fixes; we imagine a solution to some of the troubles with 5.1 is part of the package. No matter which update fits into your vision of musical harmony, you'll find details at the source links.

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Via: Cult of Mac (1), (2)

Source: App Store, Apple

Google Play Movies, Music reach Australia, Canada and parts of Europe on November 13th (update: Google scales it back)

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Google Play on Google TV

Google's long-awaited offering of Google Play Movies and Music on Google TV may have answered a longstanding demand for streaming access from some viewers, but it still left many of those outside of the US turning to alternatives. The company is closing that open loop with plans to take the media strategy global. Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the UK will all get similar streaming video options on their Google TV hubs as of November 13th; while content will undoubtedly vary, the gesture once more puts the international stores on roughly the same level as their American counterpart. The only debate left likely centers on what movie to rent for celebrating the occasion.

Update: Google has made a new post suggesting that its earlier outline was a mistake: Australia and Canada aren't part of the November 13th mix.

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Google Play Movies, Music reach Australia, Canada and parts of Europe on November 13th (update: Google scales it back) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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JBL SoundFly Air ships, delivers AirPlay to your wall socket for $199

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JBL SoundFly Air ships, delivers AirPlay to your wall socket for $199

JBL's SoundFly lineup is one of the rarer breeds of wireless speaker we've come across: it's much like an earlier AirPort Express made solely for audio, designed to be as unintrusive as possible while it kicks out the jams. Those who find that stealthy sound appealing will be glad to hear that the more advanced of the two SoundFly speakers, the SoundFly Air, is now shipping. The 20W box will play audio streamed from any AirPlay-capable device on the same WiFi network while it sits demurely on a wall outlet. JBL is counting on a few tricks to set itself apart from the rest of the similarly Apple-oriented pack, such as linking up to four of the speakers for whole-home audio and offering an iOS app to tailor the output to the room. About the only reservation is a $199 shipping price for something that isn't as portable or universal as a Jawbone Jambox, but that may be the price to pay for a speaker that can offer longer range and syncing while it very nearly blends into the furniture.

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JBL SoundFly Air ships, delivers AirPlay to your wall socket for $199 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Nov 2012 08:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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