equalizer

How to make iTunes sound better

Apple's iTunes software takes a lot of criticism from CNET readers. It's a gigantic memory hog of a program that attempts to do everything from downloading iBooks (e-books) to synchronizing apps with your iPad. For a piece of software named for its music playback capability, that feature seems to be a diminishing part of iTunes' appeal.

But groan all you want, iTunes is still one of the most popular ways to play music on your computer.

If you're one of the millions who get your daily music fix through Apple's ubiquitous software, here are a few … Read more

The 404 1,096: Where we try this again (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 show:

- 'People' defend Chic-fil-A on Facebook.

- Chick-fil-A cashier fired for racist receipts.

- Old records outsell new ones for the first time.

- Circuit City's in-home TV calibration is a total scam.… Read more

'Rah' squared: Cheerleaders urge girls toward science

One of the more unspoken thoughts about why girls don't want to become scientists is that science is less interesting than scientists would have you believe.

But here are some girl scientists who clearly believe the opposite and may leave you unable to speak.

For these are the Science Cheerleaders. They are crusaders for the cause of getting more little girls to love science.

Yes, they wear short skirts and carry pom-poms. But these are engineers and dentists who want to find any way possible to get you to pay attention.

I am grateful to Jezebel for locating evidence … Read more

How to add an equalizer to Spotify

Spotify is many things to many people, but one thing it lacks is an equalization feature for letting you adjust bands of bass, midrange, and treble.

Enter Equalify.me, a Spotify plug-in that nestles a 10-band equalizer neatly into the Spotify interface on Windows computers. It's free (donations accepted), and it works, as we know from putting it through its paces on bretberg101's public kraut/spacerock playlist (which, shockingly, lacks both Neu and Faust). In addition to the 10 EQ bands, you get a gain adjuster, which offers another way to control volume, and a toggle control that … Read more

How to get better audio quality on Android

Certain genres of music sound better when the bass, treble, and other frequencies can be adjusted higher or lower. If you're on the Gingerbread flavor of Android, you're in luck.

Note: This how to blog post is for users on Android Gingerbread. If you're still on Froyo or older, you'll have to grab a music player with an equalizer built-in, since you can't adjust the settings across the entire device. PowerAMP is a great app to start with for Froyo users.

Grab Equalizer from the Android Market, and open the app. You will see several … Read more

Surround sound on the iPhone

3D Music Player Pro gives you some interesting options for enriching the sound of your music, and it does a pretty good job with only a few flaws. Upon launch, use the plus-sign button in the upper left to add a couple of songs from your music library and test the various effects. Once they're queued up, you can play a song and then touch the 3D Sound button to hear the basic audio enhancements in the app. We noticed a difference immediately in our testing, with the app adding a much fuller and warmer sound to our music.… Read more

Think of Dell as a storage portfolio player

Last year, Dell went on a storage buying spree. Dell took in Exanet for clustered, multiplatform NAS, Ocarina Networks for extensible, cross platform data compression and deduplication, capped-off with an announced agreement to acquire Compellent's virtualized storage arrays and Fluid Data technology, which closed last month. All tallied, I estimate Dell spent nearly $1 billion last year to flesh-out its storage portfolio, which also includes its EqualLogic virtualized storage arrays and PowerVault systems.

Dell storage executives now believe they have the goods to compete head-on with the major storage players (including EMC) in the following market segments:

Virtualized disk … Read more

Last of the storage independents

A recent frenzy of storage acquisitions--with 3PAR going to HP, Isilon to EMC, and now Compellent to Dell--brings storage full-circle. Your next enterprise storage purchase? Almost guaranteed to be from a leviathan.

One of the once-amazing changes in the computer business was the birth of independent storage vendors. For decades there've been a few odd after-market and third-party storage vendors. But they were mere pilot fish congregating around the truly big, important swimmers: systems vendors. When you bought storage, it generally came from the same company that made your computer. That was the natural order.

But in the 1990s, … Read more

David Scott of 3Par, take a victory lap

It has been a long time coming, but virtualized storage is now a "must have" technology.

Dell has announced its intent to acquire next-gen storage vendor 3Par for $1.15 billion, excluding 3Par's cash and other considerations. With this acquisition, Dell continues to morph its business model to be more inclusive of computing systems and services aimed at the enterprise data center customer. With the addition of 3Par's InServ "utility" storage line, Dell ads a midrange to high-end array to its own and growing storage portfolio. 3Par's InServ FC SAN storage, popular lately … Read more

CG A-OK

AVLAN Design describes its AVD Graphic Studio as a "mini Photoshop," acknowledging that Adobe's software is the big dog in the CG yard and that the main goal of competitors is to offer Photoshop-like capabilities in less expensive packages that are easier for ordinary folks to use. At this, AVD Graphic Studio succeeds quite well. It's easy to use, it has most of the basic functionality of the pro-level applications, and it's much less expensive than the big packages like Photoshop.

This program will be familiar if you've used Photoshop or similar applications. Its … Read more