Music

Sony Network Walkman NW-HD5

Sony Network Walkman NW-HD5, the slick way to your music. NW-HD5 is a 4.8 oz MP3 player; your alternative to iPod. it is just not slick it is seductive with its stylish metallic casing. The body is scratch proof – a must for a device which is going to become part of your life. It has a 20GB hard drive. It has limited features. The list price is $300.

It has a monochrome display and measures 1.5 inch diagonally. To ensure visibility in low lighting it has backlight. The display type can be inverted, you can choose to have a black background or a white background depending on the external lighting.

Sony Network Walkman NW-HD5 is easy to use as lot of thought has been put into its ergonomics. The controller buttons are made of plastic to ensure that it does not corrode off on the edges like the soft rubber buttons. The placing of the buttons makes even the first time user to be comfortable. The device has rather cheap looking plastic cover attached to the top of the device for the USB 2.0 port and power jack.

You can access the functions through a simple menu in the display. The main menu has Find, Options, Edit Bookmark and Playback Screen options. It has music library that is organized in terms of genre, track, album, artist, new tracks, initial search and play list. What is annoying is that you remain in static mode the menu does not return to the playback screen unless you manually select the playback screen.

Sony Network Walkman NW-HD5 comes with all needed accessories. You don’t have to spend again on the basic accessories. The pack includes a software disc, AC adapter, carrying pouch, basic ear buds and a USB cable.

Some of the things you wish your NW-HD5 has include FM tuner, line-in recording to record your favorite songs from conventional mediums, voice recording, photo album, color screen and video capabilities.

Supported formats include MP3, WAV, WMA, ATRAC3, ATRAC3 plus. It also plays music purchased from Sony’s Connect music store. It has an adorable sound quality. Playback options include the basic CDman features – repeat all and repeat shuffle. It has an internal memory that keeps track of your last played spot and you can resume from where you left when your unit is back on power. Searching for your favorite tracks is made easy with intelligent search interface. You can bookmark your favorites and you can create up to five play lists of 100 tracks each. The annoying factor here is that you cannot transfer this lists to your PC – synchronizing is simply not possible.

The unit has a built in velocity sensitive G sensor for shock protection. The hard drive automatically will disengage itself when the unit is dropped.

It has really a miniature battery that lasts for an amazing 40 hours. You will need some sharp object at hand to remove the battery from the slot. Its battery life makes NW-HD5 an ideal travel companion.

Apple ipod nano

Carry your favorite 1000 with pencil slim ipod nano along with full color album art or store 25,000 photos without any trouble in your pocket. ipod nano is nano technology put to best use.

ipod nano is smaller than the standard American business card in its dimensions – 3.5×1.6×0.27 inches. It is with cute 1.5 inch LCD display but no more dull monochrome display – yes ipod nano comes with high resolution color display. Great for playing your mp3s, audio books or podcasts. Slip it into your wallet, wear it around your neck or even as your arm band.

Battery life is almost ever lasting. It gives you total freedom on travel with its 14 hours anxiety free playback battery time.

72 hours of non-stop music can be easily controlled with the ipod magic wheel. Known for its operational ease the click wheel looks all the more cute on the nano version of the ipod. The sound quality too is simply superb. Comes in immaculate white and tempting black.

It has a storage capacity of up to 4 gb that allows you to be always with your music, audio books and podcasts. Runs equally smooth with both Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP. You can have your contacts synchronized, your calendars coordinated and your to-do lists kept up to date with your PC or laptop. It comes with a convenient USB port via Dock connector.

Surprisingly, unlike other gadgets that always perform below the company’s performance claims – ipod nano exceeds the performance levels claimed by Apple, certainly an unusual phenomenon.

ipod nano comes with all the features plus more of its earlier versions that were bigger and more expensive. The basic version with 2 gb storage space is available at a value for money $199/- and the version with 4 gb storage space is available for $249/-

ipod nano comes with a wide variety of other optional accessories that make the ipod experience even more interesting. The optional accessories include – Lanyard Headphones; Armbands in five cool colors – pink, green, red, blue and gray; In-Ear Headphones – come with three different caps to make a perfect fit; Tubes to protect your ipod – come in a set of five colors, clear, blue, purple, green and pink ; Dock – serves as a convenient base while synchronizing your ipod nano with your computer or charging or to connect to your audio system; USB Power adapter allows you to Charge your iPod nano without having to be connected to your computer. USB cable.

Some of the things that would have made this “nano-wonder” unbeatable but that are missing are – it is deaf to the outside world, it does not have recording feature; FM tuner would have been a welcome add-on. Moreover, it has no pan and zoom functions to view the photos. One crucial factor that has to be taken note of is the number of battery recharge cycles – Apple warns that at one stage you will inevitably have to replace the battery.

Cowon iAudio M5

Cowon iAudio M5 is a digital audio player and recorder. It has a storage capacity of 30GB with a minimum option of 20GB. It has a monochrome 2inch LCD for its display. It has no video capabilities but high quality audio reproduction capabilities. It has a silver and black rich casing – the hard casing is made of scratch resistant metal. It has a professional design with its joystick. The play and the record buttons are pushed to the right side of the device. Though the design is elegant looking, ergonomically it would have been better to have the play button somewhere in the front panel.

The device is PC or Mac compatible. It can be connected to your computer through USB 2.0 port. This port finds its place on the left side along with the headphone jack and data port. If your computer has plug and play capabilities, then it recognizes Cowon iAudio M5 as an additional dirve in PC based systems and as a removable device in Mac based systems. Exchange of files and music between your computer and the iAudio M5 is just drag and drop. The unit also has a text file viewer.

The device has great controls to adjust the sound quality. It has a five band equalizer which can be controlled by the user. It has also regular preset equalizer values set for Vocal, Classical, Jazz, Rock and Pop outputs. It has other audio enhancements including BBE sound field enhancer, MP enhancement, Macn3Bass adjustable bass boost and 3D sound simulator. You can add bookmarks to your tracks – though it is no easy task. Little extra thought here would have been useful. Supported audio formats include MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF, WAV. One of the major drawback is that it cannot playback music downloaded from online stores.

In terms of file organizing features, it has a lot to aspire. You have to plan well to organize your tracks and almost remember how you named every track to retrieve them – quiet an impossible task with the storage capacity of 5000 MP3s. So better learn to arrange your tracks neatly right from the beginning.

iAudio M5 has a voice activated recording system and through the built-in microphone you can record your voice memos at the rate of 32kbps to 128kbps. The audio output is one of excellent quality and the headphone that come with the unit does fairly well.

Not to forget iAudio M5’s radio capabilities. It has a tuner bands and FM – this can be quite a companion to radio lovers.

The pack comes with AC adapter, headphones, cradle stand. Packed software include Cowon jetAudion, Cowon jetShell, Drivers and utilities. The battery charge time is quite reasonable you can recharge the battery completely in 3 hours. The data transfer rate through USB cable is pretty high. Other built features include alarm clock, stereo and 3D sound effect. The display resolution is 160×128 with backlight feature.

On the overall, it is a highly portable audio player – it weighs just 5.1 oz. Its dimensions measure almost the same as an ipod though it is not as sophisticated as an ipod. An economical solution to your music craving.

Music

All cultures of the world have their own forms of music. We are yet to find a culture or a race that does not have some form of music. It is rather surprising to note how this form of art has permeated all races. Even those cultures and races that are totally cut off from the rest of the world have some form of music. This shows that music is inherent in human nature.

Music is one of the most powerful mediums and it can pull crowds. Music has no barriers such as language, color, race, country. It just cuts through all these man made barriers. Music touches the human soul. Music helps us express ourself when we are sad, anxious, happy, angry. It soothes us and helps us relax. That is why we have music incorporated to meditations. It has been proved that music has the power to relax us.

There are thousands of music instruments across the world. There are also hundreds of gadgets that help us enjoy music. We can download music from the internet free of cost. There are also paid music download sites. There are many brilliant musicians in our own times and we are blessed with so much of talent around us. One can learn music at any age. There is no age to both learning as well as enjoying music.

There are many genres of music across the world to satisfy people with different likes. Each era has developed its own form of special music. In addition, each country has its own genre of music that is popularly hailed.