Cardas Audio, one of the longest-established boutique audio-cable and accessories innovators, has brought George Cardas' frequency-sweep system-enhancement tweak, previously available on LP for more than 25 years from Cardas Audio and on CD from Ayre Acoustics, into the world of smartphone applications with the "Clarifier" app, available from iTunes' App Store for 99 cents. The app is for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) only; we don't know if an Android version is planned.

With the release of their first Binaural+ high-resolution downloads, Chesky Records and HDtracks intend to take music lovers one step closer to the real musical event. Made possible by work that composer David Chesky, founder of Chesky Records and cofounder of HDtracks, has been doing at Princeton University with Dr. Edgar Choueiri, Chesky's Binaural+ downloads make possible the playback of binaural recordings on both headphones and a pair of loudspeakers.

The California Audio Show returns to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Burlingame August 3–5. Produced by Constantine Soo's dagogo.com, and sponsored by Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, Wired.com, Audiophilevoice.com, AVshowrooms.com, and San Francisco Classical Voice (SFCV.org), Northern California's only show aimed at audiophile consumers promises 36 exhibit rooms stocked with equipment from at least 100 manufacturers.

When it comes to getting audio from a PC via its USB port, the buzzword du jour is asynchronous. This cryptic term refers to which device has control over the timing of the audio data being streamed from the computer: the computer itself, or the device receiving the data. It might seem logical to have the computer control the timing, but this is not so. When digital audio data are converted to analog by a D/A converter, control over exactly when each dataword is converted is critical for the best quality of sound. Any uncertainty in that timing manifests itself as analog distortion, aka jitter.