OTHER TECH

The sight of a dancing iPod user, and particularly her white earbuds, is a genuine cultural icon. But it would be a mistake to overlook the iPod's nonportable applications. Most of your music collection might be on a 'Pod, but you don't have to condemn your tunes to the lowly fidelity typical of most 'buds.

There are lots of products that play iPods through speakers, but I haven't seen anything quite like GEORGE, from the folks at Chestnut Hill Sound ($499; chillsound.com). It's a tabletop system that not only plays your iPod but also sports an AM/FM radio and an alarm clock.

Before I get to my first critique of reader's home theater, let's make sure we're all on the same page. This column is not going to be about electronics. There's plenty of that going on elsewhere on this site. Here I will be talking about the effort to integrate electronics into the look of a room dedicated to watching DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, or HDTV.

Don't get us wrong - today's top TVs are great. But where do we go from here? What's going to get us video enthusiasts really excited? Broader color spectra arising from LED-based technologies? Frame rates moving up to 240 Hz?

Why did you decide to remaster the Boston Greatest Hits CD (Epic/Legacy)? For one thing, the other Greatest Hits CD [from 1997] was horrible-sounding - not as bad as Third Stage [chuckles], but it was an older CD, back from the days when Pro Tools was still a fledgling thing, and a lot of that mastering was done in 1

[Note: After we posted this story, Warner Bros. contacted us to give comment. (As we note in the story, we had made numerous attempts to interview someone from the studio before the story went live.) Skip past the end of the article to read a response from Ned Price, VP Mastering, Warner Bros. Technical Perations.]