Filed under: Audio A | Tags: audio, audio engineering, boombox, disco, discolite, retro
A new display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art will be turning eyes, and ears. Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience is an exhibit celebrating the “material culture of music.” The display features everything from the classic Fender Stratocaster guitar to the iconic iPod. There’s even a whole section devoted to the humble boombox.
The boombox had its own subculture, and a style meant to attract attention. Sadly, bling was many times more important than sound quality. How loud more important than how good. Collector and photographer Lyle Owerko, who calls them “gargantuan conglomerations of electronics, lights and chrome-plated gadgetry,” thinks of them as “symbols of rebellion.” According to the museum, boomboxes were “designed deliberately to be as large and flashy as possible. They featured imposing speaker grills, large buttons and flashing lights and they broadcast big sounds. Highly conspicuous aurally and visually, they were effective as mechanisms of public display. The DiscoLite featured in this exhibition, for example, is a monolithic object whose flashing colored lights draw almost as much attention to its visual quality as its sound. The sounds of hip-hop and rap, the energy of break dancing, the writing of graffiti, Adidas shoes, cassette tapes, turntables and more all served as the signifying props of a unique aesthetic expression.”
So, what audio systems do you have that are museum quality? –Leslie Shapiro
Filed under: Audio A | Tags: audio engineering, broadcast, cereproc, dvd commentaries, roger ebert, vocal database, voice
Interestingly for Ebert, there is a Scottish company, CereProc, with a fascinating option. There are hours and hours of recordings of Ebert’s voice, from years of TV shows and numerous DVD commentaries. CereProc has combed through all those recordings to create a database of his voice for his daily vocabulary. According to CereProc, the average American uses about 2,000 words a day. Many of the words it can’t find already recorded were pieced together from syllables of other words.
CereProc has been able to create libraries for people who knew they were going to lose their voice and could pre-record their vocal database. In Ebert’s case, he’s fortunate that there are already a wealth of recordings of his voice. That is, if you can call anything about Ebert’s tragic situation fortunate. Take a minute and use your voice to say something nice to someone you care about or just go sing a song. You never know if that might be the last time you’ll be able to use your real voice. –Leslie Shapiro
Via Esquire Magazine