Category: Music

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Connected Objects Lighting Music

Riflo connected LED lights up your abode with glorified notifications

We’re not quite at the point of questioning’s someone’s grasp of reality if their lights aren’t connected to the Internet. But while most would immediately point to the Philips Hue as the de facto connected light bulb for the technologically savvy dweller, the Riflo’s Indiegogo campaign presents an alternative.

While the Hue’s array of color options and scenes are all the rage, the Riflo programmable smart color LED expands on these features by adding a Wi-Fi connected speaker to the mix. This speaker can do things like audibly communicate information pertinent to the user (e.g. “You have a meeting in an hour,” “You have a new email.”) or stream music with or without a companion streaming app. Or, it’s Wink feature uses the colorful LED to silently communicate what needs to be known without a possibly annoying robo-voice droning on about it.

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Music

Plugfones Liberate blocks out noise, lets in favorite tunes

Noisy environments are usually a temporary nuisance — unless, of course, one has to work in them all day. In that case, noise cancelling ear plugs are necessary to properly protect one’s hearing. Unfortunately, that means no music or audiobooks to get through the workday with. Shaun Knudsen couldn’t deal with that limitation and created a set of noise-cancelling headphones called Plugfones. After a few years of success with his initial wired version, the product is on Kickstarter in its new, wireless iteration: Plugfones Liberate.

The noise-blocking headphones shed its 3.5mm port to make it easier for anyone to work without the hassle or potential danger of tangled wires. Beyond that, it’s pretty familiar territory as far as earbuds go. The Plugfones Liberate feature a noise-reducing mic for phone calls and controls for things like playback and volume. It’s recommended that the Plugfone Liberates’ variety of user-replaceable silicon and foam tips are replaced every few weeks to ensure a snug fit and maintain the benefits of its s Noise Reduction Rating of 26. Plugfones sells them direct from its Web site for $7.99.

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Music

Guitar Now helps aspiring guitarists strum without getting fingers numb

The road to learning any musical instrument is littered with pain, heartache, frustration, and the nagging urge to quit. The last one is so great that most people do so, despite the myriad of benefits that come from playing a musical instrument.

While the guitar is one of the more accessible instruments, it also makes it the one most give up trying to learn. Guitar Now is designed to make it a lot easier to grasp the foundations of the easy-to-learn but hard-to-master instrument. It’s comprised of three parts: a collar that wraps around the guitar’s neck, a top plate that fastens to its front side, and a range of sliding inserts. Each of these inserts is key to the Guitar Now concept because each employs a design that guides a new learner’s fingers directly to the strings that need to be played, at once teaching finger, form, and chord placement.

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Connected Objects Music

Aset and Pharaoh smart headphones turn Android on its ear

Wireless headphones provided a major boost to the headphone market. One reason why is that doing away with the cord made it much easier –- and safer — to use headphones while exercising.

patent-claimedThe patent-pending, over-the-ear Smart Listening Device (SLD) headphones take Bluetooth headphones one step further by adding the Android operating system, enabling users to download music and other media files directly to the headset. Other features include a built-in pedometer to track fitness accomplishments, USB connectivity, built-in GPS, and built-in internal microphones for phone calls and Skype conversations. Each set of headphones can play 8 hours after less than an hour of charging its lithium battery.

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Connected Objects Music

Iiothinks does the talking for a better smart home

By this point, it’s pretty much understood most smart home products don’t do the best job talking to each other. Slowly, the issue is being rectified with the creation of more and more hardware and software platforms attempting to serve as a centerpiece to a connected home.

The is the iothinks mission, but the team behind it goes about it a little differently: by using sound. The actual iothinks device is a small, attractively designed device sporting the usual play/pause button and status lights along with a few custom buttons. But the magic happens when it connects to a user’s smartphone and to any Bluetooth or Wi-Fi-enabled speakers. Then, it acts as an Amazon Echo, doling out social media message updates and weather notification, auto-launching playlists when a user is detected back home, linking up with sleep trackers for smart alarms — iothinks boasts a wide range of features.

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Connected Objects Music

MoodBox speaker senses your mood to play blues, show hues

editors-choiceMany people select music that’s based on their mood at any given time. MoodBox is a device designed to take full advantage of that.

It’s a 360-degree omnidirectional speaker with LEDs that responds to mood-matching music requests via voice command. MoodBox uses artificial intelligence and predictive modeling to help it learn different genres and moods of music and ambient lighting that the user likes. Music can be streamed from services including iTunes and Spotify via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

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Connected Objects Music

Create raucous riffs anywhere with the Remidi T8 wearable instrument

Imagine the process of making dope beats, and an array of MIDI controllers and computers with complex user interfaces immediately spring to mind. All that choice and functionality is certainly but make no mistake: all that stuff takes years to really master, ultimately turning many newbies off to the experience.

At its core, the Remidi T8 wearable instrument is a MIDI controller made to get folks jamming instantly. Designed as a thin but durable glove made of Ultra Spandex, the Remidi T8 sports eight pressure sensitive sensors in the fingers and palms. Each sensor’s sound is completely customizable, so aspiring producers can create brand new sounds or remix existing ones. Gesture controls are also present so that different movements up and down or wrist twists will further distort programmed sounds.

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Connected Objects Music

The Mighty music player lets you enjoy Spotify without a smartphone

editors-choiceThe days of small, lightweight MP3 players — a la the iPod Shuffle — are gone. For active types everywhere, their demise was a huge loss only compounded by the rise of streaming music and the increasingly larger smartphones needed for it.

Mighty Audio’s Mighty streaming music player is the only device on the market that can locally play Spotify playlists without an Internet connection by downloading music before you go. The 1.5 square inch Mighty player connects with iOS or Android devices over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to transfer up to 4GB of Spotify Premium tunes for up to five hours of playback.

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Connected Objects Music

The Solo plays the guitar for you, lets you focus on burning the dessert

Live music is a great help to practicing singers and musicians wanting accompaniment or as entertainment at a dinner party or in a club. The problem really lies in getting people together consistently who want to play, especially on short notice.

The Solo is looking to resolve that difficulty. The product is a mahogany or ebony guitar attachment that transforms any guitar into a self-playing version of itself. To do this, retractable pegs push down on the strings of a guitar’s fretboard while a row of picks down by the guitar’s base strums them, essentially creating a modern digital equivalent of a player piano.

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Music

Redeem those hours playing Guitar Hero with a real guitar and its Fret Friend

Learning any instrument is an exercise in both discipline and time, not mention the dizzying array of concepts needed before one can really start confidently jamming along with buddies.

To help, the Fret Friend eases the process of learning guitar chords by allowing players to draw them directly on its cloth overlay with a marker to add a visual element to the already sonic experience. By putting these two elements together, the team behind the Fret Friend is confident that musical padawans will not only learn faster but also retain information better as well.

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