While we all wait patiently for Apple to concoct its own subscription-based, unlimited music streaming service (hello, Lala acquisition !), MOG is jumping on the opportunity right away. Er, almost right away. Down in Austin this week, the company announced that an iPhone and Android app would be out “in early Q2″ in order to bring unlimited music streaming to both operating systems for $10 per month. We’re told that a catalog of seven million songs will be available, but there’s no way to know if 6.99 million are of the “no one cares” variety. At any rate, your monthly fee will also allow unlimited streaming from the desktop, but alas, you’ll be left with nothing but hollow memories should you ever stop ponying up

There’s no shortage of cutesy portable speakers for listening to music when you’re out and about. But if you want something that doesn’t feel like it’s going to snap in two, the Audio-Technica BoogieBox will do you a solid. More

The Hifiman HM-801 looks like an old portable cassette player, but apparently it might just beat out most music players in sound quality. At least that’s what CNET though when they had a listen . They even found it worth $790. More

Seriously, who told manufacturers that we’re in love with garish LED status lights?ASUS has strapped a glowing orb of unnecessariness around the volume knob of the Cine5 — an otherwise perfectly acceptable and appreciably diminutive PC soundbar . With an array of speaker drivers integrated into that curvy body, ASUS claims the Cine5 produces realistic multidirectional surround sound, but does admit it’s mostly intended for smaller spaces such as study rooms. The announcement also includes a nod to FPS gamers, with claims that the improved positional audio on offer will benefit both gameplay immersion and accuracy when identifying a sound source, though we reckon the biggest boon will still be the elimination of the extra cables and speakers one usually needs to get one’s surround sound on. Price and availability have not yet been made public, but knowing ASUS both should be in the reasonable range of the market. ASUS Cine5 is ‘world’s most compact’ five-channel speaker, doesn’t forget the blue LEDs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:21:00 EST

Olympic finishes always look close, but when these fractions of a second are charted in audio, you really conceptualize the nearly nonexistent margin between the top of a podium and the bottom of a scotch bottle. Just listen: [ NYTimes ]

“Larry, your new speakers look great, really they do. But…something’s off. I can’t put my finger on it, but they just sound, I dunno, kind of wooden . You know?” Because they’re inspired by trees! Haha. I kill me

What’s cute, cuddly, and makes all sorts of bizarro noises when it senses wireless waves? Yoshi Akai’s Wireless Catcher, of course! This analog synth contraption is simplistic in nature and complex in design, utilizing an onboard antenna to sense WiFi signals and then alter the sounds being outputted depending on signal strength and direction. It’s not exactly the symphony that Bach forgot to write, but it’s certainly beautiful in its own nerdy way. Have a look at the video past the break, won’t you? Continue reading Yoshi Akai’s Wireless Catcher senses nearby wireless waves, makes music (video) Yoshi Akai’s Wireless Catcher senses nearby wireless waves, makes music (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

If you want peace and quiet, current technologies involve a compromise: settle for thick, unsightly foam or use thinner panels that don’t block bass. A new technology developed in Hong Kong, however, is both super thin and super effective. The researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Kowloon have made their noise-canceling strides with the simplest of materials: latex and plastic. The latex is stretched over a grid of plastic squares that’s only 3mm thick, with a small piece of plastic in the middle of each square. Depending on the weight of that plastic button, the panel can be tuned to cancel out a different frequency. Five of these panels stacked together effectively canceled 70 to 550 hertz and was still only as thick as a ceramic tile.

Before Twitter existed, the term “tweeter” didn’t describe a person but rather a thing—the part of the speaker that reproduced high frequencies. Philips’ new MCi900 and MCD900 hi-fi stereos let theirs hang out for the world to see. Before you get too excited, take note the pretty new systems were announced by Philips’ Spanish division and will likely never make it to American soil. That’s too bad, because there’s a lot to long for: The MCi900 and MCD900 have CD players and USB ports for taking in your tunes and a nice big color display for navigating through them. The MCi900 model has Philips’ Streamium technology which lets you listen to Internet radio or stream songs wirelessly from your computer, and it also includes a 160GB hard drive for storing all that music on board. But the systems’ most striking features are their SoundSphere speakers, which have bodies made out of a single piece of aluminum and include the unique floating tweeter design which supposedly delivers a more natural sound

The Achilles’ Heel of the latest and greatest Nehalem-based Mac Pros seemed to be their trouble handling audio processing —even playing a song in iTunes reportedly caused overheating and sacked performance. Mac Pro Audio Update 1.0 offers sweet relief. According to MacWorld , the new update , which rolled out last week, seems to help the matter both in terms of cooling temperatures and reclaiming processing power. In a series of tests, they determined that installing the update resulted in a significantly quicker Aperture import and Compressor encoding with the machine simultaneously running iTunes—19% and 16% improvements, respectively. After the update, the Mac Pro’s CPU was also running 30 degrees cooler and sucking less power from the CPU and power supply.