audio

What's one of the best one-stop video/image quality enhancement and editing software available for Windows? Answer: Digiarty's VideoProc Converter AI! From the makers of WinX DVD Ripper and WinX Video Converter comes VideoProc Converter: a ... multi-award winning software program that is a one-stop video/image processing program that allows you to restore and enhance video image quality in 1 click, convert video/audio, rip DVDs, edit video, download videos, video to GIF maker ... plus much more! The latest version of VideoProc Converter AI includes the ability to upscale old pictures and video ... (view more)

Continuing what's almost become a tradition, the latest Windows 10 update has brought a string of reported problems. Microsoft says it is unclear how widespread many of them are, but has confirmed some users can no longer get online. The ... confirmation comes on Microsoft's support page for the update, which has the reference number KB4556799. The Internet connectivity problem is with users who have a wireless wide area network (WWAN) LTE modem. Specifically: anyone that uses mobile broadband for Internet might be affected. To make things worse, Microsoft says the notification area on the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Mike P. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thank you for your excellent website and remote desktop service - you've been a great help in the past. I have a new problem: Dell SupportAssist recently popped up with a message stating that I had ... sound driver updates to apply to Windows 10 , namely: two Intel high definition audio drivers, and one Realtek high definition audio driver. I downloaded and installed the sound drivers onto my PC, but unfortunately, there's been no sound after the Dell update . I've tried to uninstall and reinstall the Dell audio drivers but it made no difference. ... (view more)

Google is making several changes to the way it handles audio collected from phones and smart gadgets such as the Google Home speaker. It follows revelations that humans listened to recordings collected by several tech giants. Amazon, Apple and ... Google were all hit by claims that they'd not done enough to make clear that staff or contractors listened to recordings to check the accuracy of automatic speech recognition. In several cases, human engineers heard sensitive material which appeared to have been collected unintentionally, rather than the user meaning to make a spoken query or request. ... (view more)

Google has admitted that staff listen to some recordings from the Google Home smart speaker. It says it's only for quality control purposes. It made the comments after a contractor in the Netherlands went to local media to talk about his work, in ... which he was paid a "few cents" to transcribe comments and questions made by people using the voice controlled device or phone app. According to the worker, some of the clips he heard did not appear to be people intentionally using the device. This included one case of a mother scolding a child and another clip which the worker suspected ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Fred W. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thanks for your article on how to play games in 5.1 surround sound . I own the Asus Xonar DX (same as you) and when I first set it up, I could play games in 5.1 surround sound using my optical ... (toslink) cable. I knew this was true because my Harmon Kardon 144 receiver would say 'Dolby Digital' along with each speaker box activated on the display. This meant the receiver was receiving a true 5.1 signal. Recently, Windows 10 updated and now the only sound signal I get on my receiver is Dolby Pro Logic, which is a 2 channel signal up-converted to ... (view more)

Facebook has invented a new unit of time called "the flick." Perhaps surprisingly it actually serves a purpose rather than being a mere gimmick. A "flick" is a word that's a shortened version of a "frame tick". It refers to the length of time of 1 ... second divided by 705,600,000; in decimal format it would look like this: 1.417233560090703e-9. All mathematics aside, the "flick" could help make online videos smoother as well as improve virtual reality and similar technologies. The flick is now the next longest unit of time after the nanosecond, which isn't ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader William C. writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm have a problem with my sound after the latest Windows Update in Windows 10 (version 15063.540). If I use System Restore to roll back the sysetm (which then uninstalls the update), my sound ... works perfectly fine. In my Device Manager I have: a 'High Definition Audio Device' with yellow exclamation point warning, and two 'Realtek High Definition Audio Device' with no warning. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the Realtek audio drivers to no avail - the sound will simply not work! My system is connected to a TV via HDMI cable. If I use ... (view more)

Amazon has refused to give police access to data from a home gadget that may have recorded audio relevant to a murder investigation. The company says its policy is to only provide customer information if and when it gets a valid court order. The ... request by Arkansas police is for information that may have been recorded by an Amazon Echo. That's a gadget that combines a wireless speaker with voice recognition and an Internet connection. It lets users give voice commands for actions such as selecting music to play, carrying out voice searches of the Internet and controlling smart devices ... (view more)

Security researchers say hackers could turn people's headphones into a microphone for surreptitious remote listening. However, the method has enough limitations that it shouldn't be a major concern for most users. The method, shown off by ... researchers at Ben Guiron University in Israel, takes advantage of a very simple element of engineering. That is that the process by which a microphone turns speech into an electronic signal is effectively the same as that by which earphones turn a speaker into sound, just with the process reversed. According to the researchers, that's a security ... (view more)