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Looking back at the 2010 CEDIA Exposition, I was struck by a couple of new products which, I hope, presage a rethinking of modern electronics design. Today, the streaming of program content can be accomplished by TVs, by Blu-ray players, by dedicated servers and, for all I know, someone will put that capability into a speaker system. The result is that, unless one chooses very carefully, one will be buying the same technology redundantly. By contrast, high-end companies have striven to separate their dedicated analog/stereo products from their digital/multichannel products, forcing the very…
Next weekend's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) is bigger than ever. Scheduled to be held October 15–17 in the Denver Marriott Tech Center, the seventh annual show has expanded from last year's 145 display rooms to a record 174. Add in silent displays in hallways, and there were products in every price range from a good 400 companies (up from 350 in 2009). Now occupying six floors in the Marriott Tower (including the mezzanine) and two in the Atrium, the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest has well earned its reputation as the largest consumer-audio and home-entertainment show in the US since the…
La Stupenda is no more. The brilliant coloratura soprano Joan Sutherland, who died a thousand deaths onstage after emitting flawless high E-flats, died at her home near Montreux, Switzerland, on Sunday, October 10. Her death was confirmed by her frequent stage partner and friend, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.
Born November 7, 1926, in Australia, Sutherland received her initial training from her mother, a mezzo-soprano who had studied with famed voice teacher Mathilde Marchesi. Although young Joan, too, considered herself a mezzo, she regularly practiced the same Marchesi exercises that had…
“Dated” is a bad word. I’ve never understood what it means to “date.” Does it have something to do with the passing of time?
Michelle was from San Francisco. We once tried to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge together, but only made it half-way before having to stop and turn back around. It would have been nice, I imagine.
Getting to the other side would have been nice, but the cold wind and the sharp mist and the fast, fast traffic—ungoverned traffic, traffic free from lanes or lights or limits—were all too much for us. I remember clearly, now: It was her fault.…
Throughout college, Michelle and I—along with our very good friend, Todd—played in a performance art/noise rock band called Genie Boom. We took the name from the sky-blue steel beast that you sometimes see at construction sites, or on highways, or—here in New York City—even on Madison Avenue; the same sky-blue steel beast that I once used to propel myself a hundred feet into the air to install all sorts of I-don’t-know-what along the tanks and pumps and whatever else that make up Firmenich, the chemical plant where I worked at the time. They make flavors and fragrances; much of what…
The music we made in Genie Boom was not unlike the music made by the pumps and steam lines and reactors of Firmenich. Michelle drummed on garbage cans, a red school bell, a gas tank, whatever banged. Todd pressed buttons on his Casio synthesizer and Roland drum machine. I plugged five cheap guitars—old Silvertones and Kays, before they became popular—into whatever amps I could find, turned the knobs on my effects pedals all the way up, and screamed the lines from my poems into the guitars’ pick-ups.
We’d start slow and build, various noises working towards a certain goal—a moment of…
Not how. I mean to say: I should tell you something about the circumstances surrounding my personal act of listening.
I live in a one-bedroom apartment. The whole place is maybe 450 square feet or so. I don’t have a “listening room.” I don’t need one, really; I can hear my music, at tame levels, from anywhere in the apartment. I have a living room. Some—depending on where she grew up and how blue her eyes are—might call it a den. It measures approximately 10ft wide by 13ft long, and the ceilings are just about 8ft high. This is where the music is played.
Before I…
The AZ9345 is on right now. And it sounds pretty damn good to me. I’m listening to Smog’s latest album, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, and god, I love it. I love it. I don’t even know exactly what it is. I keep wondering, “What is it? What’s so great about this album?”
And when I can’t come up with an answer, I try not to question.
All I know for certain is that I have a hard time not listening. It’s the kind of album—I’ve been comparing it to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska—that shushes you and leaves you shaking your head at the beauty and at the sadness and at…
Seriously: Will you show me around?
I mean, I know where I am. Now, I’m at my other home: the offices of Primedia’s Home Technology Group at 261 Madison Avenue, sitting on the other other side of a low wall separating the desk that I share with Elizabeth, Stereophile’s managing editor, my friend and colleague.
You can see by the comment she left me that she began reading this blog backwards, from the top down. You’ll notice, if you haven’t already, that the earliest entries appear at the bottom of the page. I’m aware of the fact that this might prove confusing for some, as…
On this occasion, however, John had not come over to tell me to run. Rather, he had come to tell me where to go: “Good work, but I think you’ll have to steer more towards audio,” he suggested.
“I know,” I answered.
I feel very lucky to be working with and for John Atkinson. He has a special, quiet, and simple way of motivating, a special, quiet, and simple way of making you want to run.
And I hate running. Running, to me, has always meant trouble: I was late for school, or being chased, or running away from my father’s drunken screams and heavy hands.
“Did…