The Minnesota Orchestra’s president Tony Woodcock said that younger people without a classical music background “make no distinction between Led Zeppelin, Techno and classical music. They heard that Beethoven is really great, or that Tchaikovsky writes good tunes, and they download.” The American Federation of Musicians is considering an improved contract which will cover Internet recording from live concerts. When asked if CDs would be around in a decade, one authority said “bandwidth trumps plastic.” One of the major challenges is the difficulty in organizing classical music online because its data is so much more complex than the pop music for which iTunes was set up originally.
[from correspondent Laurence Vittes]
Brief Audio Items [from the Boston Audio Society Speaker] – An audio professional gave a seminar at Southampton University in the UK on the subject “High Quality Audio – From the Instrument to the Domestic Listener.” He reported that had he given the same talk 15 years ago he would have been laughed at for suggesting the audience didn’t already know what he was telling them. In this case his audience was attentive and greatly appreciated what he said. In a letter to a European audio magazine, a BBC employee suggested that audio quality in general had peaked around the year 1992.
Watch out for the ill effects of air cleaners sold to allegedly provide allergy relief and easier breathing. One user reported the belts in four CD & DVD players, three computer CD drives and a vacuum cleaner were all destroyed by the ozone emissions of his home air cleaner.
Frustrated with the terrible sound of PA systems in many public venues? One cause might be the light-dimming systems they use in theaters and performance places. The general adoption of switching power supplies causes huge amounts of harmonic distortion in the AC line, causing EMI in the audio lines.
Recent papers on speaker testing published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society seem to agree that “nonlinear phase response of speakers is unlikely to have any audible effect in typical rooms.” One paper reported that nonlinear distortion was not audible under the test conditions. The conclusion is that the audibility to most listeners of phase and distortion is greatly exaggerated. Expect to hear a loud refuting from the “absolute polarity” camp.
Confused about recording DVDs, and in fact everything video? (As I was when reviewing the Toshiba DVD Recorder in our Components Section.) Try the aptly-named web site www.VideoHelp.com