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  Sound bars have become the most popular way to improve your entertainment sound experience because they are reasonably inexpensive, simple to setup, and don’t take up much room. TV speakers are small and flat so they just can’t cut it, so a sound bar is a great way to get better sound. The good news is that there are a lot of bars to choose from, but how do you choose? Here are the factors that I think you should be considering in your purchase.

We’re now a few months past the original release of the XBox One and the Playstation 4. Both are great systems in their own right, but the discussion continues to rage on as to which is the better system.  Rather than focus on things from a technological standpoint, I think it’s just as important to look at some of the places where the systems hit us harder – Our wallets and our personal needs.  Which system do I think gives the best bang for your buck inside and outside the box?  Which is the better bargain?  Where did I actually think neither were doing a great service to gamers?  Read on to find out.

If, like most home or project studio owners, you’ve opted to use a computer as the center of your studio, then you’ll most likely be hearing a lot about audio interfaces.    For the typical home user, the sound card on your computer is just fine. Unfortunately, for a studio owner, you’ll very quickly find that the onboard sound system is inadequate for your needs. They’re typically noisy, they lack inputs and outputs you’ll most likely need and they can be inefficient in the way they translate analog and digital audio.   That’s where audio interfaces come into the picture. An audio interface is a piece of dedicated hardware that you connect to your computer. In the most basic sense, the interface is the audio middleman between you (the real world) and the computer. 

Razer Blade. Two words guaranteed to grab the attention of anyone who takes PC gaming seriously. The gaming laptop series made waves in 2013, landing on a slew of “best of” lists. The 2014 edition manages to be even more over the top, earning titles like “world’s thinnest gaming laptop” while offering performance that has to be seen to be believed. You’ll soon find the all-new Razer Blade gaming laptops at Best Buy (you’ll be able to pre-order them this week), including the impossibly thin and light 14-inch model with its 5.76 million pixels —the world’s highest resolution 14-inch notebook display.

Are you ready for another reason to wiggle, kick, swing, and otherwise use your body in amusing fashion to control a video game?  Rare and Microsoft sure hope so!  With the new generation of hardware now in play, and the ole Motion Control Kinect technology used for little more than (albiet the always fun and amusing) dance games, we’re all waiting for something to live up to the promise of motion gamings first explosion onto the scene. With its six varied ‘sporting’ activities  Kinect Sports Rivals aiming to do that very thing.

Smartwatches, augmented reality glasses, fitness trackers –any compact extension to your smartphone or tablet– is firmly in Google’s sights with the announcement of Android Wear. What is Android Wear? It’s a push to extend Android to those smartwatches and wearable devices, using a standard API and developer tools so Android apps for smartphones and tablets can be ported to, or seamlessly integrated with those wearables. Google is working with developers and hardware partners like Samsung, Fossil and LG on the Android Wear Initiative. And you’ll see two Android Wear-powered smartwatches at Best Buy Later this year: the Moto 360 and LG’s G Watch.  

After a long, grey winter, I’d say it’s high time we started seeing some color again. You can liven up your house by adding a bunch of tulips or daffodils, change up your throw pillows, or swap out your duvet for something more ‘spring-ish,’ but the single best way to breath life back into a house that’s been asleep for the winter is to update your kitchen colors.

For the vast majority of home studio owners, the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software is the control center of their studio. The DAW is the program that allows you to create, record, edit and arrange audio.   Picking one that fits your needs can be a confusing tornado of options, features and opinion. Which one do you chose? 

      Play More, Do More, Share More with Samsung Galaxy Tablets    

How are you going to be using your studio?   The answers to this question will set you on a path to figuring out what you might need to start your journey in recording. There are many, many different configurations of gear that can be assembled into a studio. Which configuration fits your needs best?