Signals

The year is 1964. Under a starry night sky, you are cruising down Route 66 in a new Mustang, listening to St Louis Cardinal baseball on KMOX-AM, the immortal Bob Gibson on the mound, throwing against the Cubs.

Today is the big day. Or rather, today is the heavy day. The day that the Falcon Heavy is (finally) scheduled for blast-off. Yes, it might be scrubbed. Or it might just blow up. If it launches, it will be an important day in the history of car stereo.

A quick look at the pie chart suggests that the music industry exists in a nice state of equilibrium. Sales appear to be evenly split among downloads, streaming, and physical media. If you were a financial planner, and your client's portfolio was as neatly balanced as that, you could sleep soundly. But of course, that equilibrium is only a snapshot of a very dynamic situation. In reality, the way we listen to music is changing fast.

Although MP3 files may not entirely deserve all the scorn heaped on them, it is widely accepted that it was the proliferation of those files that put the whammy on high-end audio. Despite the availability of higher quality formats like CD, SACD and DVD-Audio, conventional wisdom says the convenience of MP3 led consumers to dumb down their audio expectations. Now, is it possible that an old-school audio company and a brand name largely associated with cassettes could lead the way back to high audio quality?

You buy a product. It functions well for a few years, and then its warranty eventually runs out. Clearly, you are now responsible for any repairs. The manufacturer then kindly updates the product’s firmware and…wham! It’s suddenly dead in the water. Is the manufacturer now responsible for repairing or replacing it?

In case you haven't noticed, a beach volleyball tournament is going on, apparently in some large city with a beach. This tournament, which includes miscellaneous other non-beach volleyball events, is on TV. Also, in case you haven't noticed, the quality of the TV audio feed is, um, variable.

As you probably know, the Supreme Court took a dim view of Aereo, and ruled that its activities were illegal because Aereo violated broadcasters’ copyrights. In response, Aereo pulled the plug. Literally. Within hours, it notified its subscribers that the jig was up, and that it was shutting down. Signals went dark, and remaining subscriptions will be refunded. R.I.P. Aereo. But wait a minute.....