I’m a bit of an audiophile, because I really enjoy music that is nicely reproduced, not because I’m up for dropping five figures on an audio component. One of the most enduring debates among audiophiles is analog vs. digital. I don’t really take a position in this debate. I’ve owned a turntable since my age […]
In my continuing quest to stay a step ahead of recording media degradation and obsolescence, I have undertaken the digitization of my remaining audiocassette collection. Last year I wrote about preserving my archive of interviews and air checks on minidisc, with the hope that the post would be informative and maybe compel some readers with […]
Yesterday was the 20th birthday of the MP3. As historian Brian McCullough tells it on his Internet History Podcast, on July 14, 1995 an email made the rounds at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Germany declaring, “everyone voted for .mp3 as extension for ISO MPEG Audio Layer 3!” At that moment the files […]
In last week’s post about iHeartRadio I focused much of my criticism on the sound quality of the service, or lack thereof. Since the debut of the compact disc in the 1980s digital has become nearly synonymous with good sound in the world of audio, but this is not always necessarily the case. When listeners […]
Minidisc is an audio technology that never quite took off in the US the same way it did in Asia, and especially Japan. After enjoying a brief period of mainstream popularity just prior to the introduction of the iPod, many people are probably surprised to learn that minidisc is actually still around now. However, Sony […]
