The Ballerina Sweetspot is designed to be the ultimate music lover's chair. It features a thin headrest to accommodate headphones and prevent the reflection of sound, memory foam to cushion the body, hollow armrests to neatly hold controls and an aluminum frame that supposedly reduces sonic vibration.

I highly doubt that a chair like this will enhance the listening experience enough to justify the $8000 price tag, but, again, people have a thing about chairs. And audiophiles, like CEOs, are probably willing to pay for the best of the best. [Klutz Design via AV Guide via Audio Junkies via Unplggd]

Then I looked a third time, and discovered that the animated electro-luminiscent graphic EQ included in its label didn't actually respond to the DJ's antics. It is all automated, a gimmick designed to make it look like the real thing. Lame, Ballantine's. On the other side, I know that—given the quality of music in most clubs and the state of most of their patrons—this won't matter one bit to most of the people immersed in their booze stupor. So. Hookai. Whatever.

I still need that drink, though. But make that a glass of really good whiskey, neat, thank you very much. [Marketing Magazine via Luxist]

Katie pressed the record against re-frozen ice plates instead of vinyl. Then she played them on two turntables until they melted over the course of two hours.

Update: Reader Wolfgang Oblasser wrote to say that Austrian artist Claudia Märzendorfer also uses ice for pressing records.

I know, pointless. And that's exactly why I love it. [Katie Paterson via I'm Revolting via Today and Tomorrow]

The chamber is actually its own "box-in-box" building, like the Time Warner Center's Rose Theater. It rests on a cushion of massive springs and is linked to the rest of the building with a metal gangway and nylon netting (so you don't fall down into the gap). There are two doors, massive ones that were, according to my guide, "a huge pain to install." When I went to close one, I was startled by its resistance.

Inside, it's like the Star Trek version of the proverbial padded room, with wedges that act as sound and RF-proofing. The second massive door is covered with these, so when it is closed, the only way to tell where the exit is is the almost-hidden release lever. The "floor" isn't a floor at all: The real floor has to be covered with the same sound-damping wedges, so you actually stand on a mesh trampoline. (Good thing I didn't wear my high heels.)

The company who built it, Eckel Industries, also built Steve Orfield's lab in Minneapolis, Guinness-certified as the quietest place on earth, at around -9dBA. Microsoft says that theirs measures something quite similar to this, except on the very lowest end, where it's really hard to eliminate unwanted sound.

Since I entered the chamber with two other people, the first thing I noticed was how voices changed. They became clipped, truncated, like someone was holding the mute pedal down on a piano. The subtle atmosphere and depth associated with room reverberation that we come to expect when hearing the human voice was totally gone. No echoes, hence the term "anechoic." My own voice sounded like it was having trouble coming out of my head.

For a moment, I felt genuine disorientation, like the light-headedness you can get with low blood sugar. The guy who showed me the room said that, even though he works in there a lot, he still has moments when he loses his balance, because the ear uses sound reflections—in addition to inner-ear leveling—to position the head and body.

Microsoft uses this newly built chamber to test all kinds of hardware products—microphones on webcams, audio outputs on Zunes, even the clicking of buttons on just about anything—because if you want to hear a sound clearly, this is where you go. They bring in the Xbox and PS3 to see which one wheezes the loudest, and some people have already inquired about squeezing the slim PS3 in for a quick listen, to see what's changed. (Needless to say, Microsoft wouldn't make the results of this test public.)

I have heard that being in an anechoic chamber for too long can drive you mad, and now that I've stood in one, gently bouncing on the wire-frame trampoline, staring at the pointy sci-fi wedges and hearing nothing but the blood rushing in my head, I believe it.

Too bad my desire for funky naff is not $3700 strong. [Artcoustic via BornRich]

Of course, like a fine wine, what constitutes quality for an audiophile is largely a matter of personal opinion. Dr. Dre wants to bring his brand of quality to the masses, but whether or not people will pay premium prices for it remains to be seen. So, out of curiosity, I am wondering how many of you would classify yourself as an audiophile. For those that do fall in that category, let us know what you look for in superior sound quality.

The Price: $40 $60

The Verdict: It works. IT WORKS! Playing back 1080p trailers in Quicktime, powered by a MacBook Pro, on our plasma TV was fantastic. And the part where it actually has audio? Yes please.

It's quite easy to use. The USB and Mini DisplayPort goes into the MacBook Pro (or Mac Mini), and the other end takes an HDMI cable. Your Mac should automatically detect the new display, but you have to manually switch the audio output to the USB audio device. If you're planning on using a new Mac Mini, this is the way to go. The video quality is pretty much what you'd expect from a clean 1080p source, and those trailers look good.

And with the problems Apple's own Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapters are having, using this and an HDMI-capable monitor might be a smart idea.

The adapters will be available later in the week. I suggest you pick one up if you have any kind of Mini DisplayPort-capable computer you want to throw up onto your TV once in a while. Also, Monoprice has a unit coming up soon as well that's pretty similar. [Kanexlive]

Update: Availability's been pushed to mid-September, after some shortages in components. We will update when we hear anything else.

Interactivation was created by a group called Lightning Temple, who want to use sound vibrations to promote holistic healing or something like that. Great. But it's the tech I'm more interested in.

The music component of Interactivation works by running each of the six stations through a sequencing program on a laptop. Each station has an array arcade-y buttons connected to a circuit board that triggers audio samples and/or loops, which wash over each other in a lovely mess of sonic slop. To keep everything sounding cohesive, the loops fire in time with the selected time signature, so all the samples are in rhythm.

The Tesla Coil wasn't up and running during the day, so it's uncertain to what extent it functions. But I'm not sure I'd want to be noodling with sitar loops anywhere near Interactivation when it is working. [Lightning Temple]

They hate it so much that residents of Tuscarora, Nevada, fight this pest with a perimeter of—get this—boom boxes and stereos playing hard rock, tuning to local radio station KHIX. They don't want to kill them, but not because they are a bunch of tree-huggin green commie hippies, but because when you kill them they smell horrible, according to them.

The plague of the two-inch-long walking Mormon cricket—who are born in April in northern Nevada and western Utah—comes every year, devastating crops and anything green, and even causing car accidents. Their two by one miles marching columns are so dense that, when passed over on roads, they form slippery blood and guts spills that may cause automobiles to lose grip and crash. In 2008 they had to call snowplows to clean the highway that goes through Elko County in Nevada.

So people in Tuscarora use the only tool they know to convince them to take another path without killing them: Hard rock and heavy metal during the day, since at night the critters sleep—while they are not eating the fellow crickets that die during the march. And while there's no scientific evidence that strong sound waves like those produced by the likes of Kiss and Metallica, the thing is that it works for them. [WSJ]

Alright, so the way speakers generate sound is by moving air. In your standard setup, an alternating current runs through a voice, turning it into an electromagnet that is attracted to and repulsed from the permanent magnet in the driver, which moves the diaphragm (the cone) back and forth. Air is moved, sound is emitted.

But magnets aren't the only way to generate sound, obviously. Here are a few other ways speakers can get air a-shakin':

Electrostatic Speakers
Electrostatic speakers are probably the most well-known alternative to traditional loudspeaker design. In some ways, they're a lot like your standard speaker—a diaphragm moves back and forth. What's different is the shape of the diaphragm and how the system makes it move.

The diaphragm is a thin film with electrically conductive material that's stretched out between two conductive plates called "stators"—perforated steel sheets in Martin Logan's speakers—coated with an insulator. Just as the voice coil in a regular speaker is turned into an electromagnet by a current, the diaphragm and stators here are charged, creating an electrostatic field. As the charge alternates between positive and negative the diaphragm moves back and forth, generating sound. The stronger the charge, the more dynamically the diaphragm moves, and the louder the sound.

The claimed advantage of electrostatic speakers is that the entire diaphragm is driven, not just the apex, like with a standard voice coil/cone setup, so not only do you get improved frequency range, you won't get distortion from the diaphragm flexing. The flip side is that bass can be kinda weak—though size helps—and high volumes can pose some issues, given that the strong charges required for high volumes increases the chance for "pyrotechnical electrical discharge" (in other words, electrical fire). Oh, and they're not cheap. But they can sound pretty good!

Plasma Speakers
Plasma speakers aren't new, but they are badass, and you can build your own. Or you know, just pay a lot of money to get some. The basic principle is, same as always, moving air. Except, instead of magnets or an electric field, a small electrical arc is manipulated, producing different pitches and volume as the intensity is shifted. Maybe not the future, but putting the word "plasma" into any tech just makes it sound future-y.

Distributed Mode Loudspeaker
Distributed mode loudspeaker tech was developed by NXT. It's different from your standard diaphragm tech because traditional speaker diaphragms have to remain rigid. They vibrate but they don't bend, because that causes distortion. Distributed-mode diaphragms are supposed to bend. Basically, bending waves are produced in the panel by electricity, and those vibrations create sound.

One big advantage of distributed mode loudspeakers is that they can be really thin. You don't need a big box. In fact, NXT's big pitch is that almost anything can be a diaphragm—in 2002, somebody actually tried to market inflatable speakers based on NXT's tech. But like other loudspeaker alternatives, it can have trouble with bass. A bigger panel helps it out there, however. Warwick Audio's suspiciously tinfoil-like new flat, flexible loudspeaker technology actually sounds similar in principle to NXT's DML—a thin membrane is excited and vibrates in time to the electrical signal.

Planar Magnetic
Hey look, it's another technology using a thin membrane to move air! Planar magnetic speakers use a thin film with a voice coil printed on it (think back to traditional speakers). The coil is suspended between a pair of magnets. As the current alternates, the membrane moves and back forth. As with most of these thin-diaphragm setups, you need to go bigger to get a better bass response, or just go with a separate woofer for low frequencies. Oh, and they also cost lots o' dollars.

Carbon Nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes, the trendiest near-future material around, can of course be used to make speakers too. Really thin ones. They actually work very differently, too. Nanotube speakers make use of thermoacoustics, just like thunder. The nanotubes are formed into a film with electrodes attached at the end. An electrical current is sent through the film, and as it changes, the air around the tubes heats up or cools down in response, expanding and contracting respectively. Pressure waves are created, and boom, sound. The fidelity supposedly "matches that of conventional loudspeakers." The nanotubes themselves don't move at all, meaning that technically, if the technology were harnessed, it could be used to make high-precision, super-low-distortion speakers.

But here's a really brilliant idea for future speakers that'll blow you away: Make 'em cheaper without getting crappier. Now there's innovation!

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about speakers, the future or the Numa Numa kid to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

Tesla coils have always been a popular instrument for nerdy conductors. Not surprisingly, the arrangement of choice is usually one of two songs: The Imperial March or the theme song to Super Mario Bros. [March and Mario]

Inside you burns the heart of a great musician—but you never learned how to play conventional instruments. However, as a gadget fanatic you are a natural virtuoso when it comes to office equipment. The next time you are bored at work try getting your scanner to play Fur Elise or, if you are ambitious, use multiple gadgets to perform Radiohead's Nude. [Link]

How about gathering all of the phones in the office and spending months neglecting work so that you can play Mozart's Turkish March? Haha...you are so getting fired.

Here comes Mario again—only this time somebody got a little more creative and performed the music using an R/C car and some wine bottles. [Link]

Now here is where things start getting really weird. Like a Japanese "circuit bender" turning Pikachu into a synthesizer. [Kaseo via DVICE]

How about David Byrne using an antique organ connected to hammers and air pumps to "play" the architecture of a 9,000-square-foot building? [David Byrne]

Japan's "Melody Road" utilizes precisely cut grooves in the pavement between 6 and 12mm apart to play a tune as cars drive over. Obviously, the speed at which you travel affects how the music will sound—and the optimal speed is a depressingly low 28 mph. [Oddee]

Finally, we come to the work of performance artist Tim Kaiser. I'm not even sure what the hell is going on here, but the following arrangement really runs the gamut. In some areas it sounds like soothing wind chimes, babbling brooks and church bells—and at other times it sounds like the background music to your nightmares. [Tim Kaiser]

[Image via Flickr]

As I recall, I saw the Head Like a Hole video on MTV and liked the direction they were going in. At this point hair band music was wearing itself out and, for me, it was really time for a change. So, on a whim I picked up the album at a record store (possibly The Wall before it became fye) in the Danbury Fair Mall in Connecticut while on a day trip with my family. I remember playing the hell out of that thing on my Walkman. I liked it so much I even re-bought the album on CD later on.

For me, PHM really set the stage for all the music I loved in the 90's. I really got into it—even worked as one of those smug record store clerks that looked down at everyone's musical tastes. Unfortunately, I have very little to be excited about these days—except NIN iPhone apps and free albums I suppose.

For Gizmodo's week-long Listening Test (a tribute to all things audio), each writer will be sharing his/her first album. In other words, there will be many more to come.

How Speakers Work
Especially when you consider just how simple the overall mechanism behind a standard speaker is: It moves air. Essentially, what happens in a speaker—loudspeaker, to be technical—is that the alternating current from an amplifier runs to the speaker and through the voice coil (which is just, wait for it, a coil of wire) turning the coil into an electromagnet. That, in turns, creates a magnetic field between it and the permanent magnet in the driver. As the current alternates between positive and negative, the magnets are attracted and repulsed, moving the cone back and forth. Voila, it emits the soothing sounds of Bach or Korn. (Driver diagram from Wikipedia's unusually exceptional loudspeaker article.)

But that's probably not quite what you think of when you hear "speaker." You're probably thinking of a box with a circle thing and maybe a hole in it. That's actually a loudspeaker system, and it actually has more than one kind of speaker inside of it, called drivers. That's because the driver tuned to deliver high frequencies—a tweeter—ain't so good at delivering bass, which is why you need a woofer or subwoofer (low and lower). And then you've got mid-range speakers—for mid-range sounds—in higher-end systems. Your average GENERIC SPEAKER COMPANY set skips this middleman. So generally two or more drivers are stuffed in a box or cabinet, called an enclosure.

Lovely, but that doesn't explain what separates these $107,000 YG Acoustics Anat Reference II speakers from the $50 Logitech Z-2300s on my desk—which are even THX certified. So, we enlisted some help: Cnet's Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg, who lives and breathes speakers ranging from the sensible to the ludicrous, and Paul DiComo and Matt Lyons, speaker guys who came from Polk and are now at Definitive Technology.

If you read our profile of Audiophile Maximo Michael Fremer "Why We Need Audiophiles," it probably won't surprise that when initially asked simply, "What the difference between ten dollar speakers and ten thousand dollar speakers?" the Definitive guys' initial answer was, "Well, it ought to be that they sound better." Even Steve told us, "You can't apply a Consumer Reports kind of index to something that's as subjective as audio quality."

No, but seriously.

The Goal of a Loudspeaker
A speaker's ultimate goal is "to sound like reality"—the elusive dragon that every audiophile chases—so on a broad, not-very-useful level, how close it comes to matching that reality is the difference between good and bad, expensive and cheap speakers. To be slightly more technical, the "spec" is clarity: The lower the distortion of the original sound it recreates, the better the speaker. In fact, basically every other spec, every confusing number you read on the side of a box is actually totally meaningless, according to both Steve and the Definitive guys. Steve singles out watts as "one of the more useless specifications ever created." If you have to look for a number when buying speakers, Steve said one that's "kind of useful" is sensitivity/efficiency, which would be something like 90dB @ 1 watt, which relates how loud a speaker will play at a given power level.

Three Characteristics
But when pressed, there are a few qualities Paul and Matt from Definitive singled out in amazing speakers—what they call the big three:
• More dynamic range, or simply the ability to play louder without sounding like trash as you crank the volume. With good speakers, you want to keep cranking it up, like accelerating a fast car.
• Better bass. That doesn't mean louder, "but better." It's more melodic, and not muddy—you can actually hear individual notes, an upright acoustic bass being plucked.
• "A very natural timbre." Timbre is the "tone color" or how natural the sound is—if you played the voice of someone you know on a speaker with excellent timbre, it would sound exactly like them. Or if two different instruments play the same note, you'd be able to tell them apart very easily and cleanly.

Beyond that, what audiophiles are looking for—which Mahoney alludes to in the audiophile profile—is a speaker's ability to create an image, the picture. That is, its ability to create a sense of three-dimensional sound. The defining problem of designing speakers, say the guys from Definitive, is that "physics is dogmatic." So every speaker is built around a set of compromises.

Size
To put that in some concrete—rather than seemingly religious—terms, you can't have a small speaker that sounds good. So one defining quality of six-figure speakers is that they are large. They have bigger woofers and tweeters. More surface area means better sound. There are also simply more drivers—every driver you add is like when you add another string to a guitar, to create a better-nuanced sound. So, for instance, a $300 speaker from a "quality manufacturer" you'll get a 5 1/4-inch woofer and a 1-inch tweeter. A $3000 pair of speakers might have two 5 1/4 mid-range drivers and then a 10-inch woofer.

Build Quality
Build quality is the other thing. A "dead box," or an enclosure that doesn't create any sounds of its own—since that's distortion—is key and something that costs a lot of money. You just want sound from the drivers themselves. The quality of the woofer and tweeter themselves, obviously, comes into play—their ability to handle more power, since that's what translates into volume.

At the extreme end, Steve says, they can just handle more power without breaking—as the copper wire inside heats up, it can deform or melt, and the driver gets messed up. Pricey speakers don't do that. In terms of exotic materials or construction, Steve mentioned ribbon tweeters, which are only in the highest-end speaker systems—they're "literally a piece of aluminum foil that's suspended between magnets that vibrates back and forth" producing excellent clarity. Better speakers also have intricate dividing networks to make sure the right signals go to the right place—they get more complicated as the price goes up.

Dollar Figures
So how much do you have to spend to get a good system in the eyes (ears?) of an audiophile? Definitive recommends $1000 for a home-theater component setup. (In other words, don't buy a home theater in a box.) You can also get a pretty decent pair of "neutral, natural sounding" speakers for $300—they "won't knock your ass" and won't be great as some things, but they'll be alright. There's no magic one-size-fits-all speaker system, however. It depends on the room and the situation. (If your couch is against a wall, skip the 7.1 surround, says Steve.) Heavier speakers tend to sound better than lighter ones, though that's not an absolute.

But what's the upper limit? Well, there isn't any. Paul from Definitive said he heard these $65,000 Krell Modulari Duo last month and "was mezmerized." It's like wine to oenophiles, Paul said. As Steve puts it most simply: "To people who are into it, it's worth it."

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about speakers, KoRn or John Mahoney's secret Britney shame to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line. Big thanks to Steve from Cnet and Paul and Matt from Definitive Technology!

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

Fremer, if you have yet to decipher this, is an audiophile of the highest calibre. Literally millions of dollars of premium audio equipment have passed through his listening room under review for Stereophile magazine, and he's been obsessing about vinyl since he was four years old, memorizing the labels of his parents' 78s. A man who, when digital recording and reproduction methods began to surface culminating in the compact disc's takeover as the predominant music format, became a figurehead for the vinyl superiority movement, staunchly advocating its greater tonal resolution over a CD's 44.1 kHz max. (See this MTV clip for Fremer in action, circa 1993.)

In short, a species of human I had never known prior to hanging out with him in his New Jersey basement listening room last week, and a species, frankly, I was skeptical of in just about every possible way.

Upon getting picked up by Fremer at the train station near his home, my fears immediately began to feel all too real. It was but a minute or two into our car ride from the station that a rant on Walt Mossberg's inferior review of the Airport Express, Apple's music-streaming mini-router that Fremer and I both enjoy in our home systems, begins in earnest:

"If he's not going to tell people how it sounds, then what's the fucking point? Don't step into my world, Walt!" Multiple emails of complaint to poor Walt are cited. I am definitely thinking "uh oh" at this point.

But then, settled into the lone leather chaise in Fremer's basement audio temple, nestled right in the sweetspot of his $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers, I hear the needle drop on Air's "Run" from Talkie Walkie. It's a song I've never heard (kind of fell off Air after overusing Moon Safari considerably), but one that I'm now listening to all the time. Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.

The song ends, and after emerging from an opiate-like haze, I hear a hiss. And yes, while the record was playing, I heard a pop, a crackle or two. Isn't this as high-end an audiophile system as they come? Shouldn't the sound be of such purity so as to sustain life in lieu of water for days on end?

I mention this slight—very slight, but noticeable—hiss to Fremer, and it's probably a frequency that 50 plus years of rocking have eliminated from his spectrum. He doesn't even care. This is when I start to understand.

After hearing I'm a Bowie fan, Fremer drops into his near limitless stacks and spins a pressing of "Heroes" with part of the title track's chorus in German. I'm giggling with pleasure at the frankly obscene level of detail I hear (Ich! Ich werde König!), but of course, I'm hearing the pops and crackles that a 30+ year-old record is likely to have. Shouldn't a $350,000 stereo system be completely free of such impurities?

"It's like when you go to the symphony, and the old men are coughing—same thing," Fremer says. Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world.

We play my solid 256kbps VBR MP3 of "Heroes" off my iPod; it sounds like shit. Free of pops and crackles, yes, but completely lifeless, flat in every way. This is the detail that matters: Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air. It's crazy and I've never experienced anything like it.

It is within this 3D space where the audiophile lives and operates, and spends all his money. Fremer himself is the first to admit that it would only take $3,000 to $5,000 to build a system that will be deeply satisfying to most music fans. On a scale of 1 to 100 completely of my own devising, let's put this system at around 85. Now, imagine that you've tasted 85, and you want to go higher; you want Bowie's cries of kissing by the wall to inhabit the most perfect point in your system's matrix, and Bryan Ferry's back-up fly girls on "Avalon" to flank him just beautifully. That, friends, is where you might end up paying hundreds of thousands.

Our little scale, unfortunately, is logarithmic, in that going from zero to 85 doesn't take a lot of effort or money, but going from 98.6 to 99.1 by swapping out a $2,600 AC power cable for a $4,000 one becomes a justifiable end. We did exactly that, and I strained to hear any difference at all (more impressions of our test will follow later in the week), but to Fremer, the difference was abundantly clear—not necessarily better with the more expensive cable, but different, a warmer, fuller sound, as Fremer described it. Here's the breakdown of his current listening-room hardware:

The point is, people like Fremer can not only hear the difference, they crave it. I walked into his listening room expecting to discern absolutely zero difference in the comparison tests we had planned, swapping out speaker cables that cost as much as a meal at the best restaurant in New York for another set that cost as much as a year of undergrad at Harvard. I actually did hear a tiny difference. But to people like Fremer, that tiny difference becomes a mind-boggling disparity, and it's worth paying for if it means a few decimal points closer to perfection. Unfortunately, the logarithmic curve is asymptotic: There is no ceiling. Fremer will be the first to admit that this type of dragon chasing is not and should not be for everyone.

This obsession with tiny differences explains Fremer's fevered defense of analog music sources over digital. Two anecdotes from the past are particularly illuminative:

The first is his memories of rushing to the record store in 1979 to pick up Ry Cooder's Bop ‘Til You Drop, the first mainstream rock release to be recorded using an all-digital process, which at the time was being lauded as the next big thing. But upon getting it home and dropping it into his high-end system, the results were not good:

"It made me feel horrible!" he remembers. Even though it was played on vinyl, Fremer could already detect some missing elements in the 3D audiophile space that just weren't there. "And it's not like I was a digiphobe at this point—I had no reason to be. I was as excited as anyone to hear this."

The second was the first public playing of a compact disc, to a room full of expectant audiophiles a few years later. While they breathlessly applauded the first track played from the then refrigerator-sized device, Fremer was horrified. He heard the same flatness and lack of detail in the 3D audio world he loved to inhabit. "I felt…weird. My hands were shaking. All I could think, then, was WE'RE FUCKED!" A few days later, a new, custom-printed bumper sticker was slapped on Fremer's car: "COMPACT DISCS SUCK."

And thus began a long battle, and thankfully, it seems to have ended happily. Both with the advent of SACDs—which Fremer is a great fan of, proving that he's not hung up on nostalgia—and the greater acceptance and continued life of vinyl, Fremer is a happy man these days. "I'm on top of the world right now. I set out to save vinyl, and we did it."

Because the thing is, Fremer loves music first and foremost. The audiophile I had feared was one who cares far more about the overpriced gadgetry than the actual music. This is not who I ended up meeting. This man listens to music and makes sure it was recorded with the best fidelity, that the intents of the artist have been preserved. And thank God he does, because we certainly don't.

I listen to most of my music on downloaded, compressed, lossy MP3s, and so do you. But even if you can't hear the sound quality, we need someone like Fremer up on that wall, a preservationist of archival recordings and an ombudsman for new recording techniques, because one day you'll want to hear it, and it'll be there because of audiophiles.

These guardians in and outside of the recording industry ensure that, whether it's in a movie theater tomorrow or in your own home listening room on some far off future date, you'll be able always get back to a recording that expresses every frequency, every ounce of warmth and life, of the original performance. Because if you can hear, it, if you ever get to live in that 3D space, you'll be glad Fremer helped defend it.

For more audio goodness, hit up Fremer's own site at musicangle.com

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

For serious audiophiles out there, the details can be gleaned from the extensive photographic record Giahy compiled during the build process. The rest of us can stare at this crazy horn, wall speaker setup and only imagine what the sound and the experience of being in the room must be like. [Giahy]

I worked 30 hours a week during college and more during the summer. I worked at some computer help desk in Boston, but I spent a great deal of spare time hanging out in a local car-stereo installer's garage, talking to them about what exact set up I should install. They weren't the cleanest or best installers, looking back, but they did recommend some kick-ass gear.

Two giant Phoenix Gold amps, I forget the designation, painted white with clear windows for viewing the ICs. One was attached to a three-way system for everything above bass; 5-inch drivers in the door, and the tweeters and mids in the side foot panels, aimed through the dash to bounce off the windshield of my shitty little Acura Integra, lowered and ricey before that shit was played out. (It was also white.)

The car-stereo guys let me cut the wooden mounts which would give the deep speaker in the narrow door frame. I actually remember the amp names now. That was a ZX450 and it was pushing 450 watts through four channels, two to the midbass drivers, and two to the high/mids. I ran the 8-gauge wires myself, too. The other amp was the more interesting story, a ZX500, run in mono for I think close to 1000 watts, driving an 18-inch across, 9-inch deep JL Audio 18W6 (which was discontinued, presumably, because it was insane). The sub was mounted where the spare tire should have been, in a custom-built fiberglass tub, which raised the floor of my trunk so that it would barely hold a suitcase, on top of the sub's grill and half an inch of MDF fiberboard.

The system was played through an Eclipse CD head unit without MP3 capability (this was 1997 or something) which was made by Fujitsu and was very clean. It had an anti-theft system which consisted of a 1-800 number that tricked thieves into calling it to reactivate once they'd tried to get in a few times, which would instead summon the police to your door if you were calling about a reportedly stolen unit.

The first time I powered it up, the car shook so violently the clip on wide angle rear view mirror fell off, and I had to close my eyes because my eyeballs were itching from the vibration. I could also feel the sub pulling the moving the air in and out of my lungs.

I played lots of Biggie Smalls through it, and some Tupac and Mary J Blige when no one was around, and it was pretty gross. I mean, I didn't have to ring the doorbell when I visited friends, they could hear it a block away.

It forever changed the way I listen to music, because I am definitely unable to hear music with the same nuance that I did before the car stereo. The car was so loud, so notorious on campus, I am surprised it took so long for the setup to get stolen. But it did.

I fell asleep on my couch with my car outside my parking lot, on the street, and when I woke up to go drive home for Thanksgiving, it was gone. I called my mom to say I would miss dinner, and two days later, the insurance company wrote me a check when the car showed up, stripped, in Newton, Massachusetts. I used that money to move to California and to buy a motorcycle, which would eventually snap my leg in three places.

Somehow, this post turned into a note about how stupid of a 20-something I was.

It occurred to me, yesterday, on a long drive, beating on my steering while like a snare drum and my dead pedal as a bass, how much faster I drive as I listen to music. (Even if now I drive a boring station wagon with a stock stereo.) I'm not a music nut, but who can deny how much better our lives when there is song in it?

Music is arguably the most powerful medium, despite its often subtle delivery. Perhaps its power comes from how it can be enjoyed passively, while enhancing the things you're focusing on. Things from work, to running, to sex, to sleep, to skiing, driving, or just spending time with friends. Video, words, pictures require your focus, but you stand attention to these things. Audio and music go with along with anything well. A soundtrack.

Over the last few decades, since the birth of recording, technology's changed how we relate to music. In ways that go beyond the white earbuds. Everything in the last twenty years has changed, from how we discover new songs, to how we buy (or steal) it, to how we carry or trade it, to the very fidelity of the recording (which seems not to matter too much to anyone except audiophiles—a dying breed).

The only thing that hasn't changed is how the music makes us feel, no matter what the volume.

So, this week's Gizmodo is dedicated to music and the technology that helps us enjoy it. Let us know what you think of the stories, and let us know if there's anything we should post.

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

The ClearAudio Statement: At $100,000 the ClearAudio Statement, seen above, is everything that is wrong with the audiophile culture, combined into one four-foot, 770lb, variously suspended, NASA-electronics-adorned turntable (check out a full-length shot here). But it's a design triumph, coaxing a polished, demure aesthetic out of what should by all means be an ostentatious CNC-machined mess.

Speak-er: Spawned by a playful concept that nobody honestly expected to get made, the Speak-er isn't fancy, powerful or technologically impressive. It's a dead-simple desktop speaker in a fantastic shell, which opens up a slew of design possibilities for your office, room, or live-action comic book troupe.

Sonnance Freewheeler: Continuing the simple-but-perfect theme, the Sonnance Freewheeler is a wireless speaker disc, about the size of a car's wheel and able to run for about 8 hours on a full charge. It's also $21,000, but that neither here nor there, "here" being "within the range of you to buy" and "there" being "at all worth it, even if it was." But, pretty!

BeoSound 5: It's somehow heartening to see so much design go into a remote control. That's what the BeoSound 5 is: a 1024x768 screen with a brushed aluminum control wheel that serves solely as an interface for the BeoMaster 5, a giant B&O media server.

Montegiro Lusso Turntable: Apparently designed in the Towers of Hanoi tradition, this conical turntable is adorned with enough expensive-sounding features for even the most credulous discerning audiophile. It's just under $50,000, but really, you can't put a price on tying a room together, can you?

Sony Sountina: So, it's a speaker in a glass stick, but it's also one of the rare speakers that would work in virtually any setting. As a bonus, it can be illuminated in blue, amber or purple light, though I think it looks best without any at all.

V-Moda Vibe Earphones/Headsets: This is one of the few items on this list that people actually buy, and with good reason. They're capable (though not outstanding) earphones, on which V-Moda has shown extreme attention to design. The corrugated bodies, Mont Blanc-esque pen-tip wire accessories and (sometimes) fabric wire casings make for the most stylish earbphones on the market today.

Harman Kardon Soundsticks: You've seen this at Apple Store and Best Buys for years, but they're due some credit: they bring a stunning transparent aesthetic to mainstream buyers, perfectly complementing a generation of Apple hardware while being generally gorgeous enough to be appealing to the PC crowd too. You'd still be hard-pressed to find a lovelier set of speakers for under $200.

Opera Sonora Speakers: Every once in a while, questionably scientific theories of audiophilia result in extremely handsome products. That's the story of the Opera Sonora line of speakers. The theory: Bolting little speaker driver on to the back of tonewood—the same stuff used in high-end violins—will provide a rich, warm sound. The result: Speakers that look like they were designed by a reanimated Antonio Stradivari, with a sound—well, not many people have actually heard them yet.

Sony Qualia 010: Priced at over $2500, slapped with a painfully pretentious name and jinxed forever to be rejected by mainstream-averse audiophiles, these futuristic headphones were doomed from the start. But whatever, these are subtly good-looking cans, blending in for day-to-day use but revealing meticulous design and construction on close examination. (Image from Head-fi)

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.