Audio News for July 1, 2008

Music and Medicine Are Entwined According to Surgeon – Dr. Claudius Conrad, a 30-year-old surgeon at Harvard Medical School who has played the piano since age 5, finds he works better when he listeners to music. He has published a controversial paper suggesting that music may exert healing and sedative effects thru simulation of a growth harmone generally associated with stress instead of healing. He feels it raises some wonderful new possibilities about the physiology of healing.

One of Dr. Conrad’s doctoral dissertations examined how Mozart’s music seemed to ease the pain of intensive-care patients. He found that Mozart’s letters and biographies show a man almost constantly sick – fending off one infection or ailment after another.  “Whether he did it intentionally or not,” says Dr. Conrad, “I think he composed music the way he did partly because it made him feel better.”  He is planning more studies of both music’s effect on intensive-care patients and how music affects a surgeon’s performance.  He says the new wave of surgeons bring in their iPods “…whole mixes. It’s like they have the whole thing choreographed.”  Dr. Conrad’s iPod is stocked not just with Mozart, Liszt and Scarlatti but also with European techno-rap bands his colleagues have never heard of and cannot understand.

Samsung Launches Blu-ray Resource Center – Samsung Electronics has begun an online Blu-ray Resource Center which is aimed to providing technical information and answering questions both for those already owning Blu-ray players and for those looking to buy them.  Samsung recognizes the need for a single online location where current Blu-ray owners and those seeking more information can go to address their needs – since Blu-ray is now the future of HD optical discs. The center is available at www.samsung.com/bluraysupport

Downloading Movies from Cable or Net vs. Blu-ray Rental or Purchase – The spontaneity of downloading online movies or from your cable provider has proven attractive to many users, but they should consider the much higher quality image and sound, the wider selection of titles, and sometimes even the lower cost of renting Blu-ray movies via a mail-order service such as Netflix or Blockbuster’s.  Even the HD titles online are no match for a typical Blu-ray movie in image resolution, and only with Blu-ray do you get the highest fidelity lossless or even uncompressed PCM surround soundtracks.  Plus there is the time spent in downloading and possible interruptions in your broadband connection, and HD titles take much longer than standard definition.  You usually receive your movies by mail in 48 to 72 hours, and there are no return deadlines. You pay a monthly subscription fee based on how many discs you have out at one time.  if you’re passionate about AV quality, this is the way to go for now.