Signals

The year is 1969. I am sitting in front of my family’s TV watching live black-and-white video from the moon. High-definition TV is still science fiction, but in the blurry picture I can see Neil Armstrong descend the ladder and step onto the lunar surface. In the middle of the transmission, I walk outside and look up at the moon, waxing crescent, thoroughly amazed that for the first time people are up there looking back at me. Now, almost a lifetime later, we are preparing to go back to the moon. Just writing that sentence gives me goosebumps.

Spinal Tap band member Nigel Tufnel is showing his equipment to director Marty DiBergi and points out that the volume controls on his Marshall guitar amp go to 11. “It’s one louder,” he helpfully explains. DiBergi asks why not just make a “10” setting louder. A confused Tufnel replies, “These go to 11.”

The scene is renowned and has entered the popular culture as a way to point out needless excess, and particularly excess that demonstrates confusion, or otherwise serves no purpose. It’s my opinion that some audio technology now has knobs that go to 11.

The Aventho looks like a fairly conventional supra aural (on-ear) headphone. Also, fairly conventionally, it offers Bluetooth wireless connectivity. But it also features an interesting accompanying app that is unconventional, but extremely valuable.

Let's see a show of hands. How many of you often listen through headphones? Thanks to that camera looking back at you from your device, and some pretty cool software I got from a guy in Russia, I can see that many of you do indeed listen through headphones. You can put your hands down. My question then, is why aren't you listening to binaural recordings?

I have issues with Bluetooth. I see it as a force of nature, a veritable tsunami, against all that good sound quality stands for. That is because that oh-so-convenient wireless link limits functionality and degrades audio fidelity. Now, with the advent of the 5.0 spec, Bluetooth is poised to expand its dominance. But, the spec also has a glimmer of hope for us audiophiles.