Other Tech

Good is good. It’s a simple adage, but one that’s especially true when it comes to music. Genre and predetermined preferences should be secondary if you’re truly interested in having your ears entertained, challenged, and enriched.

GREETINGS, PROGRAMS!

When Robbie Robertson met Jimi Hendrix in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1966, Hendrix (then going by the name of Jimmy James) was intent on learning about a subject crucial to his future as an artist. “He only wanted to talk about songwriting,” revealed Robertson. “Because I was playing with Bob Dylan then, he thought I might know something about those secrets.” What was the best advice Robertson shared with Jimi? “If everybody is writing about one particular thing, then I would not go in that particular direction, because it’s crowded over there.

Technologies that distribute audio and video around a home are incredibly cool—if you can afford them, if you can tolerate complicated installation, and if you can figure out how to use them once they’re in. I’ve long assumed a big consumer electronics company like Samsung or Sony would invent a more practical multiroom A/V solution, but it seems the technology that finally gets us past the old paradigms may be Apple’s AirPlay.

A crowd of movie-industry folk, film students, and press assembled last night for a preview of clips from the upcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon - the first in the series to be shot in 3D - as well as a lengthy and surprisingly technical discussion between Transformers director Michael Bay and Avatar director James Cameron.

The presentation, titled "3D: A Transforming Visual Art," took place at the Paramount Theater, on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood.

INEVITABLY, WHEN something cool comes out, it will influence everything that immediately follows. That’s what happened with Avatar. In 2009, we all went to see it in 3D, and the following year stores were packed with 3D TVs and 3D Blu-ray players.

High-rez music is the most exciting audio development to come along in years, and I’ve written quite a bit about it. But I’ve received enough questions concerning high-rez that I felt it was time to devote a column to the subject. What follows is a primer that touches on the basics of high-rez music: what it is, how to get it, and how to play it.