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Tag: Christmas

Enjoy a Christmas gift, with love from Linn

As a special Christmas gift, Linn are giving away a different, free 24-bit Studio Master track every day in December, until Christmas Eve. Explore and expand your musical tastes with a host of award-winning recordings from a variety of genres and musicians, including well-known favourites. Each day they will also post an exciting new video letting you discover the story behind every song. But we know no-one likes waiting, so in the spirit of Christmas, here’s a taste of what’s to come – enjoy Dougie MacLean’s classic, ‘Caledonia’, performed with the award-winning Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Don’t forget to check each day to download a new track*. By Christmas you’ll have an incredible playlist, with love from Linn.

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Headphones for Christmas?

iGrado   It was Grado’s goal to design affordable street style headphones for Christmas. The iGrado is functional, stylish, lightweight and comfortable. The model incorporates the same drives used in the highly regarded SR60 headphones, giving you high end tech for under £40. With a dynamic transducer, open air operating principle and a weight of just 3oz.   Grado iGi   These compact in ear headphones nestle within the ear canal, maintaining an excellent air seal for improved bass and reduction of outside noise without causing discomfort. The headphones feature a dynamic driver and the raised dot on left earphones provides tactile indication of channel allowing earphones to be put on correctly even in the dark. Best mid range Grado headphones at just £84.50. Grado PS1000 Headphones for Christmas   The Grado PS1000 are Grado’s top of the range headphones. Their design uses specially selected pieces of handcrafted mahogany; made by using an intricate curing process. The outside coating is made from metal and has been machined from a special non gloss, hard metal alloy that utilises a special processing and casting method to increase the porosity of the alloy, so then this combination of wood and metal is designed to stop any ringing’ which can obscure fine detail the audio. £1520.00 REVIEWS OF GRADO HEADPHONES   What HI-FI? magazine (October 2012) conducts a ‘Supertest’ and lists their top 50 pairs of headphones; with models priced from £20 to £2000 per pair. Grado – Everyone’s a winner! Included in their ‘Top 50’ are no fewer than six pairs of Grado headphones. The result? Every single Grado model receives a resounding Five Star review! No wonder Grado headphones will be at the top of everyone’s Christmas list again this year.   Grado iGrado – Five Stars “Detail levels, cohesion, authority and refinement are simply outstanding for the money.”   Grado SR80i– Five Stars “a crisp sound that’s awesomely detailed and natural. Musically faultless at this price.”Grado iGi – Five Stars “audio with the kind of detail, dynamics and neutrality that the vast majority of rivals can’t muster.”Grado GR10 – Five Stars “Stunningly insightful and expressive; detailed without sounding overly analytical. The GR10s are earphones par excellence.” Grado SR325is – Five Stars “Perhaps the best on a ‘performance-per-pound’ basis. Offering the kind of open, detailed, dynamic and rich sound that many rivals twice the price can’t match, they’re truly stunning.” Grado PS1000 – Five Stars “Supreme build quality; astonishing resolution and clarity; gorgeously musical. Expensive, yes, but the sound is genuinely good enough to justify every penny.”

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Linn Offers Free Music for Every Day of Christmas

24 MAGICAL STUDIO MASTER RECORDINGS – ONE FOR EVERY DAY OF CHRISTMAS Enjoy your free Christmas Music, with love from Linn Get in the festive spirit with a free Studio Master download every day until Christmas. With 24 days of magical recordings by a host of great musicians, you can relax from the bustle of Christmas and enjoy a musical gift from Linn. Unwind with Day One’s free download – a beautiful choral piece from the world-famous Handel’s Messiah by the Dunedin Consort. Winner of the Gramophone Award for Best Baroque Vocal Album, this performance is true to that which was premiered by Handel in Dublin in 1742. There’s something for everyone to enjoy – from the lively lilts of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and a captivating concerto from the Avison Ensemble, to foot-stomping indie-rock band Admiral Fallow and the absorbing rhythms of Emma Pollock (The Delgados). Each track is available in Studio Master – the highest quality download available anywhere, letting you hear a song exactly as it was recorded. Every note, every beat captured just as it sounded before it was shrunk to fit on CD or squashed down to MP3 size. Don’t forget to check back each day – by Christmas you’ll have an unbelievable playlist, with love from Linn. Get Your Free Tracks Here

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Spread Some Winter Joy With the Sound of Music

Buying presents for children at Christmas can be an easy choice, since they often write their letters to Santa in advance. However, buying a present for a partner or family member can involve some thought.   Everyone Loves Music A portable media player is always a pleasant gift, as they are ideal to use at the gym or during a gentle stroll. Popular companies now market portable media and digital audio players, but many mobile (or smart) phones allow you to store song, movies and books; depending on the memory storage that they offer. Memory cards for mobile phones come in a variety of sizes which makes them a great gift for music and movie lovers. Technology today has come far from the personal stereo and portable CD player, which was impossible to run with for fear it would jump and ruin the CD playback. The MP3 player in mobile phones has caused more success than the sale of individual MP3 players put together. In 2007, over one billion music phones had sold. Since mobile phones can also make phone calls, text and browse the World Wide Web, individual MP3 players have taken a back seat in the field of technology. The Growth of MP3 Players The first MP3 players available were the same size as a deck of cards, but nowadays they look the size of a matchbox. The smaller or slimmer they are, the more general the popularity and need. MP3 players are delicate and require careful maintenance. Many of them will come with a connecting wire so that you can upload music from your computer onto the device. iTunes is a popular music platform where you can buy and download music to your individual MP3 player or music phone. In addition, you can upload your favourite CDs onto your music platform and then transfer them onto your music player. Music mobiles and MP3 players even provide the option of choosing a personal playlist that you know will motivate you when you feel you need an extra shot of mental stimulation.   The popularity of personal MP3 players is down to the fact that you can complete many tasks, without the music skipping. A flash drive is incorporated into the device for a pleasant experience. Runners can apply a portable MP3 device to an armband for comfort without the risk of it slipping out of a pocket: plus music is a fantastic motivator. The Popularity of Music Phones MP3 players first began functioning in mobile phones in 2001. By 2005, all of the major mobile phone manufacturers had released music phones. One reason why Apple invented the iPhone so quickly is because of the rapid success of media players in mobile phones. While this phone is popular worldwide, there are other phones offering exactly the same gadgets.  However, mobile phones that do offer so many applications such as the media player option may also have a short battery life and require a daily charge. Mobile phones now allow you to check your bank account while travelling to work on the train, listen to music or the radio aloud or with headphones, play games, text, make calls, browse the Internet, take pictures and watch movies and TV. With so much variety, is it any wonder why the sales of individual MP3 players are fallen? Many of these smart phones offering all of the above are available freely on a set contact. If you sign up for a mobile phone contract as a gift for a loved one, it may be useful to opt for insurance, especially if the phone is worth several hundred pound. This protects against accidental damage and theft. As the music mobile has completely stolen the multimedia market from the individual market, it has become a clear winner when choosing your stocking fillers this year.

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5 Classic Christmas Songs

As shops start to pile on the festive cheer and stock-up on Christmas delights despite the fact there are still three full months between now and the big day, chances are you either love this fact or hate it. Whether you find yourself muttering your way around stores about it being too early to sell Christmas stuff and play Christmas songs or skipping merrily down the aisles while singing along to the lyrics, there can be no denying that Christmas songs are big business.   Every year many of us indulge in our favourites, be that modern takes on classics, hymns or catchy carols. And recent research has highlighted that a chunk of us are more likely to spend more on gifts when stores play Christmas songs. Nowadays, we hear lots of tunes sung by the likes of Slade, Mariah Carey, The Pogues and Band Aid as we go about our day – but we mustn’t forget about the classic Christmas songs which continue to entertain and bring joy to listeners many decades after they were launched. 1. The Christmas Song This classic tune was first penned in 1944 by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells, and is able to succinctly sum up Christmas – with chestnuts on the fire and mention of Jack Frost, mistletoe, reindeers and turkey within the lyrics. This song is often subtitled Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire, and was initially subtitled Merry Christmas To You, and is said to have been written during a red hot summer. 2. White Christmas Written for the 1942 film Holiday Inn by Irving Berlin, this song became a hit straightaway, reaching the top spot in October of that year and staying put for 11 weeks. Its success generated a film of the same name in 1954 starring Bing Crosby. 3. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town Just the title of this track is likely to have you humming along merrily, as it conjures up Christmases of our childhood for so many of us. This song was first aired on the radio in November 1934 and an impressive 400,000 copies had been sold by that Christmas. With lyrics by “Haven” Gillepsie, this classic tune is said to have been outlined in around 10 minutes by American songwriter John Frederick Coots. Over the years, versions have been sung by Nat King Cole and the Jackson 5. 4. Walking In The Air The animated classic of The Snowman, a book by Raymond Briggs, became an instant hit when first shown in 1982. Its success was thanks in part to the brilliant theme tune by Howard Blake. Haunting and memorable, the song was originally sung by Peter Auty, but it was Aled Jones who took it into the charts in 1985. 5. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer Written by Johnny Marks and based on the 1939 story of the same name, this song was first sung by Harry Brannon in 1949 – before Gene Autry’s recording reached number one in Christmas 1949 and went on to sell 2.5million copies in the first year alone. Inspirations Wholesale sell a wide range of Christmas trees including 7ft Christmas trees

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