Last Gadget Standing nominee: Gefen Auto Volume Stabilizer

Price: $299

Ever notice how TV commercials and movie trailers are decibels louder than the shows? If so, you’ll appreciate Gefen’s use of Dolby Volume Technology to level the volume on TV programs and commercials for a consistent audio experience. A simple solution for home entertainment systems, this tiny device automatically equalizes audio from different sources so everything is heard at the same audio levels. Channel surfers will appreciate the stability.  And music listeners will enjoy a consistent level of volume when enjoying random CDs.  The Auto Volume Stabilizer incorporates Dolby 5.1 digital decoding and converting to 2-channel audio. It also supports both digital (TOSlink; S/PDIF) and analog (L/R) audio formats. It will work with most popular home entertainment devices on the market, including television sets, A/V receivers, CD players, DVD players and more. Multiple audio sources can be connected at the same time, and accessed with the included IR remote or a tiny selector on the device used to switch between sources.

Of course, Klipsch says the S4i provides a superior experience–it’s got sound-isolating earbuds and a 360-degree microphone, among other features. And the headset also works with some fancier Apple products: the iPhone 3GS, second generation iPod touch, fourth generation iPod Nano, and the iPod Classic 120GB.

Folded up, the Livespeakr is the size of a largish eyeglass case. Insert your iPhone (or iPod Touch, or iPod Classic) and rotate the mounting bracket by 90 degrees, and the two speakers extend slightly to flank the phone, which is in portrait mode and ready to play music or serve as a speakerphone:

Rotate it another 90 degrees and the speakers extend further and the phone ends up in landscape mode, suitable for watching video:

In fact, I liked the Livespeakr best for watching movies and TV shows–with its powerful speakers and adjustable stand, it turns an iPhone into a tiny home theater system that you can take anywhere.

Livespeakr’s sound is impressive; with tracks recorded at high bitrates, it was still quite listenable even when I pumped up the volume as you might at a noisy party. Unlike some portable speaker setups, this one is shielded, so you don’t need to worry about interference degrading audio quality unless you put your iPhone in Airplane Mode. The device has a rechargable battery that runs for 16 hours, according to WGA, and which can be charged via AC or USB,; the iPhone’s dock connector remains accessible so you can recharge your phone without removing it from the speaker.

The only significant gripe I have about the Livespeakr isn’t that significant, and involves the documentation: It appears to assume that understanding how to unfold and extend the speakers’ tiny stand is so simple that it requires no explanation. I could have used a sentence or two of instruction. (I’m always fearful about forcing a moving part in a way it’s not supposed to be forced and snapping it off.)

I used the Livespeakr with my iPhone 3G, but it will presumably work equally well with the 3G S when it goes on sale next week. Spealking of which, has anyone given Apple the praise it richly deserves for finally shipping an upgraded device with an unchanged case that ensures compatibility with all existing accessories?

The Zune’s OLED display is a 480-by-272 widescreen, which doesn’t meet anybody’s definition of HD. It’s only when you use a premium HDMI A/V docking station to output video to an HDTV that you get high definition–720p, to be exact.

That’s as far as its HD support goes. High definition video requires a minimum of 720-pixel resolution, and high definition audio is 24-bit; the Zune HD’s built-in playback falls short on both counts. A Microsoft spokesperson said that the company does not have any details to share regarding audio tracks or specific video files.

Microsoft is not alone in its marketing practices. “My daughter’s Sony VAIO has a sticker that says ‘Full HD’ [which suggests 1080p]. But the screen resolution is 1280 x 800. The “Full HD” comes from connecting the computer by HDMI to a monitor or TV,” said Joe Wilcox, an independent technology analyst.

While OLED screens deliver sharp colors and deep blacks–one benedit of HD–those advantages are almost entirely lost on a small screen with low resolution. And video marketplaces sometimes decrease the size of downloads by limiting black levels and other palette-related settings, said Matt Hargett, a noted technology author.

Microsoft could compensate for the Zune’s lack of HD video playback with 24-bit audio, Hargett said. Microsoft obtained the rights to the HDCD format in 2000. “Having 24-bit audio would be a great step forward.”

CDs introduced 16-bit lossless audio almost 30 years ago; High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD), a 24-bit audio format, is 20 years old; and DTS (Digital Theater System), a format used in DVDs and other media, has provided 24-bit lossy audio for over 15 years.

Despite these decades-older technologies, the Zune HD device and marketplace doesn’t appear capable to deliver a better audio experience.

“By adding the “HD” to the name, [Microsoft] is trying to secure a market who appreciates the details, but that same market will likely reject the product if it doesn’t deliver a real HD experience beyond the “HD Radio”, which isn’t really HD at all,” said Hargett. HD Radio’s quality “is below what CDs, Apple Lossless, and FLAC downloads already deliver consumers for years. Does that really count as HD? I don’t think so,” Hargett quipped.

Standard loudspeakers reproduce sound by moving a cone back and forth. Edge Motion does the job by using arrays of motors to wiggle the edges of a clear membrane. The motor arrays can be built into the frame that surrounds a TV, monitor, or laptops’s display, and the clear membrane sits in front of the screen–it’s a much more space-efficient approach than that of traditional speakers, since it utilizes the screen real estate that’s already there. (The bigger the screen, the bigger the membrane can be; the bigger the membrane, the better the sound.) End result: Audio quality you associate with bulky speakers without the bulk.

Here are some images from Emo that explain how it works:

The notion of a loudspeaker system that involves a bunch of motors that move a piece of plastic in front of a screen is a little hard to process mentally–at least if you know as little about audio engineering as I do. It sounds like it would be noisy and that you’d be able to see the membrane jiggling about. Nope. The demos that I heard worked wonderfully well.

Before the Emo exects I met with told me how Edge Motion works, they showed me a Diana Krall concert on an ordinary-looking medium-sized flatscreen TV, and the sound was big enough that I wondered if they’d tucked a multi-piece speaker system with a subwoofer out of sight. Another demo involving a 15-inch LCD such as the ones built into notebooks was equally impressive. Or maybe even a bit more so, since the loudspeakers embedded in notebooks usually range from abysmal to tinny-but-marginally-bearable-as-long-as-you’re-not-at-all-discriminating.

Emo plans to sell the speakers to consumer electronics manufacturers who will embed them in their products. I’m not an audiophile, and my ears aren’t always smart enough to be impressed by sound-related demos which I’m assured will impress me. But the benefits of Edge Motion were obvious the moment I listened; if it sounds as good in shipping products and doesn’t cost radically more than standard audio technology, I think it’ll be a major hit.

We’ll have to wait awhile before we know for sure: The company says that it hopes that TVs will be ready in time for Christmas, but availability might slip into 2010. Edge Motion speakers for notebooks will come along later (it’s a trickier engineering challenge to squeeze the technology into the more limited space provided by a portable computer). Over time, Emo has hopes of putting Edge Motion into just about any device that has a screen and a need for sound, including pocketable gizmos such as cell phones.

I look forward to watching (and, more important, listening) as Edge Motion makes its way into the market…

[NOTE: Commenter John Mulvaney notes that Emo's technology looks similar to NXT's SoundVu...I'm going to ask Emo for their input on how the technologies compare.] [FURTHER NOTE: An Emo representative says that the company has no association with NXT, and that the technologies are fundamentally different. I hope to get more details...]