Audio News for April 24, 2012

Notes on Digital Storage – From the recent CES in Las Vegas:  Video over the Internet consumes about 60% of the bandwidth in North America, with Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube the three major content users.  There is a serious problem with the natural degradation of digital storage performance due to the file fragmentation over time, plus randomization occurring from copying and rendering. With more and more users depending on icloud storage companies for their data, audio and video files, it is wise to keep in mind that some of these companies have already gone out of business without warning, potentially causing loss of the customer’s data, not to mention data privacy and security. The only positive suggestion so far is to cover oneself by using more than one service for redundant storage. Since storing of digital data on either hard drives or optical discs may not be 100% reliable, an SMPTE official has suggested doing what Dolby Digital and Sony’s SDDS digital soundtracks for feature films have been doing for over 15 years—putting the digital data on the entire available film area of 35mm film. That would provide long-term data storage that is more reliable yet requires less maintenance. Of course that’s out of the question for the average user, but libraries should consider it.
CastLabs UltraViolet Products Now Offer DTS Surround – DTS has partnered with mobile video technologies and services firm castLabs to integrate DTS audio solutions into their UltraViolet-compatible product suite, making it the first ever common file format tool kit to deliver immersive surround sound with DTS technology. CastLabs is first to offer an Android-based video play compatible with the UltraViolet CFF format. DTS integration into these tools enables surround sound on portable devices as well as in the living room, turning a portable device into a personal media center.
Boston Symphony Gets $7.5 Million – Making it one of the few fiscally solid major symphony orchestras in the U.S.  The BSO, the BSO at Tanglewood, and the Boston Pops together received a gift of $7.5 million from two longtime trustees, one of them a director at Goldman Sachs.
Light-Hearted Shostakovich? – The Chicago Opera Theater’s sparkling new production of the Shostakovich operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki is a comic tale of two young lovers trying to find a room of their own in the maze of the Soviet housing system. Written in 1958, its film version (available on DVD) became the icon film for Soviet families during the New Year holiday period.