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Check this out: iUbi Blue PMP2500B

Apple needs to get on the ball if they expect to compete with something like this. The feature set is amazing, the screen is a wonderful 480×272 (same as the PSP), codec support is awesome, USB-to-go is crazy cool, and it can record video from a number of sources in MPEG4 30fps. I’m thinking that is going to make for one hell of a personal media system. Oh, and it has Bluetooth support for wireless headphones! And a real powerful headphone amplifier to push serious plugs with some real sound.
That means whatever Apple comes up with better be damn good. I realize it probably won’t matter, but Apple at least needs to match the screen quality. Marketing will be a win for Apple if they take the low road and only support a few formats and really limit the feature set, with that attitude they might be a contender for Bose runner up with inferior products with a quality name.

But we’re talking about Apple, they’ll surely shock us all with the power of the real video iPod that has yet to come. We expect no less from them. But if they churn out some crap that doesn’t have near the feature set for an expensive price tag, they will lose. And with Microsoft rumored to have their own personal portable player coming soon, it would be a shame to see Apple lose some of that wonderful market share they enjoy.

Sorry, somewhat of a rant, but I really want to be able to watch episodes of 24, Alias, CSI, etc. on a portable player while I’m stuck in downtime or bored at work (not as if that EVER happens). And every announcement of a slick new player from somebody other than Apple makes me show a little less love for the company that could.

I’ve been a long time fan of high-quality audio, be it home, car, computer and now portable. I run my iPod with ALC (Apple Lossless Audio) not because I like being able to only fit 60 albums on my 30G unit, but because I cannot stand the audio degradation of AAC, MP3 or any other audio compression technology. Now, before you start screaming “golden ears wannabe” or other magic monkey-juice analogies of those that can hear well, let me explain. On a stock set of earbuds from an iPod headphone output, you aren’t going to hear the difference between 60Hz and 90Hz, the design just doesn’t matter. And you can completely forget about phase and separation.

I currently run a pair of Shure E4c in-ear monitors on my rig. I find the midrange absolutely stunning, with solid bass response and a respectable treble response. They are nowhere near as accurate on the top end as my previous Beyerdynamic DT-880 dynamic open cans, but those aren’t really useful on the road (or even working in the yard). The E4c IEMs have a solid 30-35 dB of noise isolation, making it easy to hear the music without completely destroying your hearing in the process. They are also very detailed, making the sonic imperfections of AAC (particularly the iTunes Music Store variety) very obvious.

Most IEMs use a single driver, some of the higher end ones use two drivers. The new E500′s use three drivers — one tweeter and two woofers. This is expected to offer a very wide response curve that should meet the needs of everyone that looks for an IEM that is accurate. I’m hopeful for more top-end extension and the same solid bass that I get with the E4c. Yeah, I don’t ask for much. These are supposed to land sometime at the end of May or early June, so stay tuned for a review.

Shure Press Release

For the past few years, I’ve worked on various electronic amplifier projects — including the MINT headphone amplifier. For those that don’t know, a MINT headphone amplifier uses two 9V batteries, a small circuit board and some connectors to add power to your standard iPod (etc…) player when used with quality high-end headphones. The end result is a powerful sound from your puny player without overdriving the stock headphone output.

They are called MINTs because they are often stuffed into a small Altoids tin for easy portability. Well, now a company has managed to slam an iPod into a designer tin of the same size.

It’s called the TinPod. Seems like a pretty fancy way to do the same thing that can be done yourself with some careful tin snipping on a standard Altoids tin. Pretty slick though.