I got a new pair of earphones for the iPhone the other day: The V-Moda Vibe Duo Nero. Lots of contenders to the throne of the white buds, but all things being equal this is the only one worth getting.

iPhone buds are  the Holy Grail of accessories – while the white ones suffice, unfortunately they’re neither here nor there. To be fair they sound ok, but people keep them around because they have the mic and button on the cord. Those inclined to trade them right off for better ones tend to hang on for the functionality. Honestly, there aren’t any real compromise-free options available.

V-Moda previously released the Vibe Duo model which had the phone mic incorporated into it, but it didn’t have the all-important button that answered calls and stopped, started and forwarded tracks – just like the regular buds. The new models, which come in chrome, red and black, have this button, which is a trifle smaller than is convenient.

But the Vibe Duo is the only one that approximates the original buds in configuration and use without taking anything from the mix. The existing alternatives either have too many cords or have little growths and appendages that carry the mic or the button or both.

At US$99 the pair is the best option so far in terms of function and value. With some extras. Of course the plug fits, and the jack seems sturdily made with a knurled grip, as there are on the left and right buds themselves. The sleek chrome of the buds and jacks are well made, but the big surprise is the cords themselves. They are light, soft and pliable, and cloth-covered! The feel like well-made, durable string, and not prone to tangling or retaining odd shapes when they get wrapped around things. A self-sealing leather carry pouch comes in the box, which is a pretty classy bonus.

The buds are in-ears, which are acquired tastes. Some like it, some don’t. I belong to the former, having used many like them in the past. They come with six pairs of replaceable silicone fittings, in three sizes: S, M and L, and in clear or black. I’m most comfortable with the mediums. The in-ears seal out extraneous noise and amplify the sound; I’m glad I don’t have to dial up the volume to full all the time now. Two-thirds is plenty.

One of the comments is that the Bliss silicone fittings have a tendency to fall off their posts, and you find you lose one or the other in common use, forcing you to use the other color, or the other sizes. I own a pair of red V-Moda Vibes, and I was down to just four mismatched pairs until I figured a tiny droplet of glue on the rims when you pop the fittings on usually does the trick. You just have to settle on the size and color and stick with your choice.

Another usual comment is that V-Modas have tradionally been bassy buds; true, but not excessively so. Mids and highs don’t get buried, and the reproduced tones shine through the low lows. I’m prefer flat settings myself, but I can live with the V-Modas.

One of my friends who owns a pair already complains that it’s odd to use the V-Moda Vibe Duos as a handsfree headset, and having taken calls on it, I know what he means. The lack of the ambient noise is a bit disconcerting, since the in-ears shut everything out. But it isn’t a biggie; it’s just a matter of getting used to it,

I’m glad I got these, and can now set the white buds aside as reserves. Two Mac-A-Doodle thumbs up.

We all know the feeling. Hearing that great song on the radio that you’d give up your Mac to remember the artist and title. Or come across this great new song playing in someone’s car or in the mall that you’d give up your iPod to know the name of. Well, these days all you’d really need is your iPhone, a wifi connection and Listen.

TUAW’s Erica Sadun, lead purveyor of free crazysexycool apps and utilities for the iPhone has come up with with another winner.

Imagine you hear that mysterious song somewhere with wifi, and you happen to have your iPhone. Fire up Erica’s Listen, put your iPhone near the audio, wait a few seconds, and you get the artist, title and album the song came from, right on the multi-touch screen. Sounds too good to be true.

Listen samples five seconds of audio, then goes online to consult a database, matches the sample to the music and spits back the song info. Is that crazysexycool or what?

I used it in the office today, and people went oooh and ahhh. Granted, it doesn’t catch everything. It caught maybe three out of every five (it’s still a beta, after all), but sample a reasonably popular song and it’d get it every time. And it’s not really a new idea - there are cellphones with this sort of feature out already for a while now. But hey, who cares? This one’s sure to make it into the Doodler’s Top 10 Favorites for 2008.

The Listen beta is available for your iPhone via Installer beginning today.

Long ago, to remove Digital Rights Management from my music tracks, I started with the rigamarole of burning them to a CD from iTunes then re-ripping them back to iTunes, fresh, sparkling clean and DRM-free.

After I had a accumulated a small stack of CDs I never used from this method, I thought of just reusing a CDRW, erasing and burning over and over, even if I just had one track to clean - I didn’t have to wait to fill up a CDR with DRMed songs just to save a little money.

5thirtyone.com shows us an even easier way that doesn’t involve burning digital media at all, and is so simple I smacked myself on the head and said, dang, why didn’t I think of that?

One caveat - you’d need to have iMovie HD on your system.

The basic idea, in a nutshell, is for your to import the DRMed track into iMovie as a soundtrack, export it to iTunes as AIFF, then convert it to AAC within iTunes then just manually adding back the meta data and artwork. A little tedious, but no more ripping and burning to CD. And easier, as 5thirtyone.com points out, to create an Automator sequence to do this by the numbers every time you need to strip DRM from a track.

More detailed instructions and explanations from 5thirtyone.

One of the consistent weaknesses of the entire iPod/iPhone line for its entire six year life is the iconic white earphone set that comes in the box.

They’re not absolute dreck, but neither are they up to the hardware they come with. Merely adequate, there hasn’t been much improvement since 2001, save for the inline remote/mic built into the cord with the ones that come with iPhones. And hey, what about those foam things, huh? They don’t last long - if you can keep them at all, that is; I wonder what Apple was thinking including them in the box. Using them’s a clear mark of an iPod newbie.

It’s as if the earbuds were mere afterthoughts they threw in the box with the iPods and the iPhone; maybe they assumed it was an unnecessary effort and expense to give nice ones we could actually appreciate, spending all the R&D budget just on the hardware. But if they assumed that we’d dump them eventually in favor of better third party buds, it doesn’t make sense that they made it exasperatingly difficult for iPhone users to swap out the buds for better ones with the repressively off-sized audio port they built into the phone. I mean, WTH?

There are very few third-party buds with plugs that fit, and even rarer third-party iPhone-specific buds that have the same remote control/mic built into them (one of the better ones is the V-Moda Vibe Duo, but its bassy, in-ear noise-cancelling style isn’t for everyone; in fact, users have noted that it’s an unsettling experience to use these in-ears as a handsfree set for some reason.)

So to the rescue come enterprising companies that literally bridge the gap. Ranging from cheap to ridiculously expensive, the adaptors can be as plain as can be, or savvy enough to find a way to add a mic function to your existing third-party multimedia-ready buds.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

One of the Holy Grails of home computing is achieving a natural sounding, conversant computer voice, like the LCARS voice of the Starship Enterprise, or HAL in 2001. Ok, maybe not HAL so much.

The built-in voices of OS X are better than most, to be sure, but it’s not quite Majel Barrett-Roddenberry level yet; the choices we currently have are still a bit wooden and mechanical. Certain third-party apps can do better, as we’ve previously posted, but we’re still a long way.

With Leopard, we’ve come much closer though.

Welcome Alex, the new voice of Mac OS X.

Apple’s new synthetic voice is more lifelike and natural, based on patented technologies they’ve developed themselves. There are new techniques for pausing and fine breath control that makes Alex sound much better than Bruce or Vicki.

Listen to a sampling of Alex here.