With Sonos doing a great job of making exceptional speakers that fit in almost every situation in your home, three further battlefields remained - becoming a less proprietary option so you can stream music from any device to the speakers without having to go through the Sonos app all the time, smart speakers and home theatre setups. All of those have been addressed over the last year or so as the Santa Barbara-based company has revised most of their range. The Sonos Beam is their second home theatre product. Here's what I've found after using the Beam in my lounge room.

To be honest, Windows 10's volume controls aren't that special. You can set the volume for the default speakers you're listening to, you can change your default speakers (from your monitor's crappy built-in speakers to your awesome headphones, for example), and... that's it.

American diplomats in China are falling ill with symptoms such as headaches, nausea and hearing loss after hearing "odd sounds" in their apartments. It's an eerily similar situation to what happened in Cuba in 2016 when 24 diplomats complained about strange sounds and nearly identical symptoms. Is sound actually making these people sick? Maybe.

In the beginning, the laurel-or-yanny clip said laurel and nothing but laurel. Here is the original version of the clip, recorded by an opera singer working for Vocabulary.com. Chances are, you'll hear it as laurel too. Let's compare it to the viral clip and we'll see exactly what changed, and why half of us hear the viral clip as yanny.

A sound clip of the word "laurel" sounds like "yanny" to some people (people who are wrong) in a new, auditory counterpart to The Dress. Already heard it? Great! Here are some more mind-bending audio clips you should listen to.

For many of you, a single pair of speakers or headphones is all you probably need for your desktop or laptop system. For others, rocking out, gaming, and listening to movies is a constant battle with Windows over which connected audio device the operating system should use to blast noise.

If, like me, you research every gadget purchase to the Nth degree, it can be super depressing when said product arrives and it's perfect... except for one, tiny thing. Usually that thing escaped detection because it only rears it head once you actually use your new shiny. In my case, it was a set of SoundMagic E10 earphones to replace my busted EarPods. The problem? They vibrate.

iOS/Android: You might want to listen to different types of music depending on your mood. SoundR helps you find music based on genre, activity, and how you're feeling.

Videos on Facebook are about to get a whole lot louder. Thanks to the Facebook app's upcoming update, videos will start playing sound automatically as you scroll through your feed. Here's how to disable it.

Mac: If you want to change which mic is being used on your Mac or swap to different speakers, you can always option-click the sound icon on your menu bar and pick whatever you need. If you want more control of those options, SoundSource 3 is the app you want.

Recording quality audio all comes down to preventing major problems from the start. This guide, from NPR's Rob Byers and NPR audio engineers, will help you avoid recording problems, as well as fix editing and mixing problems.

We've seen little DIY volume knobs before, and they're a handy way to add means to finely adjust the volume on your computer. Instructables user Trochilidesign's made their own, and it's pretty futuristic looking.

Chrome: We've all been there -- you open a site in a new tab, and it starts playing audio in the background. Or worse, you open it in the foreground and it starts a video in some random corner of the page while you read an article. Silent Site Sound Blocker puts an end to that nonsense for good.

Video: If you're looking to create a quiet recording environment without breaking the budget, a stack of old towels might be all you need.

Chrome: If you tend to bounce between a lot of different videos or sounds online, you know how much a pain it can be to have sound coming from multiple tabs. Smart Tab Mute ensures only one tab can play sound at a time.

Factoids that can save your life, free travel posters for outer space and how air traffic controllers keep planes in the air all wait within in this week's Lifehacker Thinking Cap.

Android/iOS (Beta): You probably use your phone as an alarm clock, and you may even use it to play music isntead of a generic alarm tone, but what if you could use your favourite speakers or home stereo to wake you up instead of your phone's tinny speakers? That's what Sleepcast does.

If you've ever heard your own voice played back on a recording and thought "do I really sound like that?" you're not alone. Most of us at least cringe when we hear how we sound to others, and The Science of Us explains why, and what it says about us.

Mac: Not all apps have the same base volume, and sometimes one app likes to really scream at you while another is too soft. Volume Mixer allows you to independently control the volume of apps.