Audio Video News

Audio company Bowers & Wilkins has just announced that Steve Van Zandt is the newest Fellow in the company's Society of Sound. Van Zandt is a longtime member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, as well as a solo artist and actor (best known for his role as Silvio Dante on The Sopranos). He's also a very vocal audiophile, who had some interesting things to say in the announcement:

"The CD was the biggest scam perpetrated on the public. If you don't believe me, compare your CD to the same record on vinyl. It's shocking: The difference is vast. "The challenge for the industry is to archive these very cool records that our elder brothers and sisters made - archive them in their original analog form. Currently, this isn't happening; they are being preserved in a digital format, which is a big problem."

The Society of Sound is a collective of musicians and other music industry professionals who discuss issues regarding music, audio quality, and the issues that affect sound. As a Society of Sound Fellow, Van Zandt joins the ranks of musicians like Peter Gabriel, Cassandra Wilson, and Alfred Brendel, along with other prominent figures in the music world, including producers Peter Van Hooke, Michael Gleason, and Dave Stewart, composer James Newton Howard, and Professor Tod Machover of M.I.T.'s Media Lab.

— Will Greenwald