The Better Voice Vocal Trainer
A Mormon-invented device that will have you preaching the good word for years to come
“The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play,” said Richard Strauss, the composer who wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra, in 1896. What’s more, it’s a rather tough instrument to maintain, especially over the course of a long, arduous career of live performances and late nights on the road.
Keeping performers’ voices in good condition for that long haul is the province of a tribe of vocal coaches in Hollywood and everywhere else people sing or declaim for their supper.
One of the most successful in this field is Valerie Morehouse, a former singer who meets with clients at her offices in Studio City. She has worked with, as they say in Los Angeles, everyone—Britney Spears, Sia, Ryan Gosling, Dennis Quaid, Jeff Bridges, Miley Cyrus, Dakota Johnson, and many others.
Tuning up your voice, it turns out, includes more than lots of do-re-mi. A key tool of voice coaches is vocal straws, into which a singer hums scales, meeting with various levels of resistance. This resistance causes back pressure of air onto the vocal cords, which twangs them into peak shape. The problem with vocal straws, however, is that they are unwieldy and get unpleasantly laden with saliva.
But a couple of years ago, there landed on Ms. Morehouse’s desk a sample of a whistle-like plastic device that the sender, a young man in Utah, claimed was a spit-free alternative to vocal straws.
Though she was initially skeptical, Morehouse finally tried the invention and was impressed, offering to help the inventor perfect the design of his Better Voice. Now, Morehouse says, “I use it with all my students, and they absolutely love it. Sam Smith won’t get onstage without it, Olivia Rodrigo uses it, and [so do] many, many other of the world’s best performers.”
She adds, “Not just singers and actors, either. Broadcasters, attorneys, an evangelistic pastor, people in sales who are on the phone all day and can lose their voice. You can take it anywhere, and the improvement in your voice is remarkable.”
Your columnist, whose own voice can get croaky, has tried a sample and can confirm the immediate clarity and strength your voice gains from a couple of minutes humming into the tube of the under-three-inch-long device.
Intrigued to find out more, we interviewed the inventor, Braden Oswald, and discovered he is not a singer himself. Far from it—the 25-year-old is a Mormon missionary.
“In December 2017, I developed spasmodic dysphonia,” he said. This is an incurable condition that causes the voice to crack, shake, and fail to enunciate whole words.
“I saw all kinds of speech therapists, E.N.T. doctors, laryngologists, and they suggested anything from acid reflux to an infection. I had to come home early from my mission in Oregon, and the search for something to help me speak went on for years.”
“The only thing that helped was S.O.V.T.—semi-occluded vocal-tract exercises—to put back pressure on the cords. I’d drive around with different vocal straws, and they worked, but blowing into them wasn’t great. So, I decided to make a vocal trainer to do the exercises wherever I was. My dad and I have always invented things and made them, but this was especially challenging.”
Mr. Oswald now has lines of 3D printers in his home producing up to 40 Better Voice devices every three hours. The devices retail for $45 each, and he has sold roughly 18,000 of them.
The Vitesy Natede Air Purifier
A filter that employs plants and fans to spruce up your environs
Last May, I reviewed Shelfy, an electronic air deodorizer for refrigerators made by Vitesy, an air-purification start-up in northern Italy.
Now the company sells this eccentric air purifier that, alongside a filter and fan, uses a plant—from a list of Vitesy-approved options—to help remove airborne impurities from a room. The mechanism in play is phytoremediation, the ability of plants to absorb and transform pollutants into nutrients for themselves.
The Vitesy Natede is less easy to assess than Shelfy, which demonstrably passed the ultimate test: sucking up the odor of the notorious English cheese Stinking Bishop.
So, after using it in the kitchen for a few weeks, powered by a Chinese evergreen (alongside a soupçon of electricity), it’s really difficult to say whether the Natede works. It does, however, look impressive, and it’s a good conversation piece. All the whirring it produces certainly suggests something is happening.
Additionally, the air-cleansing properties of the plant—official name aglaonema modestum, and said by Vitesy to remove benzene and formaldehyde from the air—seem to have some validity upon a cursory reading of the Internet.
The Final audio D8000 Pro Headphones
A pair of studio-quality headphones that won’t wake up the neighbors
Knowing that for $1,000 you can buy an excellent pair of headphones, one might wonder how much better a $4,000 pair could possibly be.
It would be easy to dismiss such a thing as ridiculous, but the Japanese maker Final Audio is a small, niche company whose headphones—not all expensive by any means—your columnist has admired and used for more than a decade. (I reviewed their lovely ZE8000 Mk2, which cost $259, back in August.)
Final’s just-released D8000 DC Pro are, as the name hints, professional headphones. They are enormous and, although light and comfortable, make no concessions in the way of convenience. Even if you are nuts enough to wear headphones the price of a used car on the subway, don’t. These are effectively two loudspeakers clamped onto your head, so your fellow passengers even seats away will hear everything. There’s also no sense in using them with just a phone. Even a portable external amplifier like the FiiO KA15 won’t generate enough power for headphones this big.
However, at my desk, using a MacBook wired into Ifi Audio’s $79 Uno amplifier—and streaming high-quality tracks from Tidal—the Final cans were astonishing. You actually forget you are wearing headphones, and while those in the same room will hear your music, at least your neighbors won’t.
If you like listening to massively loud, high-quality music late at night, these might be for you—and for a lot less than the price of many good speakers.
As with a lot of super-high-end audio equipment, you may spend a lot of time listening to music you don’t necessarily love just to marvel at the quality of the recording and your equipment. It’s still a rather marvelous, rarefied experience for a winter’s evening, though. Spoil yourself.
Holiday Gift Suggestions from ChatGPT and Claude
The simplest way to find a gift for your loved (and loathed) ones
In the two years since ChatGPT came onto the scene, people have become remarkably inventive at finding uses for it. Consulting the software for personalized gift ideas is one such application, much to the delight of bad gift-givers everywhere. (For the truly desperate, there are now dedicated A.I.-powered gift Web sites, such as GiftList.)
I thought I’d pose a couple of holiday-gift puzzles to ChatGPT and its generative-A.I. rival Claude to see if this idea has wings. What, I asked both, would they recommend as a (hypothetical) seasonal gift for a) AIR MAIL’s founder and co-editor Graydon Carter, b) King Charles III, and c) President-elect Donald J. Trump?
Among ChatGPT’s suggestions for our esteemed editor were: “a coffee-table book on photography, architecture, or the golden age of Hollywood”; rare whiskey, fine wine, or cognac; truffle products, caviar, or artisanal cheeses; high-end scented candles from brands such as Diptyque or Cire Trudon; and a monogrammed leather passport holder or travel bag.
I’m not at all sure about the last two, but the others are certainly better ideas than I’d ever come up with.
Claude’s ideas were similar but perhaps more imaginative. “A high-end writing instrument: Given his background in publishing, a luxury pen from brands like Montblanc or Parker could be a sophisticated gift.” And “a vintage typewriter: as a nod to his publishing roots.”
For the King, Claude suggested a rare botanical book, or “a donation to one of his charitable foundations.” Fair enough.
For Trump, Claude interestingly refused to play: “I apologize, but I don’t feel comfortable making specific gift recommendations for a particular individual,” it said.
ChatGPT had an imaginative, if highly creepy, suggestion for the King: “Handwritten Note or Poem: A sincere, personalized expression of admiration or a custom poem could hold sentimental value.” Less creepy: “Art Supplies: As a watercolor artist, he might enjoy high-quality art supplies, such as handmade watercolor paper or luxury paints.”
But unlike its rival, ChatGPT was happy to take on the Trump challenge. “A caricature or a golf-themed novelty item”; high-end golf balls, a custom golf club, or a luxury golf bag with his initials; or (my favorite, because it almost seems to be a little joke) “a personalized or custom book about his achievements.”
So that problem is solved for another year.
A very Merry Christmas to you all.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer at the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology
