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Popgadget: Bang & Olufsen comes out with products that make you ogle at them endlessly in their classy showrooms. However, only a very few of us can think of taking them home given their pricing. Following in the same tradition are the latest range of Beo speakers, the Beolab 9.

The unique conical shaped cabinet houses the usual mid-range and bass units. Sitting atop the speaker is the B&O patented Acoustic Lens that disperses the treble within a 180 degrees arc. This, according to the company, guarantees uniform sound characteristics in front of the speaker, letting the listener hear constant timbre even while he is shifting places. The absence of a sub-woofer is compensated for by another technology, “Adaptive Bass Linearisation,” that prevents distortion while delivering excellent bass performance. The speaker also has a manual position switch that changes the sound based on it’s position in the room. The speaker can be placed in an open area, a corner or against a flat wall without any compromise of the sound.

While the speakers may be overkill for just listening to music, they will fit in well with a high-end home theatre system. The speakers come in red, blue, dark grey, and black, and will set you back almost 10,000 bucks (7700 euro).

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Gizmodo: Looking for the right set up to match your 60-inch wooden plasma? Holland Electro’s new “Theatre” should complement it just fine.

Designed by Marcel Wanders, the theatre is a wooden side table with a built-in DVD player and integrated central speaker. Surround sound is achieved through the addition of 4 stone-like speakers. Not bad for $400, or around €310 (cat not included).

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Crave: Most of the so-called multimedia furniture pieces we’ve seen are unsightly contraptions that seem to treat their media components as an afterthought. Not so with the “Sonic Chair Boom Box.”This piece of digital furniture also has brains to match the beauty of its Austin Powers-era design. Uber-Review says it reserves the soundwaves for the person sitting in it, without disturbing others nearby: “The speakers are encased in a carefully crafted body that creates sufficient volume for powerful bass tones, while two body-focused sound generators, in the seat and the backrest, further augment the lower frequencies–recreating the feeling of a live performance.”

And all you need is a hairless cat to do an awesome Dr. Evil impersonation.

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Gizmodo: If you’re looking for a pair of speakers that can do the same thing five speakers normally do, KEF‘s fivetwo series can surround you with sound with just two swanky-looking audio towers. Their cool euro design and the fact that you only need two of them instead of a roomful of speakers appealed to a lot of the ladies at the 2006 IFA in Berlin.The surround sound effect is achieved by using side-facing SurfaceSound panels by NXT, coupled with drivers that KEF calls Uni-Q. Those side-firing SurfaceSound panels create left and right ambient effects, while the Uni-Q drivers deliver the left, center and right channels up front.

Available this fall, the seven-driver Model 7 will be 600 £/pair (about 900 eur), and the eleven-speaker Model 11 pictured here will be 1,100£/pair (about 1660 eur)

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Eweek: Norway stepped up its battle with Apple Inc.’s iTunes on Thursday when its consumer ombudsman said the software giant must open access to its music download system by October 1 or face legal action.
Last June, Norway ‘s powerful ombudsman said iTunes violated Norwegian law by forcing consumers to play their downloaded music on Apple’s iPod music player—a landmark decision which prompted other European countries to review the situation.

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GadgetCandy: This radio from Roberts wraps up the latest gadget goodness in an old world package that looks fan-DAB-ulous in the boudoir, parlour or hearth…
Call us romantic, but here at GadgetCandy we like a vintage look to our technology – but only if the innards compensate by building in the hottest features out.

Roberts Sound 78 radio fits the bill perfectly. Inside the wooden cabinet you’ll find DAB, as well as a 3-way speaker system that can suck tunes from your ‘Pod through an input auxiliary socket.

It’s a cinch to use too, with brushed silver controls on the front enabling you to tune into your favourite station at the touch of a button. Close your mitts around its carrying handle over at robertsradio.co.uk. The dashing DAB will set you back £120 (182 euro).

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Electronista: German Bluetooth specialists ANYCOM have announced the FIPO, an upcoming bridge device for iPod docks. Instead of enabling iPod content to be played elsewhere, as one might expect, the FIPO actually permits any Bluetooth-enabled music player — including a cellphone — to stream audio through the dock.

Once paired, the player and the FIPO can then exchange control commands, such as play, pause and track skip. This works both ways, such that buttons on a car stereo, for instance, can change tracks on a phone. The FIPO will begin production for Europe and the US on February 15th and cost about $99 (76 euro).

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Crave: Radio stations are about to feel the same pain as the television stations scrambling to keep advertisers in the wake of commercial-skipping DVRs.

PopCatcher, a Stockholm-based company, has patented a technology that can automatically detect and record music from FM radio, AM radio, Internet radio or DAB radio (for our Scandinavian readers who were wondering).

The PopCatcher MusicDock MD-601 distinguishes between speech or commercials, and music. It records music played by its radio and stores each song as an MP3 file.

The MP3 player dock is a regular radio with built-in speakers. When you place the PopCatcher MP3 player in the dock, the docking station automatically records music played by the radio station you’re tuned to. It can distinguish between individual songs and imports each as a single MP3 file to the MP3 player. It does not record commercials or DJ chatter. Of course, that also means it can’t record talk radio. (…)

The MPS player will come with 512MB or 1GB of flash memory and charges while in the docking station.

While PopCatcher is taking orders for when the MusicDock MD-601 becomes available, it is also offering to license its technology to others. Good thing, since the MP3 player shown here is not exactly something I would crave.

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Heise: In the dispute surrounding the EULA for Apple’s iTunes store, European consumer protectionist organizations have agreed to join forces. Organizations from Finland, Norway, and France have come together with the German Association of Consumer Protectionists (vzbv) to fight for “a more consumer friendly licensing agreement for iTunes in all of Europe.”

The consumer ombudsmen in Finland and Norway have drawn up a catalog of joint demands for the iTunes store in collaboration with French consumer protectionist organization “UFC que choisir” and the German vzbv.

The consumer protectionist organizations are mainly concerned about the interoperability of titles purchased, better contractual terms, and liability rules.

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TG Daily: Dolby promises to automatically control the volume of your TV. 

Dolby Volume technology will first be built into flat-panel television sets and will process digital audio signals to dynamically raise and lower levels, the company said. Incoming PCM audio is processed “psycho-acoustically” and PCM audio is exported.

According to Dolby engineers, Dolby Volume will work with all audio signals and won’t care about bitrates or sampling rates. In addition, the processing does not impact the audio signal.

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Crave: If you like to rock out in your car, but don’t want to turn your ride into a mobile guitar amp, then this might be the answer: an in-car audio system jointly designed by Panasonic and Fender. The iconic guitar maker has teamed up with Panasonic to “create customized products for the global automotive industry.”The collaboration is an attempt to cash in on Fender’s brand name and expertise in the musical instruments industry, and it’s another effort by Panasonic to name-drop its way into the in-car audio market. Panasonic already supplies the likes of Acura with its ELS Surround in-car system that it developed with Grammy-award winning record producer Elliot Scheiner.

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Crave: Pioneer is following Ford and Microsoft in its adoption of USB ports for the playback of digital audio in the car. Here at CES, Pioneer is debuting the snappily-named DEH-P6900UB and DEH-P690UB, two new stereo head units that come with built-in USB jacks for hooking up portable media players or thumb drives.When connected via USB, media players (such as iPods and Zunes) can be controlled entirely via the head unit, giving drivers high-speed control over their digital media, including content subject to iTunes (Fairplay)- and Windows Media digital rights managment. As well as a built-in USB port, both head units can support MP3 and WMA-discs. They will both ship in February with a price tag of $260 (200 euro).

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