The three iPod docks below have each won awards and have been rated highly by What Hi-Fi for their excpetional sound quality, so you know your tunes are not going to be spoiled by tinny treble or super-weak bass!

Arcam rCube iPod Dock

This brilliant iPod dock goes further than any other. It’s made by Arcam, who are well known in hi-fi circles, so it sounds crystal clear. It’s got 2x50W amps on board, so can pump out sounds loud enough to get your neighbours complaining. It’s completely portable, so you can put it wherever you want, inside or outside, and have it play for up to 4 hours on a single charge. And it’ll even stream your tunes wirelessly from your PC (with the addition of a streaming dongle), meaning it’s not limited to the tunes on your iPod.

Best of all, though, it’s all completely controllable from your iPhone.

If you’re looking for the ultimate gadget for your Christmas or New Year party – or just the ultimate gadget for the ultimate iPod lover – this is it.

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KitSound Boom Dock

The gloriously named Kitsound Boom Dock is a much simpler beast than the previous iPod docks. It is, as its name implies, an iPod dock and nothing more, but one that can deliver a real – well, boom!

In fact, that’s the reason this little beauty features in this list. It may be simply, but you won’t find a better iPod dock for this price. It produces deep, deep bass in glorious quality that simply can’t be beaten by any other iPod dock less than £150 – yet the Boom Dock is less than £80!

With 22W of power, it’s plenty loud enough, and with an AM/FM radio, line inputs for plugging other sources into it, a clock radio feature and even a remote control, it’s the best value iPod pressie you’ll find if you want an ipod gadget on a budget.

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Epoz AktiMate Mini

These glorious white speakers are active, meaning you don’t need to plug them into an amp to get your tunes sounding nice and loud. Instead, the come with an ampl built-in, so you can plug your PC, MP3 player or iPod directly into them via their 3.5mm line input connectors or buillt-in iPod dock, and get immediate 40W per channel punchy sound.

Great bass, plenty of detail and loads of simplicity – perfect for the iPod music lover who wants their tunes sounding glorious.

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Best of all is the sound, though. With 40W per channel speakers, it’ll blast your tunes out with impressive clarity, while the built-in DAB radio, CD player and USB port gives you access to music from loads of other sources, not just your iPod.

Although not as fully featured as Network Music Systems such as the Denon Ceol or Marantz Melody Media, the Onkyo CS545-UK isn’t as expensive either. In fact, it’s less than half the price, yet still sounds glorious. All it lacks is the network connectivity.

So if you need a great sounding Hi-Fi mini system that will have your iPod sounding better than it ever has done, but you’re not too fussed about wireless streaming, give the Onkyo CS-545UK a whirl. It does exactly what you want it to in a classy, simple and great sounding way. Which is all you really need at the end of the day!

Check Prices now >>

Here, in no particular order, are just some of the best JVC iPod products on offer at CES 2010, complete with a video showing them off.

JVC Kaboom

A legend returns! The JVC Kaboom, first released in 1998, became one of the most popular and recognisable boomboxes of all time. Now JVC have updated it with this, the third generation JVC RV-NB50 Kaboom.

What’s different about it? iPod of course! It packs a pair of 40 Watt speakers through which you can blast out your iTunes library, as well as a USB port, CD player and FM radio.

Twin-iPod Hi-Fi System

The JVC NX-D2 Hi-Fi is designed for power iPod users – i.e. those who can’t get by with just one, but need two iPods! The NX-D2 features not one but two iPod docks, because apparently you can never have enough docks to slot your iPod in (WTF?!)

The NX-D2 is also a beefy Hi-Fi system in its own right with 230W output, three way speaker design, USB Host and even a CD. The remote can also operate one of the iPods, er, remotely!

JVC TeleDock HDTVs

Continuing the theme of “no such thing as too many docks”, JVC also added one to their range of new range of HDTVs called the JVC TeleDock. As you can probably guess, the TeleDock is an iPod dock on the front of the TV, which will not only charge your iPod, it’ll also let you view its pictures and videos via the TV itself.

You can even control the iPod from the TV’s remote.

Six Car Stereos with iPod connectivity

JVC also announced six new car stereos that will connect to your iPod or iPhone. You can also control what songs you’re listening to via the stereo head unit, so you don’t need to kill someone while fumbling with the iPod’s controls at 90mph!

The new range also comes with Bluetooth, so you can connect your mobile phone to them, and a USB port, in case you have a non-iPod MP3 player!

In fact, you can pretty much stream music from any device in one way or another to these stereos. If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s always a CD player you can fall back on!

Video of JVC’s new iPod gadgets

Finally, a video of all these gadgets, plus a few more, has been released by JVC to give you a bit more of a feel for them. They’re coming real soon, so if one takes your eye, you should be able to buy it before Easter 2010.

Actually, although this seems like an odd idea at first, it makes a lot of sense for people who’s lives centre around the iPod or iPhone. You can control your iPod through the TV’s remote, which has a similar look and feel to it, and watching videos or photos on your HDTV is much better than staring at your iPod’s screen.

The Teledock TV’s themselves aren’t super-high end, so the iPod dock is the feature, not the quality of the picture. That said, they do offer full HD, 120Hz refresh rate, as well as digital noise reduction, dynamic backlight, three HDMI connections and 1080 24p/30p output.

Oddly, their speakers only have a 10W output, which is a bit weedy, particularly when their main use is to play music from your iPod!

The three JVC TeleDock TVs’ release date is set for Spring 2010, with the TV’s coming in a range of sizes from 32″ to 46″.

[Source: JVC]

And if you want to watch video form your iPod or iPhone – well, why not?! Sure, you’re in a car, but it would be criminal to have a 7″ screen and not show videos on it!

[Source: JVC]

iYo YOYO

We saw the iYo YOYO (pictured above) and memories of our childhood came rushing back, yoyos are versatile toys; you can walk the dog, go around the world and now you can even charge you iPod or iPhone with one. The Swedish designer Peter Thuvander has taken your average yoyo added a little Apple style (i.e. made it white and simple) and placed a small lithium-ion battery inside. Through the act of playing with the iYo the internal lithium-ion battery is charged which in turn charges your device.

Simple concept but is a fun twist on green energy, if you have a child give it to them and voila, free energy. The iYo YOYO is still in concept but when it hits the market we look forward to getting our hands on one, it certainly beats charging your iPod with an Orange.

Polygon: Charging on the go

The Polygon bike lets you plug your iPod in and charge it as you cycle. It looks very futuristic but unlike the buttons on the Enterprise, the Polygon is more than just for looks. There are handy buttons on the handle bars so once you stick your iPod in the bike-dock you have full control over the iPod without having to move your hands away from the all important steering mechanism. Some other neat features are the integrated locking system so your iPod won’t fall out and the location of the headphone jack means the wires won’t get in the way.

As if the X-Factor wasn’t bad enough at encouraging millions of warbling wannabes, the new SingStand could see even more hoardes of hopelesses (i.e. the opposite of hopefuls) think they’ve got what it takes to be exploited for prime time telly.

Or maybe not – although undoubtedly a good piece of kit and an innovative fusion of the old (ye olde microphone stand) and the new (the iPod), the Memorex SingStand does have one small drawback – it doesn’t display the lyrics from your tunes, so you have to rely on remembering them.

This might be enough to put off the average X-Factor wannabe, although they might not even realize that the lyrics they think they know aren’t actually the ones being sung by the artist. According to the highly dubious respected UK tabloid the Daily Star, iPod users are increasingly mishearing the lyrics in songs, either due to poor sound quality, poor quality headphones, or just poor singing and no lyric sheet to sing along with.

The result, apparently, is that youngsters think Kurt Cobain was singing “Here we are now, in containers” in Smells Like Teen Spirit, while Michael Stipe was asking everyone “Let’s wee in the corner”!

[Source: Electronista]

No-one, that is, except for those poor unfortunate few hoping for an announcement on Apple TV, which sadly remained the forgotten child of Apple’s gadget portfolio.

The following briefly lists what actually was announced (courtesy of Engadget):

• New iPod Nano – now longer and fatter than ever before, but still looking uber-cool
• iPod Touch 2nd generation – functionally identical, a few bugs fixed, integrated Nike+ and much, much thinner than before
• iTunes 8 – now with the Genius feature that was rumoured before the announcement
• iPhone 2.1 software update – bug fix mainly
• In-ear headphones – not, unfortunately, named the “iBud” !
• iPod Classic – only one version remains, a slightly updated 120GB model for $249.

And that’s about your lot, at least as far as gadgets are concerned. No big news there, really, but everything’s been made just that little bit better, and I’m sure the Apple Fanboys will be sleeping soundly tonight (unlike the people who bought a now-outdated iPod Nano last week!).

[Source: Engadget]

All sorts of speculation is up in the air as fanboy after fangirl posts their wishlist of what they want to see Jobs announce.

Top of the list seems to be a new range of updated iPods, with new Nanos expected to be announced. Given the amount of leaked spyshots doing the rounds, this rumour seems to be pretty much a certainty.

iTunes 8 is also expected to be announced, with rumours suggesting it’ll feature all sorts of new ways to sort through the billions of different tunes it now hosts, including a smart new recommendation engine called “Genius” that generates playlists by recognizing certain qualities in a song and selecting other songs with similar qualities (though there’s no discussion yet as to what these ‘qualities’ might be).

Finally, remember Apple TV? No, nor does anyone else, but the rumours are really starting to fly about an updated version called Apple TV 3.0, which hopefully really will be a worthwhile product that might even shift a few units. One of the more excitable posts was from Peter Magnusson, who suggested the following features:

• Blu-ray disc player; of course one that can also play DVDs and CDs.
• ATSC tuner. That
  ]]> http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/08/new-apple-ipods-and-apple-tv-to-be-announced-tomorrow/feed/ 1 http://mediamentalism.com/2008/08/21/mental-media-the-ten-best-audio-gadgets-you-never-knew-they-made-part-2/ http://mediamentalism.com/2008/08/21/mental-media-the-ten-best-audio-gadgets-you-never-knew-they-made-part-2/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:43:34 +0000 Mike Evans http://mediamentalism.com/?p=458 5). Alesis Transactive Mobile – the world’s largest iPhone dock?

  

  What is it?

  Regular iPhone speakers are for wimps! What you need is the Alesis Transactive Mobile (although calling it “mobile” is a bit of a stretch!), a huge industrial strength amp and speaker designed for outdoor events that belts out tunes to over 150 feet.

  Obviously not your average iPod speaker, it’ll make your mates’ jaws drop, both from the sound, and the slightly weird sight of seeing an iPod on top of this beast of an amp.

  Why is it mental?

  Just look at the thing!

  And no, it doesn’t go all the way up to 11 (tried really hard to resist saying that, but just couldn’t stop myself!)

  4). Numark iDJ iPod DJ system

  
  

  What is it?

  Heard about vinyl and how it’s used by superstar DJs but not entirely sure what vinyl actually is?! Then you need the Numark iDJ iPod DJ system, which lets you plug in an iPod and play two songs from it at once.

  Of course, you don’t want the tunes blaring out over each other – you want them to mix seamlessly, blending from one to the other, even scratching if the mood takes you.

  Not for nothing is the Numark called the iDJ, because that’s exactly what it lets you do – become a complete turntablist, just with an iPod rather than a record deck. You can also plug in other inputs from CD players or record decks, and even record your tunes via USB to any USB-equipped external source.

  Is there no end to the iPod’s flexibility?!

  Why is it mental?

  Geeky and cool in one button-strewn box – perfect for the techno DJ.

  3). Tonium Pacemaker HandHeld DJ system

  
  

  What is it?

  Like the idea of the Numark iDJ, but don’t have an iPod? Get the Tonium Pacemaker, then, which features its own 120GB hard drive, and which lets you seamlessly DJ in the palm of your hand.

  Designed for professional DJs, the Packemaker will let you do everything you can do on turntables and other professional mixing gear, but comes with a unique hand-held user interface. You can select tracks, mix, pitch-bend, crossfade, apply effects, loop, and loads more – all in the palm of your hand.

  It’ll detect beats for you, let you change the pitch of a tune, and offers full cueing and cue search. It’s fully capable of delivering a perfectly mixed DJ set from the palm of your hand.

  It’ll even save all the mixes you make onto its own hard disk, or let you transfer them to your PC via its USB 2.0 port.

  If you’re into DJing, or just want to see what else you can do with your huge library of tunes, give the Tonium Pacemaker a go. Your tunes will never seem the same again.

  Why is it mental?

  It’s a complete set of decks, a 120GB MP3 player, effects unit and professional DJ device that fits in the palm of your hand. ‘Nuff said!

  2). iBlaze iPod Bag, for putting an iPod in a bag

  
  

  What is it?

  What list of audio gadgets would be complete without an iPod, er, bag?! The iBlaze iPod bag doesn’t just let you carry your iPod around, though; no, that would be far too straightforward! The iBlaze goes one better and actually integrates itself into your iPod, letting you control your trusty little MP3 player with the bag’s external controls.

  Why is it mental?

  Used by geek posers, who’d like to think that pushing buttons on a bag to control their tunes makes them alpha-geek. The only problem, of course, is that no-one else knows what they’re doing, as they’re the only one who can hear what’s going on!

  There must be some way of integrating the iBlaze bag with the Alesis Transactive Mobile, surely?!

  1). Radio Shark 2

  
  

  What is it?

  Finally, the Radio Shark 2 is billed as being like Sky+ for radio. You plug it into your PC via USB, and it’ll scan the airwaves for AM/FM radio stations as well as the Internet for Internet radio stations. As well as being able to search for different radio stations from either the airwaves or the Internet, you can also record programs, including entire series, just like you can with a Sky+ box. You can pause and rewind live radio, and automatically store any recordings you want directly to iTunes.

  Why is it mental?

  Rumour has it this started life as a product for Radio Shack, but something got lost in translation, and so ended up as a Radio Shark instead.

  The End

  Here ends the first of a regular series of weird and wonderful Mental Media gadgets. Video’s next, so stay tuned for that, or better still, subscribe to our feed for instant updates.

  And if you know of any audio gadgets we’ve missed, feel free to add them in the comments.

  
  << Back to part 1

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