Bluetooth is technically a rather old technology and wireless headphones have really never taken off, yet they're becoming an increasingly popular topic on our forum. A lot of the reason for that is that it's becoming integrated into players, with the Samsung P3 and the Cowon S9 among the newest, most popular models to have this capability.

Most Bluetooth headphones are behind-the-neck style for some reason and there aren't many normal type Bluetooth headphones. The Sony DR-BT22 is the exception, with a form factor and size that really doesn't look like it's Bluetooth at first glance. The DR-BT22 are on their way out, which has dropped the price from a MSRP of $99 to a sales price of under $30 on Amazon, which means these are perfect for people who want to go wireless. But are they any good?

Here is a look at two differ cases from I-Nique: the Tuff-Luv leather case and a standard silicon case. The first leather case is made of genuine leather that is nice and soft to the touch. All of the necessary ports and buttons are exposed and are easily accessible so you don’t ever have to remove the case in order to charge it or operate any of buttons. The top buttons are covered when the flap is down, but I found it pretty easy to individually press each of the top three buttons while the flap was closed.

In a battle for touch screen MP3 players Sony swung for the fences with a premium product with a price to match well above the competition. To those who have the extra cash to spend the premium price may well be justified. These unique to the competition features include YouTube browsing, Slacker Radio (US Only), direct podcast downloads, premium noise canceling headphones, and a semi-useful web browser.

Some of the highlights of this player include an amazing looking OLED screen with a capacitive touch screen with a lightning fast response. You can also expect great sound quality like most of Sony’s other players. Read on for the full in depth look at the Sony X-1000 player.

A good sound setup doesn't have to cost $1500. There are plenty of equipment out there that will give you excellent sound quality without killing your food budget. Forum member garyk was bitten by the audio bug after upgrading from stock earbuds with his Zen Stone Plus and has been gradually improving his rig ever since.

I have had a slotRadio well before it was released to the public and over these last 6 months tried to wrap my head around where this product fits into the way people consume music. I’ve used it myself at the gym and in the car, let friends and relatives borrow it, discussed with other tech bloggers, and prodded lots of sales floor reps for customer reactions.

With all this anecdotal evidence I’m going to bet against it. However, it may be a risky bet on my part since it may be applicable to a market or demographic I don’t at all understand. For the last three or four years I have been reading and writing about digital media players as a full time job. This may have created a myopic point of view now allowing me to see that fringe demographic of music consumers that is still a substantial enough of a market to sustain a profitable product line.

Seems like everyone's jumping on the touch screen wagon lately. Samsung just updated their P2 with the P3 and Cowon's S9 is making friends all over. Archos wants in on the fun and just announced the Archos 3, a medium sized players with a 3" touch screen.

Specs wise they don't disclose much, but a 8GB storage capacity and 14 hours of battery life isn't exactly something to celebrate. Among random features they mention photo viewing, voice recording, a stopwatch and a calendar. Not a single mention of video anywhere, which isn't a good sign. Price and release date is unknown, and frankly completely uninteresting if this is all they can come up with.

[Archos via Engadget]

One of the top complains about the Zune has been the lack of Unicode support. For those that don’t know Unicode support will allow you to properly view foreign music with showing characters instead of those random boxes. So does this confirm that the Zune is coming to markets outside of the US? No, not necessarily, because there are legitimate reasons for the US- I mean we do listen to foreign music here. Its such a simple thing yet one of those make or break features for a lot of people. Kind of like the EQ.

This news broke on the Zune Insider Podcast #22. If you are at all interested in the Zune this is a must check out podcast. Jessica interviews Progressive DJ, DJ Dan and Matt has a chance to sit down with Hip-Hop star Wale.

[Listen from your browser] [Subscribe with the Zune Software]

You know we're big fans of taking a look at the chips, circuit boards, and inner workings of our cherished mp3 players- so we love to see that interest has spread to our forum members as well. Trikon000 did us the honor of posting a guide to the Cowon S9 tear down with lots of pics.

I’ve taken my S9 apart as well so I will mention that it's not for the faint hearted. It’s not an easy disassembly and it will void you warranty. So unless your S9 is broken / out of warranty or you have done this before, I recommend just checking out these cool pics in the S9 forum.

Many people might have heard of the unofficial kings of clip-on/ear-clip headphones. Their name is Koss KSC75, and their price is a whopping $10 (give or take a few) if you look around a bit. They don’t need to be ashamed of being compared to phones that cost a lot more.

With clip-on phones being quite the niche product there aren’t many fancy, higher priced – or even good sounding ones – available. Until recently only some Audio Technica products like the ATH-EM7 or EW9 fell into that category (to the best of my knowledge).

Then Yuin – a company already famed for other niche products, such as high quality ear buds – came along and introduced their G1 and G2 clip-on phones. Both of these currently got upgraded to the G1A and G2A versions, which obviously have improved bass and treble response over the former iterations.

The G1A are the “high end” variant, with a higher price and higher impedance, the G2A are the more affordable variant that are easier to drive with portable players.

Let’s take a look/listen at how they perform – not only in the sparsely populated field of quality clip-on phones, but also in the grand scheme of headphones in general.

Interconnects, IC for short, are the cables that go between your player and another device with an input jack - a car stereo, home stereo, or a portable headphone amp. The problem with the latter of those setups is that the amp is often directly under the player and so you really only need 2cm of cable to make the connection, but they don't make cables that short. As a result, a lot of people drag around long cables that are just inthe way. There's no need to. Read on for a guide on how to make your own tiny bridge-interconnect.