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Looking for a medically sound excuse next time your spouse senses the audio your audio-buying bloodlust rising or catches you browsing an audio website or brochure? There’s good news from the University of Maryland:
“Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate (or expand) in order to increase blood flow. This healthy response matches what the same researchers found in a 2005 study of laughter. On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow…
Compared to baseline, the average upper arm blood vessel diameter increased 26 percent after the joyful music phase, while listening to music that caused anxiety narrowed blood vessels by six percent. “I was impressed with the highly significant differences both before and after listening to joyful music as well as between joyful and anxious music,” says Dr. (Michael) Miller…”
“Joyful Music May Promote Heart Health
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As many of our customers, friends and business associates know, Audiomagus has been working to establish a base of small manufacturing in the US and Canada. This has been a major part of our planning from the beginning of the business, some two years ago.
It was our feeling then that small manufacturing was a fundamentally important part of small business in the US. Making things, rather than just moving money around, was once at the core of US business — and would be at the core of it again as the global economic picture shifted.
Localized manufacturing would allow Audiomagus to have greater control and stability of quality and supply. It would allow us to better protect our Intellectual Property and it would let us control costs and cut margins so that we could provide not just better products, but also better values to our ciustomers.
It has been a very difficult process. One exacerbated by the US, and then world, financial crises. We do find some validation in recent news coming out of China regarding rising costs of materials and labor, closing factories and worker unrest.
We are continuing our efforts to make our products here. Though we are unsure of the outcome. Money is tight, credit is nonexistent, and all of us at Audiomagus are, well, tired. It is a good fight and we are comitted to going forward. We just wish we had more energy, resources and support. Time will tell…
Filed under: Business | Tags: audio business, made in usa, manufacturing, small business
With the Aeolus magiDAC, we’ve begun our first venture into making our products in the US — and have found it to be more of an adventure than expected. We’ve learned much and are still learning.
We expected it to cost more than working with Asian businesses. What we didn’t expect was that it would take longer. It is as though American small manufacturing is suffering from a sort of “weekend warrior” effect. Any of you past the precipice of 40 will know the feeling: You’re out shape; just a bit less resilient and not a quick as you once were.
We’re not doing this just so we can slap a “Made in USA” sticker on our products. Part of our mission is to work with other small businesses and to encourage small manufacturing. We strongly believe that small business builds economic stability and stronger communities.
While we remain committed to this mission, we are reappraising how difficult it will be. Taking a realistic view of what condition we, our manufacturing partners and the US economy are in will be a key part to our continued success. (I remember going through a similar painful process on the Monday morning following a weekend game of hard-fought volleyball.)
More to come…
Steve Guttenberg, in his excellent c/net High-end audio blog, the Audiophiliac, writes about his visit to the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center in East Hampton, New York. In touring the house, he discovered Pollock’s stereo setup, including a Bogen DB-20 tube amplifier.
There are some 650 surviving violins made by Antonio Stradivari. Their exceptional beauty in form and function — and their high prices — have brought them worldwide renown and their own names. (Itzhak Perlman acquired “Soil” from Yehudi Menuhin for $1.25 million. Heifetz played “Dolphin,” and “Lady Tennant” brought $2 million last year at auction.)
What makes these violins so different from others? Music lovers and scientists have been working to solve this mystery for nearly 300 years. And now it looks like it comes down to a bit of bad weather.
Scientisits at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands tweaked a computer program used to analyze scans measuring lung density in patients with emphysema to get a highly detailed look at microstructure structure of the violins’ wood.
Lead author and violinist, Dr. Berend Stoel put five of the classic instruments and seven modern violins through acomputed tomographic (CT) scanner. The research, published Wednesday in the online journal PLoS ONE, states that they found the classic violins to have a more consistent wood thickness and density throughout the growth rings. This structure would influence how vibrations travel through the wood.
It is thought that a mini European ice age in the 1600s might have helped to keep the growth rings consistent by eliminating the variation caused by faster growth during summer.
Looks like our audiophilia might be showing… While it has all been well and good while kept within the family, the convergance of audio and computing is exposing our penchant for products touting less-than-scientific claims and some outrageous prices. Mix in the tech-savvy, quantiative-performance oriented computing crowd and we can look pretty silly (or at least a few manufacturers can.) Take the recent item hitting tech news sites and blogs regarding Denon’s $499 ethernet cable… LINK
We’ve all heard of RoHS, the worldwide initiative for reducing hazardous substances in electronics, but many have not heard of “tin whiskers”. While this ticklish nuisance has been known for decades, it has not been a concern as the lead content in solder stopped the whiskers from developing. Now, with lead-free solders becoming the norm, whiskers are making a combeback. What’s the problem? The whiskers can grow quite long and wreak havoc by shorting cicuitry. While this can be a costly nuisance for audiophiles, it is a potentially life-threatening issue for the military and NASA. LINK
The music market is spinning faster than the Big Four labels can follow... This was illustrated with painful clarity in a recent Economist article: Following a teenage focus group at EMI’s London headquarters, the participants were offered any and all that they wanted from a pile of free CDs. The kids took NOTHING! Ouch!
For more on the shift in buying habits away from the album-format CD to pick-and-download single track purchases, see this article at ars technica
How will this affect audiophile markets? Hell if I know. We’re not exactly a market force, but I suspect there will continue to be demand for well-recorded music. What we’re seeing is a technology shift. Hopefully the song remains the same…
Popping out the iPod earbuds for to listen to an LP? Vinyl is making a comeback. Time magazine reports about the resurgent interest in full-length LPs sweeping through high schools and colleges. They are drawn by the social aspect of listening to music with friends as well as the liner notes, album art and the better sound. The article includes a quote from a 15-year-old with over 1000 albums complaining about, “Bad sound on an iPod…” Well worth a read….
