05/02/2006 On April 21, our local National Public Radio outlet, WNYC, broadcast (and streamed over the Internet) an episode of the station's Radio Lab program. This slickly produced series combines aspects of NPR-style radio journalism with modern audio-studio production techniques that are the sonic equivalents of MTV-type visual effects.
Seven new products join the list this month. Thanks to our big shootout among budget HDTV front projectors, we've found four highly recommendable models from Samsung, Infocus, Panasonic, and Optoma. B&W's gorgeous XT speaker system also comes on, along with Vizio's highly affordable 42-inch plasma TV.
You'll laugh, as I did, the first time you hear about JVC's sake-soaked wood cone speakers. Soaking speakers in sake? Sufferin' succotash! Say it isn't so, Sam.
Daniel Barenboim is using his baton as a stiletto. The outgoing musical director of the Chicago Symphony has lashed out against Muzak in a BBC lecture series. Starting in the 1920s, Muzak pioneered the piped-in music that follows you around like a talkative acquaintance with bad breath. Barenboim called it "absolutely offensive" and declared, "active listening is essential." In response, the Muzak people compared their product to the works of Erik Satie, describing it as an "aural background" and a "mood enhancer." But the conflict here isn't between foreground and background listening. It's between music voluntarily perceived as music and music involuntarily endured as noise.
When a plasma TV isn't displaying an image, the stuff behind the name is just an inert gas - usually a mixture of neon and xenon - but it's a big part of what allows these TVs to measure just 3 to 6 inches thick.
Marantz introduced its DAvED (Digital Audio via Electrical Distribution) system at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, and I was immediately wowed by the concept of sending audio over a house's electrical wiring. So I jumped at the chance to play with a pre-production sample.
About six years ago, electronics-industry honchos started holding big powwows to discuss the feasibility of giving household power lines (the electrical wiring you plug all your stuff into) the ability to also carry communications signals - as in music, computer data, Internet access, episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
