Latest news with #audio


SBS Australia
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
SBS Japanese Newsflash Wednesday 16 July
Listen to SBS Japanese Audio on Tue, Thu and Fri from 1pm on SBS 3.


Khaleej Times
18 hours ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
boAt, India's No.1 and world's No.3 audio wearables brand, enters UAE
boAt, India's No.1 and World's No.3 audio wearables brand according to IDC data, has announced its official entry into the UAE, marking a milestone in its international expansion journey. As part of this launch, boAt will offer its portfolio of audio products and smart wearables, including TWS (True Wireless Stereo) earbuds, headphones, portable speakers, large audio, and smartwatches. These products will be available through an omnichannel retail presence, across both online platforms and offline stores. This expansion is aligned with boAt's strategic vision to expand in a focused manner in select countries in the Middle East, that have a large Indian diaspora or population with similar tastes and preferences as India. The focus remains on young, digitally enabled consumers in such target international markets. Signalling its intent to disrupt, boAt kicked off its UAE presence with a daring 'Don't be a Fanboy' campaign, shot and conceptualised by Moonshot UAE. Instagram links - 'Our expansion into the UAE represents a defining step in boAt's mission to expand our distribution in select countries in the Middle East,' said Sameer Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of boAt. 'These are dynamic markets with a large base of young, digitally enabled consumers who align with boAt's DNA of innovation. We are excited to introduce the boAt experience to theUAE.


TechCrunch
a day ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model
As AI systems become more capable, speech is fast becoming the default way we communicate with machines. French AI startup Mistral has jumped into the audio race with its first open model, aiming to challenge the dominance of walled-off corporate systems with open-weight alternatives. On Tuesday, Mistral announced the release of Voxtral, its first family of audio models aimed at businesses. The company is pitching Voxtral as the first open model that's capable of deploying 'truly usable speech intelligence in production.' In other words, no longer will developers have to choose between a cheap, open system that fumbles transcriptions and doesn't really understand what's being said, and one that functions well, but is closed, leaving developers with a higher bill and less control over deployment. For businesses, that means Voxtral offers an affordable alternative that the company claims is 'less than half the price' of comparable solutions. Image Credits:Mistral Mistral says Voxtral can transcribe up to 30 minutes of audio. Due to its LLM backbone, Mistral Small 3.1, it can understand up to 40 minutes, allowing users to ask questions about the audio content, generate summaries, or turn voice commands into real-time actions like calling APIs or running functions. Voxtral is also multilingual, with the ability to transcribe and understand languages including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, German, Dutch, and Italian. The company is offering up two variants of its 'speech understanding models'. The first, Voxtral Small, has 24B parameters for production-scale deployments, and is competitive with ElevenLabs Scribe, GPT-4o-mini, and Gemini 2.5 Flash. Techcrunch event LIVE NOW! TechCrunch All Stage Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW The second, Voxtral Mini, has 3 billion parameters for local and edge deployments. There's also an ultra-cheap, stripped-down, fast API version of the 3B model called Voxtral Mini Transcribe that is optimized for transcription-only use cases and promises to outperform OpenAI Whisper for less than half the price. Users can try Voxtral for free by downloading the API on Hugging Face or testing the models in Mistral's chatbot Le Chat. Integrating the API into applications starts at $0.001 per minute, according to the company. The launch comes a month after Mistral announced Magistral, its first family of reasoning models that work through problems step-by-step for improved reliability. Mistral, one of the top AI firms in Europe, is well-known for its advocacy pushing open source AI models. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that the company is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in equity from investors like Abu Dhabi's MGX fund.


Forbes
a day ago
- Forbes
Pro-Ject Launches Its Tiny Head Box E Headphone Amplifier For Less Than £90
The new Pro-Ject Head Box E is an affordable headphone amplifier for less than £90. Turntable and audio brand Pro-Ject has announced the Head Box E, a micro-sized headphone amplifier that's able to drive even the most demanding pair of headphones. The Austria-based manufacturer has made the Head Box E as small as possible and it' pocket-size design has a pocket-sized price of £89. Weighing just 390 grams, the Head Box E is an easy way to add wired headphone capabilities. With a power output of 665mW into 32Ω, the Head Box E has sufficient muscle to drive wired headphones, including those with more complicated loads. The Head Box E can also integrate into traditional two-channel audio setups such as CD or vinyl-based hi-fi systems. Pro-Ject claims the dedicated amplification outperforms the headphone stages found in many stereo amplifiers. The Head box E is an affordable headphone amplifier with two output which can be used ... More simultaneously. Bucking the trend of integrated chip-based designs at this price point, the Head Box E features fully discrete electronics. This approach, says Pro-Ject, gave the designers of the Head Box E greater control over the device's signal path, enabling more robust power handling, cleaner performance and improved long-term reliability thanks to easier servicing and repair. The Head Box E has a pair of RCA sockets at the rear that handles inputs, while a bypass RCA loop output allows the unaltered signal to be passed on to another amplifier or audio device, which makes tit suitable for integrating the Head Box E into a broader hi-fi system without losing connectivity or flexibility. On the front panel there are two headphone outputs: one 6.3mm and one 3.5mm. Both outputs can be used simultaneously, making it suitable for shared listening. Measuring just 103 x 37 x 120mm, the Head Box E has a solid metal housing and is available with a black body and a choice of silver or black front panel. The new Pro-Ject Head Box E launches in July and is priced at £89 / €119. Henley Audio is the exclusive distributor for Pro-Ject in the UK.

CNA
a day ago
- General
- CNA
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