OTHER TECH

Once upon a time, outside factors controlled when and where you could watch a TV show or feature film. Over the past 35 years, that’s evolved dramatically. The revolution began with the introduction of the VCR in 1976. Its ability to record and archive broadcast TV shows and movies on magnetic tape burst open the floodgates for entertainment in the home. Other formats followed, all the way up to our present-day high-density Blu-ray Discs. One thing they’ve all had in common, though, is their physical nature. That’s all changing now. Like it or not, we’re entering a transition phase from physical media to streaming and the cloud. Looks like a revolution all over again.

GREETINGS, PROGRAMS!

Good is good. It’s a simple adage, but one that’s especially true when it comes to music. Genre and predetermined preferences should be secondary if you’re truly interested in having your ears entertained, challenged, and enriched.

Good is good. It’s a simple adage, but one that’s especially true when it comes to music. Genre and predetermined preferences should be secondary if you’re truly interested in having your ears entertained, challenged, and enriched.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won the Oscar for Best Original Score for The Social Network, and it's a modern and adventurous film score if ever I've heard one. It's haunting, of-the-moment, and immersive - and, best of all for us S+V types, it's available in surround sound. Go here to get yours.

Some things you know right away in your rock & roll bones. When I first met Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins in 1991, we bonded over the contents of a suitcase he carried with him wherever he went: an ever-growing mountain of live Jimi Hendrix cassettes (some authorized, some not). As the Pumpkins’ trippily punishing debut album, Gish, had just begun melting the ears of the alt-rock cognoscenti, Corgan was already cocksure of where he was going in the world.

Do you trust your ears? I don't. By that I mean I don't trust my ears. Frankly, though, I don't trust anybody's. I've heard laymen enthuse about systems that had little more to offer than a few notes of booming bass. I've heard audio veterans trash impeccably engineered speakers - and praise speakers that showed glaring technical flaws.