Here’s what we know: Not much. The leaked sheet contains no image, no real specs and no launch date. The tablet speculation only arrives once you consider Cowon’s MO, paired with Atom. Yeah, definitely a stretch, but an interesting one to consider on this lazy, post-Halloween Sunday afternoon. [DAP Review via Engadget]

There’s also an mp3 player, movie player and an FM radio receiver. The video out is also intact, meaning this little guy can be used to play on the big screen.

Games in action below:

To answer your question, yes, this mod is very similar to one we’ve featured before. This one is cleaner, boasts more features, and plays Game Boy games too, so it gets the nod today. Nice work.

Oh, and the answer to the headline question, by the way, is unicorns. They would exist. [Ben Heck Forums via technabob]

First off, some reasons to take this road: iTunes is a decent audio encoder, and it’ll get your music from point A—the CD—to points B, C and D—your computer, your MP3 player and your backup drive—without much trouble. But it’ll do it with a less-than-great encoder, with occasionally inconsistent tagging, with album art that’ll only work on Apple devices, and without support for the best lossless audio formats and MP3 encoding options, which you probably want, whether you know it or now.

In short, the ripping process deserves a little more care than iTunes or Windows Media player can give it. You can pay people for this, which feels dumb and wasteful, or you can do it yourself. It’s not difficult, at all. Here’s what you do:

Get Your Software

The first step to ditching iTunes is to, well, ditch iTunes. What we’re looking for is ripping software that offers more encoding options than iTunes, but more importantly, a better encoder. And as far as MP3 encoders go, the open source LAME is as good as they get. There’s plenty of software for both Mac and PC that leverages this encoder, but here are two programs that do lots, lots more.

Mac OS X: Max
From the makers:

When extracting audio from compact discs, Max offers the maximum in flexibility to ensure the true sound of your CD is faithfully extracted. For pristine discs, Max offers a high-speed ripper with no error correction. For damaged discs, Max can either use its built-in comparison ripper (for drives that cache audio) or the error-correcting power of cdparanoia.

What this translates to: Great error reduction, fantastic sound quality and tons and tons of encoding options—not that you really need those to do a good rip, but hey, they can’t hurt. On top of all this, Max is also a great file converter, in case you’ve got some delinquent WMA files scattered around.

Windows: Exact Audio Copy
From the makers:

Exact Audio Copy is a so called audio grabber for audio CDs using standard CD and DVD-ROM drives. The main differences between EAC and most other audio grabbers are
• It is free (for non-commercial purposes)
• It works with a technology, which reads audio CDs almost perfectly. If there are any errors that can’t be corrected, it will tell you on which time position the (possible) distortion occurred, so you could easily control it with e.g. the media player

What this translates to: The best error correction money can buy, for free. Seriously: Audiophiles swear by exact audio copy, and with good reason. You’ll have to download your own LAME encoder before you can enable MP3 encoding in the program options, but you can do that right here without a problem. Additionally, setting up tagging, which you’ll definitely want to do, takes an extra, albeit easy, step.

If you want to take a simpler route you can just download CDex, which supports LAME and tagging databases out of the box, and produces results nearly as good as—if not as good as—Exact Audio Copy.

On both platforms, you’re going to have a lot of personal decisions to make. How do you want to organise your files? How do you want to name them? Unlike iTunes, these apps don’t pressure your to store your music in a certain way—it’s up to you to archive as you please. Both offer plenty of options for storage and organisation, easily available in their Preferences menus:
As I said, this one’s up to you.

Choose Your File Type MP3: If you’re encoding only for portable devices, not concerned about archiving perfect copies of your music, hate hate hate audiophiles, think FLAC and OGG just sound like gurgling baby noises, you’re probably going to want to stick with MP3s. Yes, there are other formats that offer a better size-to-sound ratio, and no, it’s not open source or anything, but for pure compatibility, control and encoder choice, it’s hard—no, impossible—to beat MP3. And if you set up your encoder correctly, MP3s can sound great.

It’s tough to pick the optimal MP3 bitrate on your own, since at a certain point, differences in sound quality seem to come down as much to psychological factors as to actual clarity. Thankfully, we’ve crowd-sourced this issue and come up with a rough guide: 256kbps is, it seems, where people just can’t really tell the difference. In practical terms, this means setting your encoder to these settings:
That’s no higher than 256kbps VBR—for variable bitrate, which modifies the amount of information in your file’s stream according to how much is needed, and saves you space without sacrificing quality—with the highest (read: slowest) available encoding option. For almost everyone, in almost all circumstances, this’ll do, and it sure beats iTunes default 160kbps constant bitrate rips.

FLAC: If archiving is your intention—as in, digitising your music without losing any quality, no matter how imperceptible—then you’re going to want to go lossless. And of the lossless formats, FLAC is the most well-supported in terms of software and hardware, albeit not on any of Apple’s products—though iTunes can be made to play nice with FLAC with a few simple tweaks.

But don’t fret! The beauty of FLAC music is that it can be converted to other lossless formats, like Apple’s iPod-compatible Apple Lossless, without losing any quality, or compressed into MP3s without having to worry about muddy transcoding. Think of them as CDs without the physical disc, basically.

Embed Your Album Art

This is something else that iTunes doesn’t do right: album art. Sure, it’ll find it, but when you transfer all your music to a non-iPod music player, your art is gone. Why? It’s because iTunes stores the album art in a separate database, rather than in the song file’s ID3 tags, where it should be. On Mac OS, assuming you’re doing your listening in iTunes, which is pretty handy at fetching album art, you can just use one of Doug’s famous iTunes scripts to write said album art directly to your MP3 files. Here’s how you install it:

To install the files/folders, drag the items in the disc image window to your [username]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder. If there is no folder named “Scripts” there, create one and drag the files into it. AppleScripts placed in this folder will be listed in the iTunes Script menu. You do not have to install the .rtf/.rtfd documentation file in the “Scripts” folder, but it’s as convenient a place as any.

For Windows users, Lifehacker’s written a fantastic guide to collecting and embedding album art, which you should definitely read. The short version? Download MediaMonkey, and let it do the work for you.

Granted, once you embed album art into your files, apps like iTunes and Windows Media Player might not display it, and may ask you to search for it from their databases. This is fine: Both programs use proprietary album art storage systems, so just because they can’t see your ID3 tag album art doesn’t mean it’s not there, or that you shouldn’t have embedded it—having it around can’t hurt, and it’s by far the most compatible and rational method for storing album art, as far as other software, most MP3 players and long-term storage go.

Anyway, that’s it! Now you can set your CDs aside comfortably, knowing that you’ve squeezed the purest, most delicious audio files you can out of them. Now:

Listen to Your Music

Because that was the whole point.

If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop them in the comments. Happy ripping, folks!

As the Zune HD launch looms ever closer, a smorgasbord of purported launch videos have offered up what appears to be the best demonstration yet of the sleek, sexy portable’s 3D gaming capabilities.

The 3D gaming example, Forza 3, debuts at about the 30 second mark in the video above. It’s a fleeting glimpse, but it’s solid evidence nevertheless.

For authenticity’s sake, we tell you that Microsoft PR reportedly asked the leak’s originator, Buy TV, to take the videos down, but not before brigands at sites like Neowin were able to upload them to YouTube, where they spread like a New York Times homepage virus.

Zune HD drops in two days. [Neowin, Buy TV via ars technica]

How Many iPods Have You Owned?

How Many Non-iPod MP3 Players Have You Owned?

What Is The Mix Like?

What Do You Do With Your Old MP3 Players?

TUAW dug up this Apple Store page for what looks like the original 5GB iPod (you need to ignore the photo that’s actually of a third gen model.) And from everything we can tell, the FireWire, Mac-only device is brand new (non-refurbished and bundled with a one-year warranty).

Part of me wants to lay down $US130 to order one, just to see if it comes in its original box. But then another part of me remembers how apeshit I would have gone to own a 2009 version of the iPod “from the future” back in 2001.

So maybe we’re just never happy. [Apple via TUAW]

Update: Not quite. The original first generation Apple iPod 5GB is really a second generation 10GB model. That’s what our own private detective OMGPonies says, talking on the phone with Apple:

I’m on the phone with the Apple Store now. The “original” ipod for sale is really a 2nd gen, 10GB part number F8737LL/A. The F is a refurb designation based on its previous model number: M8737LL/A.

Since we don’t know anything about this keychain-esque DAP, we’re left to guess based on the interesting ad, with its repetition of the “circle + square” tag. Is it a lost-in-translation attempt at our “square peg in a round hole” idiom? A nod to the design of the gadget itself, which is, in fact, a circle combined with a square? A hint at the future aesthetic of Cowon’s players (which have certainly been more attractive lately; compare the blocky utilitarian square of the D2 with the sleek curves of the S9)?

I personally hope it doubles as a USB drive—I really miss the design of the first iPod Shuffle and the Sansa Express, low-profile DAPs with built-in USB. That was so convenient! But we’ll have to wait for a real announcement from Cowon to figure out what’s going on here. [DAPReview]

The Price: £44.99.

The Verdict: It’s one of the most adolescently satisfying gadgets I’ve tested in some time, but the audio quality is (expectantly) mediocre at best.

The K-Box charges its 20-hour battery via USB and plugs in to pretty much any audio player through a 3.5mm (headphone) jack. The spartan design lacks fancy switches or fancy equalizer displays. Once it’s plugged in, the speaker just automatically turns on.

While it feels like a chunky MP3 player of yore in one’s hand, the rear is sticky, similar to the gecko foot pad you find on the Palm Pre Touchstone. This “gel audio technology” transfers the bass frequencies to whatever the K-Box is stuck to, from windows to coffee tables.
Just holding the K-Box makes it sound like any treble-heavy micro speaker. But sticking it to glass (which I found to be the most acoustically receptive surface next to thin metal) completely alters the audio quality, highlighting the mids and bass line with a poor but probably better quality than you’ll find in competing speakers of this size and an impressive level of volume.
Really though, it’s that 10 minutes of euphoria as you run around the house sticking the K-Box to the shower stall, coffee table, dryer door, and cat that may make the K-Box a satisfying gadget purchase. A $US20 pair of headphones will offer a better listening experience, as will the average iPod dock. [K-Box]

Gimmicky fun

Simple, understated design

Works better than expected, but still pretty lousy

Often it’s not sticky enough to stick to some surfaces

That’s not to say it isn’t an impressive player in its own right. It handily beats the Samsung P3 and the Cowon S9, but I’m left wondering who would pick this up instead of a Touch. But if Sony were to stick this UI into one of their Sony Ericsson Walkman musicphones, they might have something powerful indeed.

Click for gallery

Physical
The X-series is a very sleek player, similar in size to the Samsung P3 and significantly narrower and shorter than the iPod Touch, though ever so slightly thicker. It’s designed with an unusual aesthetic: The sides of the player are this odd sort of rough, glittery metal, similar to unfinished granite, and the back and front bezel are black glass with little shiny sparkles in them, like a granite countertop. It’s a nice-looking player, certainly, and it feels very solid in the hand. I just don’t totally get the granite thing—it’s not spectacularly eye-catching.

On the front of the X-series is the screen, an unbelievably responsive 3-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen, and a large “Home” button underneath the screen, much like the iPod Touch. The screen is crystal clear, the sharpest picture I’ve ever seen on a PMP—it lives up to the promise of OLED. Viewing angles are limitless, and touch response is great, without any lag at all. Unfortunately, that glass front and back are awful fingerprint magnets, though being glass, it does seem to resist scratching fairly well.

The right side hosts the noise cancellation switch and a surprisingly cheap-feeling volume rocker. The top has the headphone jack and the pleasantly firm play/pause, track forward and back buttons, while the bottom edge is home to the proprietary USB jack. Interestingly, the hold button is a giant semicircle switch on the back of the player—it seems weird, but I actually love how easy it is to reach and how solid it feels. The numerous hardware buttons make it a very nice player to control in the pocket, despite mostly being touch-based player.

The X-series is one of the only PMPs with built-in noise cancelling, but it only works with the included earbuds. Fortunately, said earbuds are excellent for freebies, and the noise cancellation worked perfectly on my noisy Chinatown bus ride between Philly and New York City. Noise cancelling does slaughter the battery life, though, draining it twice as fast as regular playback. When you’re trying to drown out the kind of crazies who take the Chinatown bus, you’ll be glad it’s there.

Audio quality is a hallmark of Sony’s PMP line, and the X-series does, in fact, sound great. It includes a customisable five-band equalizer for audio dorks and some nice sound enhancers like DSEE. On the other hand, you’re limited to the lossy codecs Sony supports (MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM, AAC), so it may not be a good choice for serious audiophiles.

Click for gallery

UI
The home screen has a familiar grid of icons, including Music, Movies, Photos, Podcasts and some more intriguing Wi-Fi-based apps like Slacker, YouTube and Browser. Navigating through lists of artists, songs and albums is very similar to the iPod Touch style with a grab-and-flick interface, though a fast flick leads the list to cycle through a lot faster than the touch, almost like there’s less virtual friction, and we’d say it feels just a hair less exact.

At the bottom of the Now Playing screen, there are four icons I’ve decided to term Back, Navigate, Web, and Options. The icons themselves aren’t very literal: The Back icon is a bulleted list, and Navigate is a magnifying glass, so it’s slightly confusing at first. But once you touch it, it becomes very clear what each button does, and I had no problems after that.

The “Navigate” button is great: It’ll bring up a list containing Artist, Album, Songs, etc that’ll let you jump right to that list without having to hit the Back button four times. The iPod Touch doesn’t have anything like it, and now I wish it does. The Web button is also really cool: It brings up a screen that’ll let you search the track name, artist, or album with Yahoo or YouTube. The Yahoo search brings up hits like Wikipedia and AllMusic, and the YouTube search immediately brings up a ton of music videos, live concert footage and more to watch on the player. Pretty cool stuff. Oddly, the X-series will prompt you to re-connect to a wireless signal every time you try to do one of these searches, and though it remembers your password, it’s still annoying.

The X-series also includes an FM radio, and it’s worth mentioning because it’s one of the stronger FM tuners we’ve seen in a PMP. It’s not like it’ll change the way you think about radio, but it does as good a job as you could ask.

Web Apps
The YouTube app is really great, quite similar to that of the iPod touch or iPhone except with a classy sheer black skin to match the X-series’ aesthetic. Videos load quickly and are very clear and watchable, provided you’ve got a solid Wi-Fi connection.

Slacker is another hit for the X-series, giving access to either the free or paid versions of the Pandora-like service with the same skin as the rest of the UI. It’s super fast to load and sound quality is excellent.

Unfortunately, Sony’s only two for three on the web app front, and the most exciting of its new features is a major fail: Its internet browser—NetFone-based, like PSP and Sony Ericsson—is completely unusable garbage. All text entry is done via an infuriating T9 interface (why not just rotate to a landscape QWERTY? There’s plenty of room!) that’s inexact and totally unhelpful. It requires you to type in “http://www.” before every URL. Even if you’ve got the patience to sit there for ten minutes to type “http://www.gizmodo.com/”, the browser can only manage those dinky mobile sites without totally freaking out. Browsing full sites is an exercise in futility, as the two zoom buttons don’t always work, you can’t navigate before a site has fully loaded and tapping links is inexact and frustrating. Basically, it’s worthless as a web browser, which is a huge disappointment. This image pretty much sums up the X-series web browsing experience.

Desktop Software
The X-series has both a MTP (Windows-only) and a UMS (shows up as a drive, compatible with Mac and Linux as well), though UMS must be switched on before each connection. That means it’ll work with most any media player, save iTunes. Sony’s “Media Manager” software is included, but it’s pretty awful, very archaic and difficult to use, and won’t convert video unless you pay for the “Pro” upgrade. That last part is a real killer for the X-series’ video capabilities.

Speaking of video conversion, you’ll be doing a lot of it, since the X-series only supports a few video codecs and none of the common pirate formats (Matroska, XviD) are included, unlike the pirate-friendly Samsung P3. I used Cucusoft and was able to get a few MPEG-4 videos onto the player, but your average user will definitely have trouble figuring it out. None of the WMVs I tried would work, and I never was able to get a great-quality video on to test out what the OLED screen can really do. iSquint for Mac does work, but the quality, while totally watchable, is disappointing: On an OLED screen like this, you want to be blown away by video quality, and I wasn’t.

Audio codec support is disappointing too, considering the X-series’ stellar audio performance: The only lossless format is WAV, which nobody will use due to its massive file size. Besides the preferred lossless formats, more niche codecs like OGG aren’t supported either. The player has incredible capabilities, yet Sony cripples it by limiting its compatibility—they could have courted the audiophile market, but 320kbps mp3 files can only sound so good.

Price and Conclusion
The X-series, according to Sony, is a premium gadget and thus commands premium prices—coincidentally the same prices as the iPod Touch. The 16GB version costs $US300, with the 32GB going for $US400. The difference is that the iPod Touch comes with a massive App Store for boatloads of new features, not to mention an accelerometer, a web browser that won’t make you long for the days of WAP, tons of accessories, and software that actually works. The X-series just can’t compete with that.

The X-series is a really solid player: The form factor is nice, the screen is incredible, sound and video quality are as high as these things get, and it comes with built-in noise cancelling. If it were $US50 cheaper, I’d have no hesitation about recommending it over the Samsung P3 and Cowon S9, but if you’re spending at that level, you’d be buying the wrong machine if you chose the Sony.

On the other hand, we do see a successful future if Sony put a phone version of this up against Nokia’s XpressMusic. It could never be a smartphone, not in this shape, but it could be a great music-based dumphone.

Sony understands that PMPs can’t just be PMPs anymore: basic iPods aren’t selling like they used to, and the Touch is part of a mobile computing platform. But to just stuff in some Wi-Fi features without thinking about software expandability or even a usable browser—that’s not going to cut it these days. Sadly, despite all the things the X-series does right, it’s emblematic of Sony’s current slide into muddled mediocrity. [Product Page]

Beautiful and responsive OLED touchscreen

Great size

Nice extra features like noise cancelling and YouTube

Excellent sound quality

UI is sometimes unclear, but has more options than iPod Touch

Battery life is above average but not thrilling

Web browser is complete garbage

Frustrating T9 text entry system

Limited audio and video codec support, and video conversion is a pain

Too expensive

This pocket speaker, only $US22 and the price of a few AAs, connects to music players through a 3.5mm headphone jack to provide 2 channels of 0.5W sound. Available in many fluorescent colours that will attract onlookers and bees to your breast, the only missing element in the new pocket movement is the proper theme music. Hopefully our commenters can come up with some good suggestions not by Rick Astley or John Williams. [AbilityCreate via Newlaunches]