Since it appeared in the seventeenth century, the guitar has been a work of visual art in its own right, as well as a powerful influence on artists in other media.
Back in NYC - after 9 days and nights of SXSW Music, Film, and Interactive in Austin, Texas - I finally have time to mull over the 21 acts I managed to see during the music portion of the festival.
That perfect 21 might suggest that I had a lucky hand at SXSW this year. But as is the case every year, I heard much that was good and some that was . . . not.
The iPad is cool for a lot of things, but does it work for music? Various opinions came from the SXSW Music Festival, and together they're an interesting follow-up to Michael Berk's earlier post here on the concept of the iPad Album.
This past week Harman International quietly released a public beta of How to Listen, a freeware application used in-house at Harman as part of a listening course for train staffers in product research, development, and testing.
My greatest CES disappointment led to my greatest discovery. After a cable manufacturer bailed out on the bacchanalian dinner he’d promised me, I ended up at the New York New York hotel nursing a glass of watery house bourbon while dropping quarters into a video poker machine. I soon noticed that the man next to me was sketching electrical circuits on his napkin.
Onkyo continues to upgrade its line of receivers, today adding the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink HT-RC370 and just slightly less fully spec'd HT-RC360 ($849 and $549 respectively) to its 7.2 lineup, smoothing the feathers of those audio and videophiles who might have felt left out by last week's announcement of the music-only, decidedly retro TX-8050 stereo receiver.