The Little Things

Pepcom held its annual Holiday Spectacular this week in New York, where several dozen companies set up booths to promote products that will be in stores for the holidays.

During the event, the technology press shuffles along from booth to booth, picking up souvenir pens with company logos, along with product literature. We get demos when available and listen to spiels from eager marketing and sales types who want to convince us that their gadget or gizmo is the next big thing.

We see everything from iPod cases to HD camcorders — with a lot of sometimes cool, sometimes silly, and often more-difficult-than-they-need-to-be products in between. 

Downsizing Again

Bose is up to its old tricks. The company first pulled the faux speaker cabinet caper on audio journalists back in the late 1980's when it introduced the Acoustimass system. Lee Ritenour's On the Line came pouring  out of a sub box and a pair of tiny cube speakers hidden behind curtains, but the company made it first appear that a pair of towering floorstanding speakers was delivering the driving jazz tune.

The company put on a similar ruse yesterday at its Framingham, MA, headquarters where it took the wraps off new PC speakers called MusicMonitors ($399 a pair). Bose set designers placed a sub box beneath a desk in a home office environment with two aluminum miniature satellites positioned on either side of a monitor.

"YYZ": Heroic Guitarist or "Guitar Hero"?

My older son, Paul, is kinda bummed that he wasn't able to go with me to Rush's American tour finale last night at Madison Square Garden. Seems he was especially eager to hear "YYZ."

That would be "YYZ" as made famous by Guitar Hero II, the videogame that includes a cover of the classic instrumental, with the billing: "YYZ" as made famous by Rush. Y'see, Paul doesn't think he's even heard the original track. After all, it was released on Moving Pictures way back in 1981 — eight years before Paul himself was, um, released. (And folks, that's a helluva long time in "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" years.)

"No Taste for High-Quality Audio"?

Been meaning to post this link for some time now . . .

Fans of DVD-Audio, SACD, surround sound, and so forth are hereby encouraged to check out No Taste for High-Quality Audio, published recently in the British newspaper The Guardian. It's a pretty neat summation by Jack Schofield, who begins: "Today, we live in a world where poor-quality audio is becoming the norm." Required reading, and reflection.

Note that Schofield calls DVD-Audio "extinct."

That got me thinking: Is he right?

Who Are You and What Have You Done With Sonance?

Can an interior designer learn to love a speaker that's not camouflaged in the wall?  One of the founding companies of the huge in-wall/-in-ceiling speaker market is banking on it and even believes a little visibility might be a good thing.

Sonance gave reporters at CEDIA last week a peek at a hanging speaker that's more supersized lighting fixture than loudspeaker. The company went to Italy--where else?--to find its design partner, NAC Sound, and came away with some gorgeous handmade ceramic speakers that are not only meant to be seen, but are sure to be conversation pieces to boot. Finished in graphite and copper glaze, the cone-shaped speakers can be be used inside or out.

According to Ari Supran, chief sales office for Sonance, the highly stylized speakers will help position Sonance as a designer brand with architects and interior designers. The  speakers--perhaps designed more for the eye than the ear--could come stateside next year.

Asbury Park: Reborn in the U.S.A.?

Greetings, indeed! The summer may be over, but with all of the anticipation brewing over the October 2 release (less than three weeks away!) of Bruce Springsteen's Magic, his new album with the E Street Band (see my posts below), it's a good time to reflect on exactly where Asbury Park is right now. What I mean is: Decades after its glory days and having hit rock bottom, is the New Jersey seaside resort ready to become . . . well, a resort again?

More Storage for Your DirecTV HD DVR

Ever run out of room on your DirectTV HR20 high-definition DVR? (I don't, maybe because of my HR20's propensity to stop recording episodes of a programmed series for no apparent reason, but maybe your luck is better than mine. Man, do I miss DirecTiVo.) TenBox says it has a solution: add-on boxes that tack 1 to 2 terabytes of extra hard-disk storage onto the 300 GB built into the HR20. So with the big unit, available next month at a price to be announced, you should be able to record a total of up to 1,300 hours of standard-def programming or 330 hours of high-def. Just plug one into the HR20's back-panel eSATA port and you're ready to rumble. The 1- and 1.5-TB models are available now at MSRPs of $1,199 and $1,499, respectively. Happy viewing. —Michael Riggs

Led Zeppelin to Reunite for One Show

Rumors were flying last week, but today it's official: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones will play one concert as Led Zeppelin on Monday, November 26, at London's O2 arena (capacity: 22,000). They'll be joined by Jason Bonham, son of Bonzo.

The show is actually a tribute to the late Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who originally signed the band. So the bill will also include such names as the Who's Pete Townshend, ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, Foreigner, and Paolo Nutini (the last British act signed by Ertegun).

Tickets will cost a relatively reasonable $250 — benefiting the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund — and will be available via lottery at www.ahmettribute.com.

This may indeed be a "one-off" gig for Led Zep — but with all of the band's coming reissues (see my post below), who's to say they won't do a Cream and play New York, too? Keep your fingers crossed.
—Ken Richardson

Joe Zawinul: 1932-2007

Very sad. This year is shaping up to be a rough one for titans of the arts. I'm almost afraid to wake up every morning.

Head over to The New York Times for its obit. Meanwhile, that color image above is a highlight from the cover of Forecast: Tomorrow (Columbia/Legacy), last year's boxed set chronicling the history of the keyboardist's groundbreaking band, Weather Report. For the blurb I wrote in "Season's 60: A Gift Gallery of CD Box Sets," click here (then scroll down to "Season's 60," click Jazz & Classical, and see Image 55).

Apple Announcement #3: Steve Jobs Says, iSorry!

"I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of the iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale," writes Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs in an open letter "To all iPhone customers," posted yesterday on apple.com. (If you've been on Mars the past few days and need some background, see my "Apple Announcement #2" below.)

Jobs concludes: "We have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store."

What a brouhaha. Or should I say: boo-hoo-hoo . . . ha, ha!