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  • MHW Gadgets – Aerielle’s i2i Stream

    For music lovers, sharing is caring. That’s the goal with the i2i Stream. But is it worth it?

    Do you have to share your iPod? It sounds like a silly question in this day and age, but Aerielle has a solution to that problem if you do. The i2i Stream is an interesting product that helps stream music from an MP3 player to a mini-receiver, which you can plug headphones into and listen to music through. The big question for me is that I wonder if people have this problem in this day and age. You can buy an iPod shuffle for $50. Is the i2i Stream necessary? Especially for its price tag, which is $119. I’ll get to that.

    The product comes with two i2i Streams (you can buy solo players for about $70). This is the best solution for those who don’t have an i2i Stream because you’ll need two to start. Also inside the box are two USB charging cables, four different audio cables, two pocket clips, and two neck lanyards.

    In order to put the units together, you have to attach the pocket clips to the back of the i2i stream. This is a bit tricky as you have to loop the clips through the back. I quit early on and it took friends about 20 minutes to get the clips completely on. This allows you to attach the lanyard to the i2i Stream which seems to be the way to rock it.

    You will have to charge up the units via the USB cables and a computer. The USB cable fits into the side of the player and it immediately lights up to let you know that it’s charging. It takes a couple hours to completely charge. Once charged, attach the audio cable into both your MP3 player and one of the i2i Streams. Rather than plugging your headphones into the MP3 player, you plug them directly into the i2i Stream. The MP3 player and i2i Stream will represent the broadcast player.

    The other i2i Stream is the receiver and you also plug in your headphones directly into the unit. The players are a bit tricky to turn on as well. There’s a volume control on the top right of the player and in order to turn it on, you press it as if you were pressing a button. The reason it’s tricky is because when your thumb touches it, you want flip it up or down, which you can because it’s the way you turn the volume up and down. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to turn it on. I thought the broadcaster was already on because I could hear the music coming out of it, but it wasn’t. When I finally turned them both on correctly, they lit up like they were supposed to.

    It’s funny that the set up was much harder than the actual sending and receiving signals, which is the technical part. On the broadcaster, you hit the middle button which acts as the channel button. Channels aren’t noted with numbers, but they are noted with colors. When you press on the channel button, it turns one color and as long as you set up the same color on the receiver, you’re lynched. Once you have your colors synced, you press the send button on the broadcaster and the receive button on the receiver. Once that happens, your receiver should hear everything that the broadcaster is playing. It works exactly as it should

    The wireless receiver works within about 30 feet. Once you are outside of 30 feet, you can hear static and know that you are outside of the necessary range. The receiver works beautifully. You have a very small i2i Stream around your neck (barely larger than a lighter) with headphones coming out of it. But for the broadcaster, you have your MP3 player attached to the i2i Stream with an audio cable, and then your headphone cords. If you are not a fan of cords, this can be a messy situation for you. I know that I’d be bothered if I was the broadcaster.

    There are a few other details that the buyer should know about the i2i Stream.

    – i2i promises about 5-7 hours of battery life. Compare that to an iPod Shuffle and it’s a bit disappointing. I imagine that if this product gets more iterations, it will get smaller in size and the battery life will increase

    – It’s made of plastic and I can imagine that there will be accidents with people stepping on it, or putting in their pocket and sitting on it. I don’t want to test this, but it’s not a sturdy feeling or looking unit.

    – Just like with a wireless telephone, the unit streams over a 2.4-GHz spectrum, which means that if you sit it near your wireless router, there can be some static.

    – It can be used to broadcast audio from your computer to a set of speakers, essentially making the i2i Stream a wireless receiver for speakers. You’ll have to use the audio cables on each i2i Stream, but it’s definitely a great feature that they should promote.

    Now, the main question still remains. Is it a necessary product to have? In most cases, I’d say no. But in my case, I’d say yes. My oldest son has an iPod Nano and he sits in the backseat of the car on long drives and listens to his iPod while his brother has to do something else. We could buy a jack that would allow them to plug into the same iPod with two sets of headphones, but if you’ve ever dealt with brothers, they don’t always get along and if the owner of the iPod decides that he doesn’t want to share his headphone jack, he can just unplug it. With the i2i Stream, the sharing is done wirelessly and there’s less of a chance that the older brother decides that the younger brother isn’t worthy of his iPod any longer.

    I would also use the i2i Stream to send audio from my computer to a speaker that’s in another room without having to plug in the iPod to it. Usually in this room, I listen to podcasts and if my iPod isn’t updated with the new audio, I have to download it to the iPod first, and then undock it and plug the iPod into the speaker. With the i2i Stream, I wouldn’t have sync the iPod to the computer. I’d just listen from the computer.

    I’m not sure that the i2i Stream necessarily catches on, but for what it promises, it does a great job. There are products that promise to do many things and don’t work as well as the marketing says, but this isn’t the case with the i2i Stream. It works exactly as promised. With some new functionality like bluetooth and possible wireless syncing to the iPod, the i2i Stream might save families from having so many MP3 players.

    3.5 stars out of 5

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #1: Laughing In A Crashing Car

    My friends call it The Red Monstrosity, but I lovingly refer to it as Heaven.  It’s a large black & burnt-red pine cabinet I liberated from a neighbor many years ago and proceeded to stuff with my favorite substance: 7-inch vinyl.  Decades of being a rock & pop music fan, not to mention working in record stores and for record labels, landed thousands of these sexy little platters in my lap over the years.  Yet I’ve never really considered myself a collector;  more like an accumulator, I suppose.  I’ve never concerned myself with “the first-pressing of this” or “the rare picture disc of that.”  Fact is, this overstuffed termite festival is probably worthless to anyone but myself, which leads me to a conundrum:  in this hyper-digitized age, what do I do with all this antediluvian stuff??  The answer, of course, is enjoy it.  So each week in this column, I am going to grab a slab of plastic at random out of The Red Monstrosity, spin it, and talk about it.  Like rummaging through old photographs, it might bring up some funny anecdotes.  Or embarrassing moments.  First up…

    THE JAM  “Absolute Beginners” b/w “Tales From The Riverbank”(Polydor UK POSP 350 Oct. 1981)

    While The Clash looked out from England onto the rest of the world, Paul Weller and The Jam seemed to be peering backwards into English suburban life, not unlike The Kinks before them.  And also like Davies & Co., they came across as way too English for the rest of the world, or at least America.  But nevermind that.  The fact is that when young Paul Weller was on, he was ON.  And in the very early 1980s he was one of the few rock artists who could be counted on to relelase a great single, whether it scraped the top of any noteable charts or not.  So I was not exactly “rolling the dice” when I plunked down (probably somewhere around) $2.00 US for this lovely little imported single with a strange title that I didn’t understand.  The 16-year-old version of myself was not yet aware of Colin MacInnes’ 1959 novel titled “Absolute Beginners,” and Julian Temple’s musical film adaptation was five years away.  Regardless, when I got this disc home to my bedroom and slapped it on my little stereo, there was one thing I knew for sure:  it was EXPLOSIVE.  And I do mean literally.  The Jam always prided in mastering their records very hot, with Bruce Foxton’s bass EQ’ed round, crisp and BIG to fill the bottom end, while Weller’s brittle, often distorted guitar and Rick Buckler’s bright, splashy cymbals rang out in the top register.  I was aware of this from spending time with their previous albums, most notably Sound Affects, whose one-two opening punch (on the US LP version) of “Start!” and “Pretty Green” often sent my speakers dancing across the floor.  But my system was not prepared for the triple-forte bass/drums/horns blast of the opening notes of “Absolute Beginners.”  By the time the song swung down into the main D-major to B-minor verse progression, the damage was done:  the woofer in my left-channel speaker had popped outward, looking like the shell of a washed-up sandcrab.  And sounding like one, too.  Speaker blown, stereo ruined, I did not turn off the music.  In fact, I turned it UP.  “Absolute Beginners” turned out to be The Jam at their highest power, at their most captivating and thrilling, and no blown speaker was going to stand between me and my enjoyment of this moment.  I played this disc over & over again, all through the afternoon and night, woofer rattling away like hell, with not a care in the world.

    And that’s just the A-side.  On the flip, “Tales From The Riverbank” turned out to be a great track too, once I got around to it.  A minor-key ballad that swings upward to Bowie-esqe heights then back down again, “Tales” makes great use of Foxton’s rich bass-tone, opening with the kind of snaky, haunting line that would inspire a million lifts (The Smithereens’ “Blood And Roses” comes to mind).  This B-side could easily have been an A-side, and I recall reading somewhere that it almost was.  But I think things worked out OK as is.

    “Absolute Beginners” reached #4 on the UK charts.  Here’s a link to the video, which some “early MTV-o-philes”, and those of you who remember the USA Network or Twiggy’s Juke Box, may remember.

    The Jam Absolute Beginners

    NEXT WEEK:  A band that got their name from Pynchon, their lyrics from Yeats, and their sound from across the Atlantic.

  • Worth a Second Listen: Special Michael Jackson Birthday Edition: “Invincible”

    Worth a Second Listen: Special Michael Jackson Birthday Edition: “Invincible”

    If you bought into the hype spewed by the mainstream press and Michael Jackson’s detractors, 2001’s “Invincible” was a Invincible Coverflop of colossal proportions. Of course it was no “Thriller” or “Off The Wall”, but it stands as a fairly contemporary, often good, and occasionally awesome album from the King of Pop. Was it a sales bust? Considering only about 20 or so albums a year sell over 2 million copies (with only one so far in 2008), and this one broke that barrier, I would say no.

    After the debacle that was 1995’s “HIStory”, Michael retreated back to the lab to create an album that would focus less on his personal problems and more on just making good music. In the six years between the two albums, he had also seen the entire teen-pop industry build back up on a sound he created. From Sisqo to Usher to Beyonce to Britney to Backstreet & *Nsync…damn near every pop or soul artist coming up owed a big debt to Mike…a trend that’s grown even more prevalent in the seven years since this album’s release.

    The first thing you notice is that Michael the balladeer is back. The man hadn’t whipped out a slow jam since “Bad”‘s “Liberian Girl” in ’87, but “Invincible” finds him bringing sexy back about 5 years before Justin Timberlake. “Break Of Dawn” is a summery song that finds The King Of Lotharios promising to “make sweet love till the break of dawn”. Get the visual out of your head and concentrate on the song’s sweet melody, the calming background arrangement and the effervescent chorus. “Butterflies” is more of the same. Over a thumping groove from neo-soul producers Dre & Vidal, Mike testifies about a girl who makes him ridiculously nervous. This song wouldn’t sound out of place on “Off The Wall”, with it’s deep bottom, airy harmonies, and Michael singing in a casual cadence that’s ever-so-slightly behind the beat. It’s easily Michael’s best performance in years. His vocal is exquisite, especially when he slips into a mind-melting falsetto in the second verse…a vocal even more impressive when you realize the man doesn’t have a nose to sing through.

    “2000 Watts” finds Michael jumping straight into the space age with an energetically jumpy production. The lyrics make no sense, but the high-energy arrangement makes you dance, and Michael brings out his deepest vocal tones for this song. First single “You Rock My World” is sunny and pleasant enough, although it sounds like a watered down version of “Remember The Time” (which, in itself was a watered down “Rock With You”). Nevertheless, the song’s got an addictive chorus and reasonably uncluttered production, not something you’d necessarily associate with the track’s producer, Rodney Jerkins.

    Jackson occasionally finds himself lost amidst the more modern-sounding production. The opening track, “Unbreakable” is a mission statement that favors 1991’s “Jam”, but Michael’s overwhelmed by the bloops and bleeps that come crashing through. It also features a post-mortem verse from the Notorious B.I.G.-one that was lifted from a Shaquille O’Neal album released about 6 months before the rapper’s death. Biggie verses? Generally cool. Exploiting the dead? Not really cool. The album’s title track starts off slow but picks up steam towards the end when the army of Mikes commanding the vocals break it down over a menacing-sounding piano loop and finger snaps. The Timbaland-esque “Heartbreaker” is nice, but much of the production just sounds like the audio equivalent of trying to modernize a classic car with garish paint. Michael doesn’t need all the bells and whistles to make great music. Another demerit agains the album is that, ever since “Dangerous”, Michael has felt the need to fill every last second of a CD’s 79 minute running time with music. It’s not necessary. Give us 10 songs of great music, not 16 songs where we have to skip around to find the 10 good ones!

    “Invincible”s crowning achievement is “Whatever Happens”. For once, Michael stops singing about being persecuted and concentrates on the story of a man and woman’s unconditional love in the face of great odds. This song would have been an inspired choice for a single and could’ve made an awesome video. Its got a slow motion, cinematic feel, Mike’s vocal performance is top-notch, and Carlos Santana pops aboard to add a blistering guitar solo. Classic stuff here.

    On the poppier side of things, “Don’t Walk Away” is a stunningly heartbreaking ballad that The Backstreet Boys would still salivate in their sleep for. It’s by far the best of the easy-listening type things on the album. “You Are My Life” is a goopy ballad which put the final nail in the coffin of the songwriting career of the once-reliable Babyface. Meanwhile, R. Kelly pops in for the world-peace anthem “Cry”, which just sounds like an inferior version of the not-that-good-to-begin-wit “I Believe I Can Fly”.

    “The Lost Children” is unlistenable. Even before the trial, this song was unlistenable. It’s like Michael got kidnapped by Raffi and decided to make a song either about runaway kids or a loosely metaphorical song about folks who have had lost childhoods. Either way, the song is easily one of the 5 worst things he has recorded in his adult life.

    All told, “Invincible” is not the piece of shit most claim it to be. A leaner structure to the album and some more sympathetic production would have resulted in a classic. However, when placed against what passes for pop/R&B these days, “Invincible” holds up better than a lot of the junk on radio waves now.