Ljung said that unlike some other music or performance-focused services, SoundCloud’s focus is not just music but any kind of sound — from audio books to recordings of conference calls like Facebook’s earnings call, or the embedded audio that bloggers like venture capitalist Fred Wilson use. “It’s really natural when you think about it, because sound is a huge part of the way we experience the world,” he said. The company’s mobile app recently passed 10 million downloads on iOS and Android.

The size of the market means the potential opportunity for SoundCloud is huge, Ljung said, but it also means that it’s easy to try and do everything all at once, because there are so many potential ways to create and share sound. In addition to mobile, one of the ways the service is expanding its reach is through partnerships with companies like Apple — which built support for SoundCloud sharing into GarageBand — and Flipboard.

The company is also working on a redesign of the service that is currently in private beta. Ljung said that it is much faster, and also has a range of new features, including the ability to share sounds in different ways and to create collections of sounds that share certain attributes. There is also a continuous play feature so that users can listen to something while they are browsing through other content, and there are real-time notifications of new content.

When it comes to the future of sound, Ljung said he dreams about a day when it is just a standard part of how we experience the web: “When do we get to the point where I can listen to the internet and talk to the internet? That’s kind of out there, but it’s what I like to think about.”

Check out the rest of our RoadMap 2012 live coverage here, and a video recording of the session follows below:

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Here’s how NXP says this works, along with a short video to provide an idea of the chip’s capabilities:

“Because the speaker is fully protected, the system can deliver significant levels of extra power to make the sound louder and better than before. The TFA9887 optimizes the audio signal based on the movement of the speaker, something no other system is capable of, using the full capabilities of the speaker without pushing beyond the limits. An advanced clip avoidance algorithm monitors audio performance and prevents clipping, even when the power supply begins to sag. Bandwidth extension increases the low frequency response well below speaker resonance.”

The concept is appealing: As mobile devices have quickly evolved with advanced features and functions, some of the basics have been overlooked, particularly, I think external speakers. If I can get richer, deeper and louder sound on my phone or tablet speakers, I’m all for it.

One of the main drawbacks of my Galaxy Nexus smartphone is the speaker. Music and voice calls sound great on headphones but terribly soft through the external speaker. Even with just a little background noise, I sometimes can’t hear the phone ring, for example.

I don’t expect music to sound great from the phone’s speaker, but even watching a movie or video is difficult without headphones due to the low sound output. While NXP’s hardware solution won’t address the low sound in my current smartphone, I’m looking forward to hearing it in a new one.

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Kyocera thinks the old audio speaker in your mobile phone is passé. There are just too many steps: a diaphragm vibrates to produce sound waves that travel through the air down your ear canal, where they resonate off your eardrum. Kyocera would rather just skip all of those steps and funnel sound directly into your inner ear.

Kyocera has dug deep into its applied material roots – the company’s name is a shortening of Kyoto Ceramics – to create a ceramic transducer that replaces the speaker in a phone. The transducer generates vibrations on the phones face plate itself, which sends sound waves into the air: but if you touch the phone directly to your ear those vibrations travel through the tissues in your skull to your eardrum.

At CTIA Wireless, Kyocera director of corporate communications John Chier said that by passing sound waves through the flesh, not the air, the communication path remains unpolluted by outside noise, and he’s not lying. I tried out the demo phone, donning noise-cancelling headphones that drowned out normal air-conducted sound waves emanating from the phone. But as soon as I pressed the phone to my ear lobe or even the side of the headphones the audio came through clear as day.

“As long as you can block out ambient noise by blocking the path to your ear, you’re essentially alone with the phone,” Chier said. “That’s a perfect for a device like a smartphone, which naturally blocks your ear.”

Chier said the technology was originally designed for the sophisticated hearing aides, but Kyocera has gotten the cost of the technology down to a point that it can be used in smartphones. The first device using the technology will come out in Japan “very shortly,” Chier said, but Kyocera smartphones with the tech will make their way to the U.S. soon after.

Kyocera also added two new Android smartphones to its U.S. line. The first is called the Hydro, its first waterproofed smartphone intended for a mass consumer audience. While Kyocera has sold many waterproofed and water resistant smartphones in the U.S. they’ve all been ruggedized devices built to military specifications. Chier said Kyocera believes there’s a pent up demand for such phones among consumers given how easily phones become water damaged.

The second is called the Rise, which attacks another market Chier said is underserved in the U.S.: smartphones with Qwerty keyboards. Both are Android 4.0 devices with modest specs and CDMA radios. Kyocera typically sells to Sprint and several regional carriers, though Chier said it isn’t yet announcing carrier partners for the devices.

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For our inaugural edition of “A few of our favorite things,” we’ll be looking at an essential product for iPhone, iPad and Mac owners alike: headphones. Mostly, we’ll be talking about stereo headsets that also feature mics and remote controls which work with late-model Macs and iOS devices.

Best all-around stereo headset: Bowers & Wilkins C5. These in-ear beauties are great at sound isolation, audio fidelity and comfort, and they look great, too. Durable cord construction will mean you shouldn’t have to worry too much if you get snagged on a fence or other outcropping, and the unique looped excess cable design at the earbuds keeps them firmly in place, unlike a lot of other in-ears we’ve tested. The only real downside is their price: at $179.99, they’re not cheap.

Best stereo headset under $100: Marshall Minor FX Earphones. These are a fraction of the price of the C5 at $64.95, and still manage to exude a lot of style. They sound good, too, but the EarClick tech isn’t quite as good as the C5 in terms of making sure they stay put inside your ear canal. Plus, they’re gold, and frankly, we’re a little more partial to silver.

Best over-ear stereo headset: SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset. These are also relatively inexpensive, retailing for $79.99 direct from the SteelSeries website. SteelSeries normally makes headsets for gamers, and these live up to that tradition, providing strong bass response and immersive, rich sound that you may find surprising for the price. That, and the unique design of the Siberia which moves the band to behind your neck instead of on top of your head, preventing bad hair days and working perfectly with winter hats, makes these our favorite this year.

Best gaming headphones: Turtle Beach Ear Force PX5. If you’re gaming on a Mac, you’re probably in a relatively small minority, but the Turtle Beach Ear Force PX 5 is a great pair of headphones for you. They accept optical in (which all Macs have), do true Dolby 7.1 surround sound, and are wireless. All those features will cost you, though, as these ring in at $249.95. Budget gamers should look at the SteelSeries Siberia.

Best stereo headset for workouts: Sennheiser Adidas PMX 680i. Sennheiser actually makes multiple varieties of activewear headsets for the iPhone and iPod touch with integrated remotes, but the PMX 680i ($69.95) is the best in our opinion. They won’t break down no matter how much you sweat, nor will moisture interfere with audio. The neckband keeps them firmly in place without being uncomfortable while jogging or even doing jumping jacks, and the neon yellow accents make them very night-visible.

That’s our list, but feel free to argue our picks or chime in with your own suggestions in the comments.

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After I wrote my recent article about Bluetooth integration with car audio, Ford contacted me about the Microsoft SYNC  functions built into the Ford Fiesta and asked if I knew about the AppLink functions. I took it for a test drive (literally) and surprisingly, I found that a new Ford may just be about the best (and probably most expensive) iPhone accessory out there.

What is SYNC?

SYNC is a Microsoft Windows-based embedded automotive system found in a variety of Ford cars. Go ahead and get the Blue Screen of Death and “crash” jokes out of your system, because SYNC actually worked quite well in my testing, and is smartly integrated with iOS devices.

SYNC is a suite of functions that combines Bluetooth audio and phone functions, USB audio, and extended “services” via a yearly subscription. Pressing a button on the steering column activates voice recognition and allows a driver to issue commands. In select Ford models, AppLink allows software developers to interact with SYNC via APIs and a software development (SDK), allowing for the creation of apps specifically for Ford cars.

For my test drives, I used my iPhone 4 and Ford provided both the vehicles and the complimentary SYNC services account.

Bluetooth phone functions

Similar to many factory or add-on car stereos, SYNC supports standard phone functions such as dialing by name, and answering phone calls via the SYNC button on the steering column. Calls were crisp, clear and understandable, so no complaints in this regard.

Bluetooth audio functions

SYNC supports AD2P audio which allowed me to stream iPod, Pandora and Audible content via Bluetooth from my phone to the stereo. While audio paused when a call came in via the iPhone, when SYNC was announcing directions, the audio did not pause. This is completely consistent with my Bluetooth experiences with other integrated car systems, but still not ideal.

USB audio functions

Now things get interesting. The car comes with a USB port that’s treated by the iPhone as a standard dock connector. Using it, you can control your iPhone’s audio functions via the steering wheel controls, and when SYNC gave directions, the audio did not drop out. In fact, when SYNC detected I was playing music, it simply showed the directions as text on the radio display and didn’t interrupt playback.

AppLink

An API for your car? That’s what AppLink is all about. Currently only Pandora and Stitcher for the iPhone support the AppLink APIs (BlackBerry has more). I tested the system with Pandora. When I open the app and instruct SYNC to take control, a Microsoft SYNC logo shows up on my iPhone screen and SYNC assumes control.

There’s nothing to download, as the SYNC support is already baked into recent versions of the Pandora app. Once SYNC’ed, I could then issue voice commands to switch stations, mark items with thumbs up or thumbs down, and skip songs.

The experience is a bit clunky. The app must be open and in the foreground, and the iPhone must be directly connected to the car’s USB audio port. Hopefully, developers will be able to access more features of iOS in later versions of Apple’s mobile platform to make this process more natural.

The potential of AppLink is amazing. Theoretically, any iOS app could be made to use SYNC; it’s just a question of iOS developers adding SYNC functionality to their apps.

SYNC Services vs. Siri

A yearly subscription (three years free are included with a new car purchase) includes access to a “Services” call center that extends the function of SYNC to the realm of a virtual assistant. When you click the SYNC button on the steering column and request services, your phone will dial a special toll-free number that recognizes your iPhone and provides you access. This allows you to take your account from vehicle to vehicle, as it’s tied to the phone and not your car.

SYNC services provide a range of information, such as weather forecasts, news, and phone number lookups. These requests, unlike with Apple’s own Siri, had to be issued in a rigid structure as opposed to using natural language. Additionally, you have to wait for Services to dial a phone number, while Siri is more or less instant.

Navigation is where SYNC shined. The first vehicle I used couldn’t determine my current location. Apparently, its GPS sensor needed a reboot, but the second vehicle had flawless navigation. Instead of requiring downloaded maps or updates like a standard GPS, Services downloaded the directions directly to the car and provided turn-by-turn instructions via audio and visual signals on the car stereo. This relies on the car’s own GPS sensor, and currently can’t use the iPhone’s built-in location services. The download process took about a minute. If you go “off-route,” SYNC offers to dial and get new directions.

Both Siri and SYNC can search for destinations either by business or category (for example “Computer Repair in Lawrence, Kan.”). SYNC also offers a downloadable app for bookmarking destinations, however. You can use nicknames like “hotel” or “conference venue” and then call services and ask for the destination. This is something Siri can’t do. If you have a set of destinations you’d like navigation for, you can’t easily pre-plan and give it a complete route. Having navigated with only the iPhone, and then having SYNC services grab GPS turn-by-turn directions for comparison, I was extremely impressed. Plus, SYNC services works with any phone.

Similar to Siri, SYNC services requires a carrier signal to make a phone call. If you’re lost and can’t make a call, you are out of luck. A standard GPS doesn’t suffer from this flaw, but Siri also needs the ability to access data to complete queries, which SYNC does not.

Another function of SYNC is the ability to contact 911 after an accident. Unlike GM’s OnStar system, SYNC uses your mobile phone to call 911 directly on your behalf and provide your location. This “911 Assist” function relies on your mobile phone not being damaged during the crash.

But how did it drive?

I’m by no means a car reviewer, but having recently test-driven a number of cars, I was impressed. What’s surprising is the Fiesta is a very affordable car, and these type of tech features I’d expect on a higher-end model. When I was on my last car search, built-in navigation, Bluetooth audio and hands-free cost several thousand more as add-ons.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with the iPhone integration via SYNC. If more iOS developers use the SYNC APIs, Siri’s virtual assistant will seem rather limited by comparison, at least when you’re driving. While Siri is stuck inside my iPhone, SYNC has the ability to directly talk and interface with my car itself, which can come in very handy on the road.

Special thanks to Thoroughbred Ford of Kansas City for the initial demo and training.

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• Increase the chances your content will be found. Full, or even partial, text is more searchable than tags and titles alone. “I’ve found that on several of our clients’ blogs, the transcript often outperforms its corresponding podcast,” says Janelle Kozyra, the Director of Editorial and Senior Managing Editor for Gregory FCA.
• Make your content more accessible. People who can’t hear the video, or those who don’t want to search through it, will find transcripts useful. Ted Cocheu, the founder and CEO of Altus (an enterprise provider of video search and management tools) said recently, “New technology is enabling enterprises to easily combine PowerPoint presentations with audio/video into a dynamic format that is searchable down to the point of interest or keyword. . . . As a result, users can have instant access to the information they need.”
• Make repurposing your content easier. Once you have a transcript, it’s a short step to a tweet, a blog post or a slide deck.

Creating these transcripts is becoming easier, and there are alternatives.

• Professional transcriptionists. These professionals provide high quality and full control of the process. But this may be overkill for some audio and video.
• Crowdsourcing. Ryan Lawler has covered the development of SpeakerText, a firm that supports the crowdsourcing of transcripts. The Kahn Academy crowdsources transcription and translation through Universal Subtitles.
• Automatic captioning. YouTube uses Google’s voice-to-text technology to create autocaptions.

This is a call to both content creators and users to support transcription. Content creators: Please use a service that adds transcripts to your audio and video content. Users: Help where you can by contributing to the crowdsourcing efforts.

How have you benefited through audio or video transcription in your web work?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Iwan Gabovitch

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Wheels of Steel is a fun app that allows you to play with a fully functioning set of turntables online — loading up records, dropping the needle, manipulating the vinyl, using volume controls, faders, equalizers and pitch controls. You can switch between 33RPM and 45. You can mix, beat match… you can even scratch yourself silly. Pick your tracks by entering the relevant Soundcloud URL, or plugging in the specific URL of the MP3 you want, and then go crazy.

And the most amazing thing? It’s built entirely in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The man behind this piece of genius is Flickr engineer Scott Schiller, an audio nerd who previously developed Sound Manager, an API that lets you play audio online, through JavaScript, without worrying about the usual hassles (Sound Manager is, unsurprisingly, used to power Wheels of Steel).

For anyone wondering exactly how it works, Schiller has written a blog post giving an incredibly detailed look at how it was put together. The post details every aspect of the build, and explains how all the different options and physics were designed and assembled.

Ultimately, it’s all intended as a bit of fun produced by somebody who was clearly dedicated to building virtual turntables. The actual build took 12 weeks, but he admits that he’s been interested in doing this for “years”. But it’s a great demonstration of what is now possible by using the basic toolkits of the web.

The prototype is an experimental bit of web audio fun, stamped with a number of warning labels and is not intended for pro or “skratch” DJs as frankly, it will quickly disappoint — and what DJ really wants to scratch records with a mouse, anyway. ;)

We now have digital toys and things that allow music to be manipulated in ways never imagined before — and yet, there remains something special and meaningful about the old, scratchy, dusty sound of analog mediums and the hands-on, real physical experience of mixing music that digital technology — this HTML experiment included — still aims to match.

Great stuff.

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With ThingLink’s new suite of what Engeström calls “rich media tags,” users can embed media from Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Twitter and more onto an image on their websites. It’s a significant improvement, because in the past tags could only contain links, which meant that users would get sent away from the host site.

Now it’s more pared down, providing an easy-to-use system that lets people add tags and hotspots to images. And as of today, the company is offering to embed not just text links to pictures but also audio, video, images and other material brought in directly from other sites.

“Now you don’t have to go away from the original image,” Engeström says. “You can discover all the things you need to know right there.” If you want to see what these rich media tags actually look like, here’s an example that incorporates all sorts of multimedia options:

Thinglink’s business is to help users build these images, let them tag and annotate them as they want, and then embed them on the users’ sites. The business so far has seen nearly 1 billion views of images created by around 3,000 publishers; the publishers are mostly individual bloggers but also include several large news organizations in Europe (business customers pay a fee for using the service, which gives them more support, access to data and the like).

For example the Berliner Morgenpost, a German newspaper, used Thinglink to enrich the haunting Situation Room image taken in the White House during the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden.

Engeström says the range of services that connect to Thinglink will continue to expand over the coming months and that the company is in talks to have its tools built-in to a number of different platforms. The service is already being adopted by several surprise sectors, and she sees more opportunities for expansion in other areas, too.

“It’s for everyone who has a vested interest in explaining the details of what they do,” she says. “We were surprised by the music sector, by how enthusiastically they took to Thinglink, and there is a lot of potential for educational use because it makes images really rich, which can be a fantastic way to learn about things.”

It’s easy to dismiss a service like this as a toy or perhaps as a feature of a bigger product rather than a stand-alone system. But that would be ignoring the power of images — an area that is starting to be radically redefined online. After all, only yesterday Google gave a bravura display of how important images could be in the future of information, showing off the new search by image feature. There’s a lot of life in this area yet.

And true, there are competing services that want to embed data inside images, admits Engeström — companies like Pixazza. But they have their eyes on short-term goals, she says, while her heart is in providing tools that anybody can use — and that can ultimately feed back into that early dream of being able to call up online information about any object in the world.

“The difference between us and anyone else described as competitors is that most image-tagging companies see images as a platform for advertising, because that’s where the money is,” she says. “For us, that’s interesting, but it’s not the most interesting thing. We see images as a navigational surface that you can use to create a rich experience. We’re not merely a tagging tool; we’re a future browser.”

Photograph used under CC license courtesy of Flickr user Nadya

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Turtle Beach recently introduced a wireless gaming headset called the PX5, which features a mini receiver designed for use with PS3 or Xbox 360 gaming consoles, but it actually supports Macs, too, thanks to the optical audio out I mentioned above. I spent a week testing out the PX5 with my Mac HTPC setup, and here are my thoughts.

Not Cheap — In Both Good and Not So Good Ways

The PX5 system is the mostly costly offering in Turtle Beach’s lineup of gaming headsets, with an MSRP of $249.95. You can get it cheaper if you look around (Amazon has it listed for $212.99 as of this writing), but while it’s still not inexpensive even then, consider that Beats by Dre or Bose headphones will probably cost nearly as much, if not more.

Turtle Beach also packs a lot of value into that $250 price tag. The PX5 is wireless, communicating with the receiver base via 2.4 GHz RF signal. It supports pass-through audio if you want to use it in combination with a full home theater receiver, and it also offers Bluetooth connectivity. Finally, it’s fully programmable; the only problem is its programming software is Windows-only.

Downsides

Windows-only programming is a drag, but the presets Turtle Beach preloads onto the PX5 are probably adequate for most users anyway. Plus, if you have Windows installed on your computer via Boot Camp or virtualization software, you can still take advantage of this feature.

Also, as I mentioned, the PX5 communicates via 2.4 GHz RF. That means if your home wireless network is also on the same frequency, there can be some interference. In my usage with an older 2.4 GHz-only Apple AirPort Extreme router, I could hear audible clicks infrequently when I was very close to the router (within three feet), or when I was transferring large amounts of data over the network. But when I swapped out the router with my newer, dual-band switching 2.4 and 5.0 GHz AirPort Extreme, I heard nary a whimper of static while using the headset.

Note that in all cases, it’s recommended that the PX5 receiver is in the same room where you’re using the headset, and that line-of-sight seems to guarantee an optimal connection. Even with all these caveats, I found the connection was consistently strong, and even the occasional interference I experienced under the worst conditions was more than bearable.

Finally, note that the PX5 natively supports only Dolby Digital 5.1 and 7.1 for true surround sound. If your source uses DTS, the receiver will digitally process it using Dolby Pro Logic II technology, which, while not optimal, in my experience also didn’t detract from the experience enough to make me give it too much thought.

Strong Suits

First, the PX5 is remarkably versatile. It works very well not only with Mac home theatre setups, but also with PCs (so long as they have optical audio output), with the PS3 and the Xbox, and also with Bluetooth devices.

One really cool feature is that you can connect the PX5 to your iPhone as a Bluetooth headset (independent of the RF receiver), while also using it with an optical source through the RF connection. That means you can use it to talk on your Phone while playing games or watching a movie, by muting one and switching to the other on the fly. Or, you can stream stereo music via A2DP from your iPhone or computer to the PX5. In fact, as a stereo Bluetooth headset, I’ve yet to come across another product that matches the PX5 for sound quality. The detachable boom mic it comes with is also more than up to the task of making voice calls. Unfortunately, there aren’t any iPod controls on the headset for use with the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

The PX5 is also great for small spaces and for people who don’t want to clutter up their entertainment space with wires, big stereo system components, and speakers. It has about the same footprint as your average contemporary wireless router, or like a slightly thicker DVD case. The fewer wires I have in my office/gaming space, the better.

While the PX5 doesn’t offer the ability to connect more than one headset to the wireless receiver, it does provide a 3.5mm jack that can be used with any stereo headphones at the same time as the wireless headset, complete with virtual surround sound. That means if you have a friend over and want to watch a movie together, you can do it without any particularly complicated additional setup.

One last point that may be contentious as a strength: the PX5 uses regular AA batteries, both alkaline and rechargeable. Some may prefer a built-in rechargeable battery, since this device does tend to use a lot of power, but I’ve managed to get a lot of usage time out of a set of 2 AAs. The alkalines it shipped with lasted pretty near the 15-hour life in the official specs, and even a pair of well-worn rechargeables I’ve been using since have done very well so far. I prefer not having to deal with a proprietary battery when it comes time to seek out a permanent replacement, since the PX5 seems to be a product I could be using for a very long time.

Verdict

If you like watching movies on your Mac, and you’re looking for a surround sound experience that won’t break the bank or draw noise complaints from your neighbors, the Turtle Beach PX5 is a very good option. Consider that you get a high-quality Bluetooth headset in the bargain, as well as probably the best gaming headset on the market, and the value picture gets that much better.

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Holman is currently a film sound professor at the University of Southern California, and he has received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. He spent 15 years as the corporate technical director for Lucasfilm, and all of the company’s THX patents stem from his work and research. Holman also has experience designing loudspeakers and amplifiers in addition to his work in the film industry. His experience covers all aspects of audio, according to Holman himself in a 1996 interview. He says that his ability to avoid narrow specialization is what got him his earliest jobs.

If Apple has indeed brought Holman on board, it could signify big things in store for Mac, iOS and even iTunes audio. Apple already builds optical audio out into all new Macs, via the headphone port (it works with optical TOSLINK cables using an adapter), which can provide true surround sound from your computer to your home theatre system, but it could stand to improve the quality of its built-in Mac and iOS device speakers and headphones. There have also been rumors that Apple may be looking to improve the sound quality of iTunes audio files, which is definitely something Holman could assist with.

Isn’t it time we got good (not just okay or passable) sound from our computers and iOS devices? Admittedly, we’ve come a long way since the days of the first speakerphone, but considering the advancements in display and video quality (a game Apple’s already winning with its Retina Display), I think it’s about time we saw similar investments made in sound quality, too.

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