OTHER TECH

It seems like yesterday that the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival began as a local gathering in Austin, Texas. But it's actually been 15 years - and today, what is simply known as SXSW has morphed into the American music industry's largest event.

So I've been basking in the sounds of Cake's new chart-topping album Showroom of Compassion (Upbeat Records; cakemusic.com), and have to say that I'm really loving it.
Oh good. That would be horrible if it was a nightmare for you. [chuckles]

And it's a great album to listen to on vinyl. The bass lines on "Got to Move" and "What's Now Is Now" have real impact.

The concept of "plug and play" is a starry-eyed consumer-electronics fantasy. In my experience, almost all home entertainment devices - at least the kinds covered in this magazine - need some sort of setup to achieve optimum performance. Heck, even my first childhood record player had to have the volume adjusted.

You probably already know that good speakers are essential to putting together a high-quality stereo or multichannel music system or home theater. You can invest several months' mortgage payments in first-rate audio/video components, but without good speakers you're simply not going to hear your system's full potential.

P2P. No longer the story. The press is burned out on it. As are the insiders at music conferences. Bring up file-trading, and they wince. But more people are downloading more files than ever before.

Eleven months into the 50th-anniversary year of this magazine, we still just want to celebrate. And ever since we ran our "Top 50 DVDs of All Time", you just knew we'd have to do the music side of the Sound & Vision equation.

CableCARD, a PC card-like device that slips into the back of most new big-screen HDTVs, lets you tune standard- and high-definition cable channels (even premium ones) without a digital cable box.