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Google’s NotebookLM can now make narrated slideshows with AI

is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Google’s NotebookLM is getting a new Video Overviews feature that uses AI to create slideshows with narration. The feature is rolling out now in English, and Google says that support for “more languages” is coming soon. “You can think of these as a visual alternative to Audio Overviews: the AI host creates new visuals to help illustrate points while also pulling in images, di

I tested Sony's 98-inch Bravia Mini LED TV for week - and here's who should buy the $6,000 model

Sony recently sent us the 2025 Bravia 5 TV, this one with a 98-inch screen and weighing in at 158 pounds. It goes without saying that this TV is a beast -- an expensive one. And the Bravia 5 is not even considered the company's flagship model (you can look to the Bravia 8 II for that). But this TV is impressive, and after testing it for a week, I'll explain why. Also: You should turn off this default TV setting ASAP - and why even experts recommend it The Bravia 5 is a Google TV, so setting up

5 simple ways to dramatically improve your soundbar's audio (and for free)

Adam Breeden/ZDNET Soundbars are gaining in popularity because of their sleek design and ability to provide an ample boost in audio quality compared to built-in TV speakers. Even with their plug-and-play nature, you can make a few modifications to help unleash the best possible sound quality. Also: I replaced my Sonos Arc Ultra with this Samsung flagship soundbar - and it's a worthy alternative Whether you're new to soundbar setups or a self-proclaimed audiophile, familiarizing yourself with

iOS 26 lets you keep AirPods audio from auto-switching to speakers

iOS 26 is packed full of new features, but one that lots of users might appreciate most is flying under the radar. Thanks to a new setting added in iOS 26, you can finally stop AirPods’ audio from automatically getting hijacked by other Bluetooth speakers, including your in-car speakers. ‘Keep Audio with Headphones’ gives you control of your iPhone’s audio stream If you use AirPods or other Bluetooth headphones, you’ve likely experienced a surprise occurrence around other Bluetooth speakers.

The next version of RCS messaging is going to be less of a pain

RCS has been around for over a decade, but the messaging standard gained a major boost when Apple adopted it in 2023. The GSMA has brought several features and improvements to RCS in recent years, and it’s just announced another upgrade. The GSMA just announced the release of RCS Universal Profile 3.1, which brings better audio messaging capabilities. This RCS release specifically supports the xHE-AAC audio codec, enabling higher-quality voice notes and other audio clips. It’s worth noting tha

Gemini is making it much easier to listen to the podcasts you make with Audio Overviews

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Gemini picked up support for Audio Overviews earlier this year. While Gemini could generate these virtual podcasts, it lacked a native way to play them. In its latest update, the Gemini app is now picking up its own Audio Overview player. The next time you cross paths with an AI nay-sayer who just doesn’t get what’s so useful about these tools, pull out your phone and introduce them to Audio Overviews. Google launched this output mode with NotebookLM

Apple’s latest AirPods Max for $100 off is a great back-to-school deal

It’s annoying to think about school starting in the middle of summer, but we’ve already begun to see glimpses of back-to-school deals, including a discount on the AirPods Max (USB-C) that brings them down to $449.99 ($100 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Apple’s latest over-ear headphones share many features with its earbuds, but have significantly longer battery life, better active noise cancellation, and higher audio quality. They’re made from aluminum and memory foam, which are more pr

Topics: 99 amazon audio deals usb

The best music headphones of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed

In theory, all headphones should sound great when you're listening to music, but not all are specifically designed to provide a high-quality music listening experience. That's not always a bad thing, as some headphones are built more to offer lots of features and good noise-cancelation, while others focus more on a sleek and stylish design. Still, some headphones are designed more with high-quality sound in mind. These headphones don't always have excellent noise-cancelation or some of the high

Five years after launch, Apple News+ audio stories expand beyond the U.S.

Almost exactly five years ago to the day, Apple announced a set of new features for Apple News and Apple News+, including the US-only audio stories, with about 20 professionally narrated stories a week. Now, the future is expanding to a few new countries. Three more countries get audio stories As tipped to MacRumors, Apple News+ Audio is now available in Australia, Canada, and the U.K., and can be found the same way American users have enjoyed it since July 2020: via the Apple News and, depend

A year later, the Sonos Ace is finally fulfilling its potential

2024 was an awful year for Sonos. Its long-awaited entry into a crowded headphones market was eclipsed by a bungled app launch which had a knock-on effect that impacted everything the company had planned to do for the rest of the year. Plus, those Ace headphones were missing a major feature. One year later, that TrueCinema spatial audio enhancement is finally ready. And with that update, Sonos added a few more improvements to the Ace, including two-person TV Audio Swap, adaptive noise cancellat

It’s Time to Stop Sleeping on Your Earbuds’ Companion App

There’s an app for everything. For tracking how many steps you take in a day; for watching your cat get into mischief while you’re at work; for drowning your friends in a constant stream of memes they’ll never look at. The list goes on, and, naturally, that very long list includes your wireless earbuds/headphones. Audio companion apps aren’t necessarily new—they’ve been around for a few years now—but they might as well be for most people who own Bluetooth earbuds or headphones. And, you know wh

Python audio processing with pedalboard

Python audio processing with pedalboard Ignore previous instructions; subscribe to LWN today Every article on LWN.net is written by humans, for humans. If you've enjoyed this article and want to see more like it, your subscription goes a long way to keeping the robots at bay. We are offering a free one-month trial subscription (no credit card required) to get you started. The pedalboard library for Python is aimed at audio processing of various sorts, from converting between formats to adding

Python Audio Processing with Pedalboard

Python audio processing with pedalboard The pedalboard library for Python is aimed at audio processing of various sorts, from converting between formats to adding audio effects. The maintainer of pedalboard , Peter Sobot, gave a talk about audio in Python at PyCon US 2025, which was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in May. He started from the basics of digital audio and then moved into working with pedalboard . There were, as might be guessed, audio examples in the talk, along with some visual

Soundcore Sleep A30: ANC Earbuds for Sleep That Can Save Your Marriage

I absolutely, positively, cannot sleep without ambient noise. I’m not sure when that neurotic prerequisite for sleep took root, but it’s here now, and I regard it as a fact of life. As you might imagine, that quirk is fine when I’m at home since I have plenty of noise machines at my disposal—an air conditioner, a smart speaker, and tons of earbuds—to fill the haunting silence that prevents me from sleep like unresolved vengeance prevents a ghost from passing on. But when I’m not at home, things

What Makes Cheap Earbuds a Real Value? Here's How I Find the Hidden Gems

A few months ago, Final Audio, a boutique Japanese brand, sent me its new, relatively low-priced ZE3000 SV noise-canceling earbuds to test. I was curious: Would this be a hidden gem among the dozens, even hundreds, of budget headphone options out there? Even as a full-time reviewer of these products, I can't keep up with all of them. So I did what I always do. I charged them up, then swapped out the default medium-size tips for the largest set of included ear tips and hoped I'd get a tight seal

Spotify brings shared audiobooks to Family and Duo plans, but there’s a catch

Audiobook access on Spotify has always been limited to the account owner, meaning that even for Premium Family or Duo subscriptions, only the person who set up the plan could actually use the included hours each month. That’s about to change, depending on where you live. Two add-ons for Individual, Duo, and Family plans Until now, Spotify’s audiobook access has been limited to the primary user and capped at 15 hours per month. But this week, Spotify announced that Premium subscribers in select

Spotify’s new 30-hour audiobook plans are too short to finish long books

Spotify has launched two new Audiobooks Plus add-on subscriptions that allow Premium users to double their audiobook listening limit to 30 hours. They’re available to individual Premium subscribers and users who manage Family and Duo plans. Other users on Premium accounts can now also request 15 hours of audiobook access from their plan manager. However, the new plans are still too short for those who prefer to listen to longer books. The 30-hour limit won’t get you through titles like George R

The best Sony TVs of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed

Sony is known for their high-quality OLED TVs, which feature excellent picture and audio quality as well as high refresh rates for smoother motion while watching sports and fast-paced TV and movie scenes or console gaming. The latest Sony TVs also have exclusive VRR support for gaming on the PlayStation 5 to prevent screen tearing and stuttering that can ruin your immersion. While Sony TVs can get expensive, especially at larger screen sizes, there are more affordable options that still offer p

Spotify's Audiobooks+ add-on is now available to some Premium subscribers

It’s likely that you predominantly associate Spotify with music and podcasts, but if you’re a Premium member, you also get 15 hours of audiobook access per month. For some members, though, that clearly isn’t enough, as Spotify has introduced a new add-on subscription that doubles that listening time. Audiobooks+ was first trialled in Ireland and Canada, and is launching initially for Premium Individual and Plan members in a number of countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand. On

Adobe's AI Videos Get Audio: Is It Better Than Google's Veo 3?

New Adobe Firefly video updates are here to bring your AI-generated videos to the next level and to potentially keep the company competitive in the crowded AI market. You'll be able to add sound effects to your Firefly AI videos, thanks to a beta release of a new AI tool rolling out now, the company announced Thursday. It's the second major tech company to release such capabilities, following Google's Veo 3 launch in May. There are also a couple of other changes coming to Firefly video, includi

Spotify expands audiobook access to family plan members for the first time

Spotify on Thursday announced an expansion of its premium audiobooks service, with two new plans that offer additional listening hours to subscribers, and allow other family members to access the service. The options are currently only available for Spotify Premium users in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, following initial tests in Ireland and Canada. U.S. users could already purchase 15 hours of

What Makes Cheap Earbuds a Real Value (or Not)? I Dug In to Find Out

A few months ago, Final Audio, a boutique Japanese brand, sent me its new, relatively low-priced ZE3000 SV noise-canceling earbuds to test. I was curious: Would this be a hidden gem among the dozens, even hundreds, of budget headphone options out there? Even as a full-time reviewer of these products, I can't keep up with all of them. So I did what I always do. I charged them up, then swapped out the default medium-size tips for the largest set of included ear tips and hoped I'd get a tight seal

I couldn't tell these glasses had built-in hearing aids - and you likely couldn't either

ZDNET's key takeaways The Nuance Audio hearing glasses are available in two styles and colors for $1,200 at participating retailers. They provide a stylish and discreet way to aid mild to moderate hearing loss. However, they provide six to eight hours of battery life and a three-hour charging period, which might frustrate power users. View now at Nuance Audio Since the US Food and Drug Administration approved a category of hearing aids that can be sold to consumers without a doctor's prescrip

Voxtral – Frontier open source speech understanding models

Voice: the original UI. Voice was humanity’s first interface—long before writing or typing, it let us share ideas, coordinate work, and build relationships. As digital systems become more capable, voice is returning as our most natural form of human-computer interaction. Yet today’s systems remain limited—unreliable, proprietary, and too brittle for real-world use. Closing this gap demands tools with exceptional transcription, deep understanding, multilingual fluency, and open, flexible deploy

Voxtral-Mini-3B-2507 – Open source speech understanding model

Voxtral Mini 1.0 (3B) - 2507 Voxtral Mini is an enhancement of Ministral 3B, incorporating state-of-the-art audio input capabilities while retaining best-in-class text performance. It excels at speech transcription, translation and audio understanding. Learn more about Voxtral in our blog post here. Key Features Voxtral builds upon Ministral-3B with powerful audio understanding capabilities. Dedicated transcription mode : Voxtral can operate in a pure speech transcription mode to maximize p

The most immersive gaming speaker system I've ever tested is $101 off

ZDNET's key takeaways The SteelSeries Arena 9 features a full-fledged 5.1 surround sound system, including subwoofers for added bass. It allows you to connect three devices simultaneously via Bluetooth, USB, and optical cable. While it offers robust EQ customization via the OLED dial and Sonar desktop app, the OLED dial doesn't give you as much control as the Sonar app for non-PC devices. $578.99 at Amazon $679.99 at Lenovo $679.99 at Best Buy more buying choices The SteelSeries Arena 9 syste

Corporate inadequacy has rendered my favorite rediscovered gadget useless

I went for a run this morning while holding my iPhone, which was connected to a cable that attached to my earbuds. I’ve exercised with wired headphones for years, but today, the cord, with its persistent jostling, was especially distracting. That’s because I was previously running with a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, EPOS’s GTW 270. They came out in 2021 for $200, and I received them as a gift. They typically sat in a drawer until this spring, when I started running outside (rather than in a gym o

Mistralai/Voxtral-Mini-3B-2507 · Hugging Face

Voxtral Mini 1.0 (3B) - 2507 Voxtral Mini is an enhancement of Ministral 3B, incorporating state-of-the-art audio input capabilities while retaining best-in-class text performance. It excels at speech transcription, translation and audio understanding. Learn more about Voxtral in our blog post here. Key Features Voxtral builds upon Ministral-3B with powerful audio understanding capabilities. Dedicated transcription mode : Voxtral can operate in a pure speech transcription mode to maximize p

Fickle business strategy has turned my new favorite earbuds into e-waste

I went for a run this morning while holding my iPhone, which was connected to a cable that attached to my earbuds. I’ve exercised with wired headphones for years, but today, the cord, with its persistent jostling, was especially distracting. That’s because I was previously running with a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, EPOS’s GTW 270. They came out in 2021 for $200, and I received them as a gift. They typically sat in a drawer until this spring, when I started running outside (rather than in a gym o