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Audio specialist Blue promises true hi-fi quality wireless audio by the spring

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I take the view that wires are evil: anything that can be wireless should be wireless. My iOS devices sync via wifi, my keyboard and trackpad are Bluetooth, I have Wemo-controlled lighting, Tado-controlled heating and love cloud services.

But there’s one thing in my living-room that still relies on a wire: the connection between Mac and hifi system. I tried a Bluetooth link, and the quality just wasn’t there. I quickly reverted to the 3.5mm cable that runs around the skirting board.

Enter microphone specialist Blue. The company is teasing a true hifi-quality wireless connection between digital devices and headphones (and presumably hifi systems) under the name Mo-Fi.

Where digital music technology has advanced, headphones have lagged behind. We’ve seen dramatic advances in the quality and convenience of digital music, yet headphones –designed specifically to bring us closer to sound— have failed to bridge the gap from hi-fi to mobile. Headphones are the last barrier between us and the audio trapped in our digital devices. What if we liberated our music from overhyped lo-fi to true mobile hi-fi? We can. Blue is offering the first sneak peek at CES 2014.

We’ll bring you more details when we have them.

CES coverage brought to you by Belkin

iTunes dominates US music retail, Amazon fails to dent share

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The figures are in and they confirm that iTunes remains the biggest US digital music retailer, with Amazon failing to grab too much of Apple’s digital music heartland.

NPD tells us AAPL’s iTunes took 66.2% of the digital music market in the third quarter of this year – that’s up from 63.2% in Q3 2009.  Easy still beats free.
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