Other Tech

And in an instant, lo, a hole in the sky appeared, and then it hit me like (bang bang) Maxwell's Silver Hammer when "Get Back," the Beatles? 1969 classic song to roller-coast by, cued up on my iPod during one morning's commute. As Paul McCartney's lead vocal embraced the song's galloping melody line, a great revelation emerged: I can sing Black Sabbath?s "Paranoid" to the same tune! Black Sabbath, the dark lords of melody . . . revealed!

While wandering the aisles of the recent Audio Engineering Society show in San Francisco, I found a great little measurement rig for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that deserved inclusion in my recent article on DIY audio measurement in the January 2011 issue of S+V [on stands now]. Unfortunately, the article had already gone to press, so I thought I'd report on the system here.

CES 2011 is a wrap, but the new products will live on - at least until they're made obsolete by new stuff at next year's show. Here's a hand collection of all the news you need from the floor and beyond.

CES 2011: The Wild World of the High-End Audio Rooms

Where do you start when converting a music collection to data files for home (and portable) playback? In the January 2011 issue, we defined key terms and explored the pros and cons of both lossy (data-compressed) and lossless (uncompressed) music-file formats. Now we'll put that knowledge to use. With space at a premium in these columns, instead of debating all the options I'll just tell you what I do and why, and hope that you can work out your best strategy from there.

Formal Fit

Do you trust your ears? I don't. By that I mean I don't trust my ears. Frankly, though, I don't trust anybody's. I've heard laymen enthuse about systems that had little more to offer than a few notes of booming bass. I've heard audio veterans trash impeccably engineered speakers - and praise speakers that showed glaring technical flaws.

Some things you know right away in your rock & roll bones. When I first met Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins in 1991, we bonded over the contents of a suitcase he carried with him wherever he went: an ever-growing mountain of live Jimi Hendrix cassettes (some authorized, some not). As the Pumpkins’ trippily punishing debut album, Gish, had just begun melting the ears of the alt-rock cognoscenti, Corgan was already cocksure of where he was going in the world.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won the Oscar for Best Original Score for The Social Network, and it's a modern and adventurous film score if ever I've heard one. It's haunting, of-the-moment, and immersive - and, best of all for us S+V types, it's available in surround sound. Go here to get yours.