The Verge

JULY 1, 2020

I’ve been using the Emberton nonstop since I got a review unit to test, and it easily hit the 20-hour lifespan claim when it was piping out music at medium volume. That also means the Emberton doesn’t have voice assistant support, which may or may not bother you. Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge.

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The Verge

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

It can play music and show you the weather and answer questions like any Echo smart display. From there, you can tell the Astro to go to a specific location either with a voice command or remotely through the app. Surrounding the telescoping pole are the far-field mics that are used to pick up voice commands.

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The Verge

JUNE 8, 2021

They practically make the ambient sounds in my local coffee shop go poof, and while visiting family upstate over Memorial Day, I tested them in a crowded bar and found that I could listen to my music at around 60 percent volume without hearing any of the lively chatter surrounding me. But Sony’s audio prowess extends through all frequencies.

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The Verge

MARCH 11, 2021

The app plays about 10 seconds of ringtone-esque orchestral music, then displays a “good seal” or “bad seal” result for each earbud. My test resulted in deep bass and less treble, which did make my music sound fuller. Take an earbud out of your ear, and your music will stop; put the bud back in your ear, and it will resume.

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The Verge

MARCH 21, 2021

The buttons are mushy, which I can understand since that means they don’t click loudly as you’re listening to music. The music control buttons can be a little cumbersome. I also tested them wired with my Apple Lossless files and streaming Amazon Music HD, and the M-200 ANCs proved wonderfully layered and rich.

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The Verge

AUGUST 6, 2020

Some people will like that they won’t have to worry about missing travel announcements or someone trying to speak to them nearby, but I’m more of a tune-out-everything-else person when I listen to music. Samsung says they also have a “voice pickup unit” in the hardware for improved speech detection.

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The Verge

JUNE 3, 2020

It doesn’t support Wi-Fi connectivity, and its microphone listens for changes in your environment’s acoustics to tweak its adaptive equalizer (you can customize it yourself if you’d prefer to), but there’s no support for voice commands here, which I frankly welcome. Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge.

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The Verge

OCTOBER 9, 2020

One thing worth mentioning is the occlusion effect; since Bose didn’t go for a vented design like the AirPods Pro or Pixel Buds with natural airflow, if you have a very tight seal with the QuietComfort Earbuds in, your inside voice might sound louder than normal, and in silent environments, you can hear yourself breathing.

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The Verge

MAY 22, 2020

Except for the dials along the perimeter, the entire surface area of either ear cup can be tapped to pause or play music, skip tracks, and answer calls. But if you’re super particular about balancing your music with the outside world, there’s no getting more granular than this. Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge.

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The Verge

JUNE 14, 2021

You can customize the long-press to activate a voice assistant instead, but that’s as far as Beats lets you switch things up. The Studio Buds support hands-free “Hey Siri” voice commands. Voice call performance was pretty rough outdoors in busy environments, and callers found it difficult to make out my voice from the background noise.

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The Verge

JANUARY 21, 2021

That’s a potential deal-breaker for some gamers who might want to be able to jump into a voice chat with friends on their consoles. As for controls, they have just a single multifunction button that handles pausing and resuming music, changing tracks, as well as picking up phone calls. Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge.

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The Verge

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

The new music controls in Android 11. Android has long allowed music and podcast apps to place custom, themed controls into notifications. Google is radically improving voice controls, which is a huge win for accessibility. Photography by Dieter Bohn / The Verge. Image: Google.

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The Verge

MARCH 15, 2021

During my tests, I listened to Spotify, and the music sounded good enough to stick with this headset instead of automatically reaching for my Sony 1000XM3s. The soundtrack and all of the various hellish sound effects have an adequate amount of crunch and punch, and I was head-banging to the music while I played.

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Forum One

OCTOBER 20, 2021

Marketing images in pop culture—like TV shows, movies, music groups, clothing, and even cartoons—tend to include primarily white people as the focus. The more we showcase real people of all kinds in our photography, the more engaged our audiences will be in the content we create, and the more inclusive our culture will become.

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The Verge

OCTOBER 8, 2021

Of course, you can also ask about the weather and such, as well as control smart home devices with your voice. There’s no camera in the device, and the small speakers provide just enough audio quality for some nice bedtime music and to deliver your choice of seven different alarm tones to rouse you in the morning.

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Review Voice Google Music 76

Nonprofit Tech for Good

MARCH 8, 2013

Animoto enables users to turn their photos, video clips, and music into videos that can be uploaded to YouTube and shared on the Social Web. Ideal for activist organizations, CrowdVoice allows organizers to create “Voices” of protest where users can monitor and contribute links, photos, and videos of protests worldwide.

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The Verge

APRIL 6, 2021

The Roam supports hands-free voice commands, has Apple AirPlay 2, includes wireless charging, and features a rugged design that lets you use it practically anywhere. The Roam seems to make a priority of ensuring that the texture and vibrancy of music comes through with maximum clarity. Instruments come through with a natural tone.

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Nonprofit Tech for Good

DECEMBER 27, 2012

Animoto enables users to turn their photos, video clips, and music into videos that can be uploaded to YouTube and shared on the Social Web. Ideal for activist organizations, CrowdVoice allows organizers to create “Voices” of protest where users can monitor and contribute links, photos, and videos of protests worldwide.

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The Verge

DECEMBER 15, 2021

Perhaps most surprising is that Sony also includes its higher-quality LDAC codec among the speaker’s features, allowing you to play music at higher bitrates from services like Amazon Music, Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and others that offer lossless audio. This speaker lacks any voice control “smarts.”

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Sound Review Music Audio 79

The Verge

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Below this on each stem is a mic used for active noise cancellation; the mics that work for calls are positioned at the bottom of the stems for optimal voice pickup. Razer has packed 10mm drivers into these earbuds, and they’ve gone through THX certification to “present a rich, balanced sound stage for all your movies, music, and gaming.”

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The Verge

MARCH 23, 2021

By default, two taps is pause, three activates a voice assistant, and a long press toggles between the noise-canceling modes. They reliably resumed the music whenever I put them back in my ears. Despite putting a huge focus on voice mic performance, 1More also winds up behind the AirPods Pro there — as does everyone else.

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The Verge

JULY 10, 2020

There, you can swap between presets for Music, Movie, and Voice, as well as equalizer settings for different tunes. The Voice profile even helped mitigate some background noise during Zoom calls. Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge. The Envy comes with stereo speakers and a Bang & Olufsen audio control center.

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The Verge

JANUARY 30, 2021

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge. For this price, it’s a good deal considering these over-ear cans can automatically play and pause music when you put them on, and they have active noise cancellation and USB-C charging. Razer’s cheaper Opus headphones are $60 off. They’re normally $200. Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge.

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The Verge

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

It’s a little glimpse into a future Alexa robot that could become much more than a voice powered remote control. All of this processing happens locally on the device — unlike voice commands you say to Alexa, which are primarily processed remotely on Amazon’s servers. It takes getting used to and I’m not sure I’m there yet.

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The Verge

MARCH 27, 2021

Sound bleed is easily canceled out by everyday street noise, but if you’re inside with the volume turned up, people nearby will be able to tell that you’re listening to music. Voice calls while wearing the Tempos have also been a joy. Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge. No complaints there.

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The Verge

OCTOBER 25, 2021

But you’ve also got hands-free “Hey Siri” voice commands at your disposal for adjusting volume or changing up the playlist. In the right ways, they still sound like AirPods, and they’re tuned to work equally well for music, watching videos, podcasts, games, and so on. But when it comes to music, it all feels far more gimmicky.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

The music sounds better with you : Frond is a witty cross between Discord and Facebook groups, by Amanda. Martin UW Photography (opens in a new window) / Getty Images The Defender’s Dilemma is one of cybersecurity’s touchstones: “Defenders have to be right every time. So now people have a voice to go with your photo.

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The Verge

AUGUST 14, 2020

It also has twice as much storage (8GB) for saving music playlists directly to the watch. There’s calendar, weather, Outlook for email, messages, Spotify (including the ability to download playlists offline), Samsung Health for fitness tracking, timer, stopwatch, alarms, world clock, voice recorder, Samsung Pay for mobile payments, and so on.

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The Verge

JUNE 29, 2020

Music is full-bodied regardless of whether you’re playing a pop-filled running playlist or something quieter. I’d put these earbuds in the middle of the pack when it comes to voice call performance. Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge. You can use either earbud individually for audio or making calls.

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The Verge

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Bose has essentially just copied and pasted the physical buttons of the QC35 IIs: on the underside of the right earcup are dedicated controls for volume and a multi-function button for track controls and summoning a voice assistant. It would’ve been nice to see some EQ options in the Bose Music app.

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The Verge

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Jabra’s latest earbuds impress on voice quality but arrive without the company’s signature feature Jabra has managed to carve out a strong reputation for its true wireless earbuds over the past several years, even as the competition from larger companies continues to get better. Those are both only slight improvements from the 7.5

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The Verge

SEPTEMBER 13, 2021

The sound quality isn’t going to remotely compete with the best from Apple or Sony — there is bass, but it’s not especially pronounced, and instruments can get lost in the mix easily — but it’s average for this price point and just fine for the music or content kids might use them with. Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge.

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The Verge

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

You can be listening to music from your laptop and take an incoming call on your phone without having to manually switch the earbuds over. People said my voice was crisp and came through clear without much background noise. Unlike previous Jabra earbuds, the 85ts no longer offer Amazon Alexa as a voice assistant.

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The Verge

OCTOBER 15, 2021

I have little use for the voice commands since I plugged the Immersion Kit’s control box into a smart plug that automatically turns the backlighting on and off along with the TV (it remembers your last used Govee settings). Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge. But video mode is where the Ambilight-like magic happens.

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The Verge

MAY 20, 2020

And once we all return to offices, you’ll have to ignore nearby conversations cutting into your music. You can tap twice on either earbud to pause or play music. With these, there’s no ear detection, and the music just keeps going. Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge. There’s nothing subtle about the Surface Earbuds.

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The Verge

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Each bud houses a single driver (unlike professional IEMs that often have two or more), but that’s still enough for respectable bass response and excellent, detailed music reproduction. As a side effect of this issue, I also occasionally heard a sonar ping sound effect in the left earbud — even when it was paired and music was playing.

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Mashable Tech

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

Whether you're a professional or just picked it up as a hobby, photography nerds know that the Sony a7R II is an incredible piece of equipment. You can control your music, send and receive texts, monitor your health, and tons more. Switch it up and go retro with a vinyl music collection. Prices vary. A nice camera. Credit: sony.

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