Signals

Once upon a time, the trajectory of a piece of consumer electronics was arbitrarily ballistic. Much like a cannonball that leaves the muzzle, flies through the air, and lands, a product was manufactured, sold to a consumer, and dumbly performed its appointed functions. Now, and particularly with products like Alexa, when a consumer product enters a home. it's more like adopting a pet, or more accurately, like taking in a puppy that has a doctorate in statistics.

Without question, voice control is the hottest thing in audio. Tomorrow it will be something else. Today it is voice control. In particular, Amazon's Alexa is all the rage and is poised to appear in phones, cars, refrigerators, and pretty much anything else that is powered by electrons. But Alexa is really just the gateway drug to the Internet of Things.

I am not a fan of Bluetooth. In particular, I regard Bluetooth audio as the worst thing to happen to audio fidelity in 20 years. When Harman first announced its wireless CarPlay technology, I recoiled at the thought of yet another wireless audio option. But, now I see there is a glimmer of hope.

OK. First we need to talk about the picture. His name is Graham. Don’t get too creeped out. He’s not a real guy. He’s just a rendering. You’ve probably already seen Graham. His picture has been floating around the web-o-sphere for a while. He is what a guy might look like if he’s evolved to survive car crashes. But I’m pretty sure it’s also what you would look like, after Alexa has her way with you.

You probably have at least a passing awareness of James May. He was one of the trio who hosted Top Gear (recently reincarnated as The Grand Tour) and is a bona fide cool car guy. But he has also hosted a variety of interesting, verging on odd, television shows. Perhaps the oddest show, and my favorite, is The Reassembler in which Mr. May, well, reassembles things.

It has become trendy to bash corporations. And in some cases, if a corporation is big enough and faceless, it's easy to suppose that it's merely a shareholder profit machine that is uninterested in the needs of individuals. But of course many companies certainly do not fit that profile. Instead, you'll find that many small and medium size companies take a very different view of their role in society and, in many case, are family-run businesses. Case in point: Sennheiser and the Sennheiser brothers.