The description in the press release for this gadget was so bizarre that I immediately requested photos. Can you guess what it is?
Hint: The SRS button "creates a wide and full sound stage with deep rich bass and adds a definition control for realistic clarity and significantly enhanced sound quality."
Hint 2: Here's another photo, showing accessories:
Yep, it's the latest digital music player from iRiver, the S7. Here's the line in the press release that intrigued me: "The S7 is display-less. Instead, the faceplate displays images of animals and humans which represent volume control and fast-forward and reverse." I couldn't imagine which animals would match those functions—and I'm still not sure why a goat indicates "volume up." At least the dog lifting its leg evokes the phrase, "Down, boy!"
Seriously, it's heartening to see more manufacturers adding sound-enhancement features to their MP3 players. Erica Sadun was so taken with Creative Labs' Xmod processor that she wrote up a whole series of application tips for it. And given that SRS stands for Sound Retrieval System, that technology seems like a natural fit for lossy audio.
Ideally, memory capacity will increase enough that we soon won't think twice about storing lossless files on portable players, but even then, some audio enhancement will be fun.
More goat!
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Audio
Comments (4)
Read More Entries by David Battino.
Robert: Exactly. Perhaps a mouse would have been a better icon to indicate quiet.
I think the dog looks like it is peeing...
@Jon: I think you may be right. I assumed we were seeing only two of the goat's legs because of the sideways perspective. (Similarly, the dog appears to have only three legs, but maybe that's just to set up the old joke, "A three-legged dog walks into a bar....")
Who knows? If space aliens saw an iPod and an iRiver and wanted to adjust the volume, maybe rooster/dog would make more sense than +/–.
Looks like a rooster to me, though I'm not sure what that would imply. Maybe "Get up!"?