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Music

How to use Apple Music’s Karaoke Mode

Apple Music has a new feature called Apple Music Sing. This fun feature allows you to sing along to your favourite songs, whether you’re alone or with friends and family. If you subscribe to Apple Music, this cool new feature uses machine learning algorithms to separate a song’s vocals and background music in real time. As a result, you will be able to adjust the volume of the vocals so you can only focus on your voice.

Note: You need to have an iPhone 11 or later, an iPad Pro (3rd generation and later), an iPad Air (4th generation and later), an iPad mini (6th generation), an iPad (9th generation or later), or Apple TV 4K (2022) to do karaoke on Apple Music. Also, you must have an active Apple Music subscription. read more

How to enable Google Assistant’s two new speaking styles

Google has announced the addition of two new voices for the Google Assistant. These two new voices, Lime and Indigo are for United States English users.

Google Assistant’s Lime is a male voice and Indigo is a female voice, which joins the ten other voices currently available. These voices are namely Red (default), Orange, Amber, Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple, Pink, British Racing Green, and Sydney Harbor Blue.

To change the voice of Google Assistant, users can say, “Hey Google, change your voice.” This command works across smart speakers and smart displays, users will need to listen to each voice individually and pick from there. read more

How to turn On Bluetooth on your iPhone with pro tip

Turning Bluetooth on and off is the first step in being able to stream your favourite music to a speaker or watch videos on a larger screen.
You can quickly connect and disconnect your iPhone from a device by turning Bluetooth on or off.
If you can’t get audio to play directly from your device, turning Bluetooth off might solve your problem.

Turning On Bluetooth from Settings

The first way to enable or disable Bluetooth is in Settings.

On your iPhone, open Settings.

Select Bluetooth.
Toggle Bluetooth on or off. It will be green and toggled to the right when enabled or gray and to the left when disabled. read more

How to use Hey Siri

Apple introduced the ability for users to say “Hey Siri” and provide hands-free voice commands to Siri in 2014 with iOS 8. It was limited to basic actions and information queries, but the technology has improved dramatically in the last decade.

How to set up “Hey Siri”

Open the Settings app
Scroll down and select “Siri & Search”
Toggle on “Listen for ‘Hey Siri'”
The procedure is identical for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch and their respective Settings apps.

Macs can also listen for “Hey Siri,” but only in models released in 2018 or later for MacBooks and in 2020 or later for iMacs. The toggle is in the same location, but this time in System Preferences. read more

Samsung Announces Bixby feature that creates an AI-generated copy of user’s voice to answer calls

Samsung Electronics has announced new updates to Bixby that improve user experience, performance and capabilities of the intelligent assistant and platform. The new updates deliver significant improvements in Bixby’s ability with enhanced language recognition, giving people greater control over their mobile experience.

What is the Custom Voice Creator?

The new “Custom Voice Creator” lets users record different sentences for Bixby to analyze and create an AI-generated copy of their tone and voice. Unfortunately, the feature is currently only available in Korean on Galaxy S23 series devices. read more

Korean trio designs guitar for blind musicians

Korean design trio Eojin Roh, Seonjin Baek, and Yujeong Shin have introduced VITAR, a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) designed for the blind and visually impaired.

What does the VITAR look like?

Shaped like a guitar, and instead of the traditional strings. The instrument includes a Braille fingerboard made up of several embossed keys that users sense and press with their left hand to play a tune.

Where does the music transfer to while operating the keys?

While operating the keys, electronic signals get sent to a Digital Audio Workstation.

How does the user navigate the ‘VITAR’ guitar?

To help the user navigate the ‘VITAR’ guitar, which has and asymmetrical shape. Complementing its unique shape is a set of embossed lines carved along the main body, acting as additional guiding points when handling the device. The most prominent lines are found at the center of the guitar, reminiscent of the row of strings in traditional guitars. the recessed chamber at the center of ‘VITAR’ serves as guidelines read more

How to adjust iPhone Equalizer

In Apple Music settings, you have the ability to adjust the way the music sounds, like how loud the bass is and more. You can also customize your Apple Music settings based on whether you’re listening to pop, rock, or jazz. This feature is called the equalizer, or “EQ.” The EQ can be adjusted to provide the best sound regardless of your surrounding environment.

Open Settings.

Select Music.

Go to apple music settings to adjust eq
Scroll down to the Audio section and select EQ.

From here, you can scroll to explore the many options to choose from based on the music you are listening to. read more

Hey Sonos now has a voice assistant that lets you control playback on Sonos speakers

Sonos announced the launch of its very own voice assistant. The new
Sonos
Voice Control feature is now available on select Sonos speakers with built-in microphones, like the Sonos Move and Sonos Beam.

Though these speakers already support digital assistants like Amazon Alexa and
Google Assistant, this new feature was built specifically with Sonos products in mind. The company also developed its assistant with privacy as a priority, so customers don’t have to worry about their voices being recorded. read more

Apple adds accessibility to Fitness+, live sessions, shortcut suggestions, and more

Apple adds accessibility to Fitness+, live sessions, shortcut suggestions, and more

Apple is celebrating Accessibility Awareness Day with new content for Apple lovers of varying abilities, from Fitness+, Apple Maps, Apple Music, and more.

What is SignTime?

SignTime, which is an on-demand sign language service in Apple Stores, is coming to Canada on May 19. Apple Support and Apple Store customers can utilize this service to communicate with an interpreter through American Sign Language (ASL). SignTime is already available in the US using ASL, in the UK using British Sign Language (BSL), and France using French Sign Language (LSF). read more

Sonos introducing its own voice-activated digital assistant on June 1

The new service, called Sonos Voice Control, is focused on controlling media content and the company’s devices, rather than serving up information in the style of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. Still, it marks an ambitious expansion for a company best known for sound bars and other audio accessories.

The service was part of a new lineup of products announced Wednesday that also included a new lower-cost sound bar aimed at TVs. The functionality, which Sonos claims is the most private on the market because data isn’t shared to the cloud or monitored by the company, will be added to existing Sonos devices via a software update on June 1. read more

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