Dr. Dre announced 3 new additions to his Beats Headphone lineup at CES 2010 in Vegas this past week. The latest generation in the Beats by Dr. Dre line is a more hardcore focused line of DJ headphones. First up is the Professional model. 

From the minds that brought you Beats by Dr. Dre Studio headphones comes Spin Professional Headphones. Engineered and artfully designed with the needs of DJs and audio professionals in mind, Spin deliver pro-caliber response and sound isolation, revealing every note with distortion-free clarity. Spin are also constructed for heavy duty use, featuring a light, yet rugged, industrial aluminum frame to endure even the most intense gigs. Plus, the unique flip up ear cups make checking out house noise a quick flick.They also have two connections for two 3.5mm headphone cables so you can switch around the cable from the left ear cup to the right ear.

This model comes in a white or black.

Beats Spin Professional Headphones - Beats by Dr. Dre by Monster available for $349.00 

Not only amazing headphones, a portion of the profits from the special Beats Solo HD (PRODUCT) RED edition will go straight to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Proprietary driver technology ensures they preserve every bit of the lush bass and vital details of your music. Plus, the ingenious tri-fold design make for easy storage when not in use. Solo HD’s cable also features Monster ControlTalk™ for iPod® playback control and iPhone™/music phone hands-free calling.

  

Beats Solo HD (Product) Red - Beats by Dr. Dre by Monster availabe for $229.00

 

 

Experience high definition sound while on the move with these ultra light and comfortable on-ear headphones. Advanced proprietary driver technology ensures they preserve every bit of the lush bass, vital details and high energy your favorite artists created for their fans. Plus, the ingenious tri-fold design makes for easy storage when not in use. Solo HD’s cable also features Monster ControlTalk™ for iPod® playback control and iPhone™/music phone hands-free calling.

This model comes in a white or black.

Beats Solo HD (High Definition) - Beats by Dr. Dre by Monster available for $229.00

 

  

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT MY NEW PAGE...LP'S TECH CORNER...ON THE BUZZ!

FOR THE BUZZ,

I'M LP

Thomas Mascall at the Macedesign House in the UK has come up with a pretty cool little device. A pretty unique personal music player that incorporate interactions into the act of listening to music. The large controller wheel, surrounding the screen, acts similar to that of a turntable: when used in combination with the surrounding function buttons, it allows for compelte user control over a track, through a precise position, timing and pitch manipulation.

One function button controls the simultaneous switching to a second track, allowing the user to mix records on the fly or scratch sounds over a track. Through the cue output, each track is directed to either the left or right headphone, the beat and pitch can then be matched, a cue point or sample loop created and the tracks mixed out the main phone output, cueing points at will.

Two devices can also be combined wirelessly at the click of a button, to act similarly to the traditional DJ set up, just at around 1:8 scale. This function also allows for multiple users to mix and scratch tracks together combining their own touchtables through one output.

The device not only adds interaction to the personal listening experience, but can also be used for performance. The touchtable can be plugged into a computer, where it acts as a midi device, working with built in software allowing complete creativity and control over custimization and music creation. Although the touchtable allows for complex interactions comparable to a complete DJ set up, the device itself is very simplistic, not to mention ultra portable and easy to use. There is no distributor for this product as of yet and no price set either.

Be sure to peep my new corner called "LP's Tech Corner" for other previously posted tech articles on the site!

LP

These are pretty cool and invented in the Bay Area too! Named one of Time's 50 best inventions of 2009, OrigAudio's new foldable eco friendly foldable speakers are cheap and practical. Carrying bulky speakers everywhere is impractical, and sometimes headphones just won't do the trick. OrigAudio has an affordable solution that folds conveniently into your on-the-go music lover's lifestyle. A combination of origami and genius, fold and play recycled speakers lie flat when not in use and then pop up into 3 inch cubes that require no external power source - they're compatible with any device that has a standard headphone jack, and draw power directly from the source they're plugged into. The tiny speakers, made from recycled materials, produce high-quality sound and come in five cool designs or the blank Canvas version, which you can decorate however you want with your own graphics.

Priced at a very afforadable $16 and available at www.origaudio.com

Specifications:

• Two 1 watt speakers
• Cube Size: 3.15 x 3.15 x 3.15 inches (8 x 8 x 8 centimeters)
• 3.5mm Standard Audio Jack Plug
• Made from Recycled Materials
• NO batteries or external power source needed.
• Universally Compatible with any device that has a headphone jack (MP3 players, laptops, cell phones, cd players, etc.)

It is hard to believe that 2009 is nearly over. As this year is coming to an end so is the first decade of this new millennium. A lot has changed in technology over the last 10 years.

As 1999 was coming to an end, I like most others in the Information Technology industry was preparing for the impending Y2K doom that was being predicted in the media. Of course nothing happened and that was a non-event, so I threw on my headphones, slammed a CD in my portable Sony compact disc player and went back to being amazed I could listen to a whole album while walking around town.

10 Years later, I'm even more amazed at the technology that surrounds my life. I may not have the definative list, but I was looking for gadgets that either sparked a revolution or did something innovative enough to warrant a nod. A game changer in one way or another at least in my world.

15. USB Flash Drives - not sexy by any means, but mass storage on the end of your key chain is pretty cool in my books. They seem to proliferate like rabbits too. I have as many of these things hanging around my house now as I did 3.5" floppy's in early 90's.

14. XBOX Live - Video game consoles have been around for most of my life and in the 2000's they got faster and came with better graphics and more sophisticated games. But the game changer for all of us was XBOX Live. That revolutionized the way we all played games as we could play together online with people from anywhere at any time we wanted.

13. HD TV - I gotta tell ya, I'm a big hockey fan and there is nothing like watching a game in 1080p. I can't even watch a game anymore unless it's in 1080p. I'll watch two crappy teams play in 1080p over two great teams on a non HD feed. Amazing really.

12. Nintendo Wii - Yes game consoles have been around since the early 70's, but no game console has done what the Wii has, it pulled gamers off the couch and into the action, revolutionizing video game play in the process. Unless your grandma is ultra hip she ain't playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 with you but she might be standing up there and bowling with you on the Wii.

11. Blogging - Hey where would the Buzz be without the explosion of the blogging world? 100 million blogs online these days makes everyone a real time reporter, it has changed the way media reports on and responds to news and all kinds of topics. Defiantly a game changer in the world of media. It brought Fetty Be's Buzz to the masses!

10. Satellite Radio - Sadly, this one may be petering out after a great run through the middle of the decade. Crystal clear signal, no commercials (yeah right) with 100's of entertainment choices basically anywhere you go. BPM was and still is a staple in Fetty Be's house. Unfortunately the merger, large ego's, internet streaming radio and HD Radio may kill this one.

9. Social Networking explosion - You know for the geeks like me we had BBS, Compuserve and AOL in the 80's and 90's. But in this decade it exploded, it started with Friendster in 2002. 2003 saw MySpace come online and everyone in entertainment or creeps looking for a date said "hit me up on MySpace" for the next 6 or so years. For the professional worker, Linkedin also arrived in 2003. Classmates also popped up for the High School Reunion crowd and those wanting to reconnect with that person they took to the junior prom. Over the last couple of years, even Grandma got in on the action with Facebooking which left MySpace in the dust at the end of this decade. Now there's a micro-blogging phenomena going on with Twitter, where everyone broadcasts in 140 character bursts what they had for breakfast that day.

8. Digital Cameras - At the end of the last decade, only the very coolest of people had a digital camera, most people were still using film and waiting days to see the results of their fine portrait work. Sorry to pick on Grandma again, but even she has a digital camera and instant gratification from email'ng pics from the latest event. We got our first Digital Camera in 1998, 12 years later we have a 132GB and 130,000 digital photos.

7. GPS - My sense of direction - not so much. Map unfolded on car seat next to me - not helpful. Where would I be most of the time without my Garmin Nuvi? Oh yeah that's right - LOST! Although this device on it's own is probably going to be a distant memory soon as it continues to merge into just an add on app on the mobile handheld device you are carrying.

6. YouTube - Ebay was a game changer very early in the decade and Wikipedia is still big now but I gave the nod to YouTube. These guys brought video sharing to the masses and in the process made the Movie houses and Television studios stand up and take notice. Hard to imagine a day doesn't go by where you don't end up watching something that originated from this website. The Buzz is certainly a big user of YouTube.

5. Google - The decade started with "Do you Yahoo?" but it certainly ended with "I'm going to Google that!" These guys somehow managed to change the search engine game and clobber the competition along the way. With a 65% market share on web searches, nobody and I mean nobody else is even close. Just think how many times a day you end up on that plain white page typing in something you are looking for?

4. Tivo - Another gadget with a famous pop culture moment, "My Tivo thinks I'm gay?" We were very early adoptors of Tivo at the beginning of the decade. It changed the way we watched TV for sure. Time shifting and skipping commercials -  I even hacked the Tivo box and added more drive space and an ethernet card - it was 2001, what could be cooler really? At it's height we had 3 TIVO's, but some bad business decisions by the company, not being able to make deals with DirectTV or Comcast and the advent of me-too products has all but killed the brand while the technology lives on.

3. iPhone - Got an App for that? Oh and that touch screen. That's got to be a geek's wet dream. Mr. Jobs changed the mobile device market just when you thought it had become a commodity. Diehard Apple fans camped out on city sidewalks for days to be among the first to score the hotly anticipated iPhone. The first iPhones dropped on June 29, 2007 and within 74 days Apple had sold 1 million of its new devices. Now it's said that the number of iPhones and iPod touch units sold has climbed to 40 million. It just debut in China, you do the math on that one. Ironically the only item on the list that we don't own.

2. Blackberry - A fine Canadian invention! Another gadget with a pop culture reference, the "crackberry." You could say I've worn out a few blackberry keyboards over the years. It might be more fair to say this slot should really be for PDA devices as whole but the Blackberry introduced in 2002 has survived and thrived where many other's have failed. Hell, even the President has a blackberry now.

1. IPOD - It's pretty simple, at the beginning of the decade I had a portable CD player with 15 songs on it. Now I have my entire music collection (all 130GB's of it) on a device I can slip into my pocket. So do a 100 million other people. There have been many versions of digital music players, the IPOD wasn't the first, but it really is the only choice that matters these days. Introduced in 2001, the iPod has come a long way. Since the original iPod that could hold 1,000 songs, Apple has updated the model nearly every year, expanding the line to tiny workout-friendly Shuffles and Nanos and, of course, the iPhone-like iPod Touch. The current iPod classic can hold 40,000 songs. That still large enough to handle all of Fetty Be's music collection (just barely though!).

FOR THE BUZZ, I'M LP!

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile...If you are old like LP, you remember when people carried around boomboxes on their shoulders? A new innovation could make that as ancient as the casette player.

If you're looking to save space in your living room, while getting a conversation started at the same time, you could do a lot worse than the FleXpeaker, a paper-thin speaker from a Taiwanese research company called ITRI.

An amazingly skinny, but still powerful device, the FleXpeaker sounds great, while making your iPod Touch seem obese by comparison.

ITRI came to the Silicon Valley last month to show its speaker off.  It's not yet ready for mass production (probably, we understand sometime next year), but it's not too hard to imagine it in a car, on a laptop, or even covering an entire wall.  It can be bent like a piece of paper, and get this you can even cut it into whatever shape you want. That part blew my mind...they guy cut it right there and then started pumping music out of it again.

Check out this video:

IRTI vice president Ian Yi-Jen Chan says the speaker can be this skinny because of an ultrathin film that fits between thin sheets.  The sound vibrates off the film, and comes out sounding better than you'd expect.  Plug it into your MP3 player, and you've got sound to go, in any size or shape.

The company even sees a day when people attach the speakers to their clothing for ultraportable sound.

FleXpeaker also proves that you can get good sound without using a lot of power.  The skinny speaker uses a fraction of the energy of your home set, so it saves money, while taxing the power grid a lot less. 

Even if it turns out to be something of a novelty itself, it's worth keeping an eye on the technology, which looks to be a game changer.

Where will we see it next? Well, if the researchers can combine both a thin display from either HP or Samsung with this FleXspeaker into a paper thin dimension, the future with entertainment wallpaper is highly possible!

Keeping The Buzz geeked out with gadgets!!!

For The Buzz,  I'm LP!