Sonos announced today that it will be ending support for some legacy hardware later on this year. The phase out won't happen for a few months yet, and Sonos says that it will only impact its "oldest products." Those products can still be used once support ends too, but they'll no longer receive software updates and new features from Sonos.
Apple recently teamed up with the National Basketball Association and United Masters to launch a new Apple Music playlist called 'BASE:LINE' that currently contains 40 songs from independent artists. The playlist is available for everyone to stream; it is intended to highlight the best indie and emerging hip-hop songs of the past week, helping listeners discover new music to enjoy.
The audio equipment industry has experienced a dramatic change in the past few years. Especially thanks to smartphones, there has been a greater focus on wireless audio streaming which did catch a few companies a bit off-guard. Consumer buying habits have also changed over the course of the years, with more and more people becoming more comfortable buying things online rather than walking into physical stores. It is at least only for the latter reason that Bose is closing up almost half of its shops around the world and not because it's losing its market share.
Bang and Olfusen has introduced the third-generation version of its Beoplay E8, a pair of true wireless earbuds offering longer battery life over the previous generation. Depending on how often they're used, the company says that some users can go up to 'several' weeks recharging the earbuds with the battery case before they'll need to recharge the case itself.
The first batch of previously announced Marvel audiobooks has arrived for fans to enjoy. The new titles include both traditional audiobooks and multi-voice versions, which are essentially dramatizations that include sound effects and music. This is only the start -- another, though smaller, batch of Marvel audiobooks will arrive later on this year.
In February we'll get our first official look at the newest round of Samsung products, one of which will quite likely be the Samsung Galaxy Buds+. This newest pair of wireless earbuds from the Galaxy-centric brand will be the most visible opponent of the latest wireless earbuds from Apple, the AirPods Pro. For those users looking for feature-by-feature parity, today's leak might be sorta bad news.
Once in a while, one company stumbles onto a new technology that pulls the rug out from under their industry - and sparks plenty of competitors trying to do the same. For Nura, that innovation centered on how it could create truly personalized hearing profiles simply by having people sit through a series of beeps and boops while wearing their headphones. Headphones offering personalized audio has since then popped up left and right, pushing the company to step up its game. That next level comes in the form of the NuraLoop, a pair of around the neck earbuds that brings Nura's technology to a more discreet and more personal wearable device.
It is always good to hear, no pun intended, when trends, technologies, and designs from the mobile market seep into other industries to help make products become more approachable or even desirable and vice versa. Such an exchange of gifts is perhaps most visible in the audio market where Bluetooth earphones and hearings aids inform each other's development from time to time. The most recent example of this is Phonak's Virto Black, a hearing aid that further blurs the lines by adopting a form that is quite common if not already fashionable among mobile users today.
Among the other audio products it launched at CES 2020 is Harman Kardon's new FLY product line, the company's first headphone series launched since 2014. At this point in time, the FLY series features a total of three models: the FLY TWS true wireless headphones, the FLY BT Bluetooth model, and the FLY ANC, a model that features active noise cancellation.
Accessory maker Belkin is probably best known for its chargers, cables, and power banks but now it is dipping its toes into a brand new market. It partnered with audio brand Devialet to develop a new audio accessory that doesn't simply connect to a speaker but is a speaker in its own right. And something more up Belkin's alley, the Soundform Elite Hi-Fi smart speaker also doubles as a wireless charger to boot.
As we enter into 2020, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group is announcing a new specification for audio over Bluetooth. Just as we have devices that can leverage Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), we’ll soon see audio devices that use Bluetooth LE Audio. It sounds like it’ll be some time yet before we hear more about Bluetooth LE Audio, but at CES this year, the Bluetooth SIG is outlining a couple of potential applications for the spec.
Audio company Sennheiser has introduced two new wireless headphones models, the HD 450BT and the HD 350BT. These two models are nearly identical, the only difference between the two being the HD 450BT's inclusion of active noise cancellation. Among the models' many features is one particularly notable offering: incredibly long battery life.