iTrax News

Recently, I was reminded of the many wonderful musicians/artists that I've met or had the chance to work with over the years. My wife and I were sitting at dinner and somehow we drifted onto the topic. She recalled the time she picked up the phone and John Adams, the northern California-based contemporary composer of "Nixon in China" and numerous other terrific pieces was on the other end of the line. ...

You all know the product category that I'm talking about. Audiophiles are dedicated to their tweaks and fine tuning in the search for the "absolute sound" as Harry Pearson put it so eloquently all those years ago, but there are lot of snake oil salesman out there trying to convince you that purchasing their magic elixir [for $60 a bottle] will result in "a significant increase in soundstage size, seemingly unlimited dynamics, and a much smoother tonality" [a real quote from a customer after placing his CD player on a rubber mat]. Does the customer know that the dynamics of a CD, any compact disc, are limited by the number of bits used to encode the analog at the conversion stage of the machine?
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Last weekend, I received an email from an online audio reviewer asking about whether I could help him understand how to establish the fidelity of a particular piece of music. He is aware of the issues associated with a number of HD digital music download sites and wanted to ensure that he advises his readers accurately about sound quality. ...

I was invited to join an audio centric web portal yesterday and while looking around on their site, I noticed the "We Support Real Stereo" logo. I've encountered it before and was aware of their campaign so I clicked on the link and read their "mission statement" and even visited a number of the sites that have signed up.

The few paragrpaphs extole the concept of stereo sound recording and playback as invented by Alan Dower Blumlein over 70 years ago. They describe his invention as a "method for capturing the spatial information inherent in live performance, including the sound and positioning of instruments and voices and a sense of the acoustic in which the performance was taking place." ...