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Sonos has announced support for music service Murfie, which is a site that enables users to store their physical CD collection offsite and stream or sell the CDs through the cloud.

Users can stream their ripped CDs or, for a dollar, download them in a number of formats including FLAC. Until today, the only way a Murfie user could stream a collection was via a Web browser, but the dedicated Murfie plug-in means you can use your Sonos controller wirelessly around the house.

Murfie works by enabling users to mail their CDs in and rip them and have them stored … Read more

It can be hard to distinguish one portable speaker from the next. They usually come in some uninspiring variation of black, white, or silver. There is a more colorful way to go, however: turn a group of artists loose and reap the rewards.

The Boombots Artist Series takes the small Boombot speaker and turns it into a graffiti- and street art-inspired canvas. Artists UberPup, DGPH, and Sket One give the little guys a bright makeover.… Read more

In the late 1990s, one of the original portable music file formats -- the MP3 -- was causing quite a bit of bother. It had earned itself a reputation as a pirate format, and this was mainly due to the sharing site Napster, which was at the height of its notoriety. While MP3 inevitably prevailed, there is a much better choice for high-quality music, and it's gaining in popularity.

FLAC is a musical file format that offers bit-perfect copies of CDs at half the size, and is compatible with many phones (including the iPhone -- with an app), MP3 … Read more

Design firm Teague knows a thing or two about making things. After all, the company's design portfolio includes (among many other creations) the Polaroid camera, the Xbox, and even the UPS truck.

John Mabry, a senior industrial designer at Teague, believes we're entering an age where we can print out working consumer electronics instead of buying them from major corporations. Built around the concept that we live a "life in beta," Mabry freely offers plans for a working pair of headphones that anyone can print with a MakerBot Replicator 3D printer. … Read more

If you want to listen to better-quality digital music, then FLAC files are a great way to do it. They typically use half the storage space of uncompressed music files and should sound identical to music played from a CD. And yes, you can use apps like FLAC Player to listen to them on iOS devices.

Like MP3s, there are two main ways to get FLACs legally: rip them from CDs, or buy them directly. While we cover how to rip your own music to FLAC format here, there are several sites that offer FLAC album downloads for less than the price of a CD, and yet offer the same level of quality. You'll find that most of these sites are independent and that's because major labels have yet to embrace fully lossless downloads, presumably because of the ever-present "piracy concerns."

Below are the best five stores that sell the FLAC format. If you're interested in higher-than-CD quality, some of the following sites also offer 24-bit "HD" downloads for an extra charge.… Read more

Face it, most of today's shiny new gizmos will be hopelessly out-of-date in a few years and taking up space in landfills not so long after that. The iPhone 5 may be a marvel of engineering and marketing genius, but like iPhones of years past it's doomed to be cast aside when legions of Apple fanboys and girls stand in line to buy the iPhone 6 sometime next year. And so it goes.

Four years ago I wrote about my friend Gene and his Linn LP 12 turntable, the one he bought 30 years earlier.… Read more

Since Apple's iPhone 5 became official on September 12, it's been an emotional roller coaster for tech enthusiasts. There have been plenty of highs -- It's so light! It's got 4G! Beautiful screen! -- but they've been tempered with some disappointing lows, too.

On the software side, Apple's decision to move to a Google-free maps app has been the biggest sticking point. On the hardware front, there's still grumbling about the death of the venerable 30-pin dock port, which has been a mainstay of iPhone (and iPod) design since the early days.

For many, the transition from 30-pin to Lightning has meant an express trip through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and even depression. But now that the iPhone 5 is here, it's time for acceptance -- let's make the best of this.… Read more

Editors' note: This story was updated September 27, 2012, to include a response from Logitech.

In my review of the Logitech UE Smart Radio, there's a single parenthetical line mentioning that the company is discontinuing the Squeezebox line of products. Incredibly, that's more than Logitech has officially said on the matter, leaving the passionate fans of the Squeezebox platform wondering what's going to happen to their network audio streamers.

To be clear, the Squeezebox product line is unequivocally over. Logitech representatives have confirmed to me that there will be no new Squeezebox products, and the Logitech Web site … Read more

Judging by the number of e-mails I get on this subject, a lot of folks don't understand the difference between computer and hi-fi speakers. For example, how is an Audioengine A5+ ($399 a pair) functionally different from a PSB Alpha B1 speaker ($300 a pair)?… Read more