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From the November 2021 issue of Car and Driver. What's blasting from your car speakers, and more important, how does it sound? For sound-system engineers at the audio-equipment manufacturer Bose, a playlist is more than tracks that slap. To test stereos, they need songs representing a variety of sounds and recording techniques to make sure new systems can re-create a song with the depth of the original recording. To have a common reference point, Bose engineers all over the globe share a master playlist. "Every system engineer knows these tracks inside and out," says Mark Armitage, head of the acoustical-engineering...

One of the greatest songs by the stones in the greatest year of music, 1966.

I never got the argument between mono and stereo until now. This song sounds better in mono.

Some people have noticed an odd shape, sort of a cross inside a circle, entering the field-of-view of the HI2 telescope on STEREO Ahead around February 20,2020. Eventually there is a cone shape that appears next to it. You can see the feature in question in this movie moving from right-to-left, just below the trapezoidal occulter on the right side of the image. The answer lies on the exact opposite side of the image. At the same time as this strange-looking feature starts being visible, the very bright planet Venus enters the HI2-A field-of-view from the left. Notice that Venus...

As the headline states, I'm looking to buy a very basic home stereo system with speakers, fm/am radio, and CD ability. I'm not tech savy, nor all that interested in delving into it, but I may not have a choice anymore. Most stereo systems sold today are intermeshed with Bluetooth. I have budgeted up to $250. for it, but hope I needn't go that high. The model I own right now is that way, but I am able to use the CD player and the radio without going through a lot of intricate hooking up. I only plan to change...

When we hear the word "stereo" today, we might simply think of a sound system, as in "turn on the stereo." But stereo actually is a specific technology, like video streaming or the latest expresso maker. Sixty years ago, it was introduced for the first time. Whenever a new technology comes along – whether it's Bluetooth, high-definition TV or Wi-Fi – it needs to be explained, packaged and promoted to customers who are happy with their current products.Stereo was no different. As we explore in our recent book, "Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America," stereo needed...

I have over 300 GB of high quality (256 and 320 MP3, and FLAC) digital audio in a hard drive on my home server.About forty feet away is my living room stereo, an old but quite decent sounding Technics receiver (which far predates the networking era) and floor-standing JBL speakers.What I would like to figure out is a way to get the latter to pull tunes from the former, via my wireless router.Is there a device that will read the server contents and feed them to my existing receiver's audio inputs?? What is it?? Or do I need to get...

Explanation: Still intact, on November 21 Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) swept into this animated field of view (left) from the HI-1 camera on the STEREO-A spacecraft. The camera has also captured periodic Comet Encke, Mercury, and Earth, with the Sun cropped out of the frame at the right, the source of the billowing solar wind. From STEREO's perspective in interplanetary space, planet Earth is actually the most distant of the group, seen in its orbit beyond the Sun. Mercury is closest, but both planets are still so bright they create sharp vertical lines in the camera's detector. Both comets clearly...

I would like some input on which in wall speakers to choose to replace the Polk ATi-A9 tower spkrs I have. I love the speakers but want to free up some space without sacrificing the sound quality I have Price is not an issue. My listening preferences are mid 40's to mid 60;s and some 70's stuff all played at moderate to low level. I have a Parasound 2100 pre amp powered with Parasound 2250 2 channel amp (250 WPC). I also have a Cambridge DAC (DacMagic) All my music is in WMA and MP3 (minimum 250 bps) form and...

Hello, After twelve years, I am resurrecting a stereo component systen that has been dormant and in a cabinet. I need to purchase speakers, hopefully white. Do you have any recommendations? I got the tuner to work, and the six disc cd player. The tape deck is working but wont speak to the tuner. My focus is speakers. they are the wire kind that connect up in the back with little red and black twisties.

On Sunday, the left channel (front and back) cut out with nary a sound coming from the left rear, and the front left speaker was tweeter only. After sitting overnight, (Monday morning) the stereo functioned normally (as far as I could tell) for a few minutes, and then same thing. Last night, I removed left side speakers, and discovered left front speaker was blown (and probably was Monday morning, but I just didn't notice). Left rear speaker was ok. Moved left rear to left front, and replaced left rear. (I checked both speakers to make sure they were functional before...

Clara Moskowitz The solar system might once have had another planet named Theia, which may have helped create our own planet's moon. Now two spacecrafts are heading out to search for leftovers from this rumored sibling, which would have been destroyed when the solar system was still young. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago — and that it collided with Earth to form the moon," said Mike Kaiser, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland...

STEREO Hunts for Remains of an Ancient Planet near Earth April 9, 2009: NASA's twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle--the origin of the Moon. The name of the planet is Theia," says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago—and that it collided with Earth to form...

April 9, 2009: NASA's twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle--the origin of the Moon. "The name of the planet is Theia," says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago—and that it collided with Earth to form the Moon." Right: An artist's concept of one of the...

STEREO: Into the Lagrangian Points I love it when we find uses for instruments that they were never intended for. In deep space terms, we can go back to Voyager 2, which carried a plasma wave instrument that was designed to measure the charged particles inside the magnetic fields of the gas giant planets it would pass. Voyager 2 was able to tell us much about dust impacts on a fast-moving spacecraft when it was realized that the plasma wave instrument would be able to sense the plasma created by vaporized particles. In other words, the instrument became a de...

After a frustrating few months of searching for a solution to the audio problems he encountered while ripping on-screen video with his Dell laptop, a ripten editor discovered that others were experiencing the same issue—and that the problem was not confined to Dell laptops. Apparently, the lack of a sound card Stereo Mix recording option is to blame—and numerous forum threads have suggested that the RIAA has put pressure on laptop manufacturers like Dell, Gateway and Pac Bell to remove it.After posting this information on ripten, a Dell representative chimed in to say that the lack of a sound card...

Bo (woof) In Commentary: I haven’t been happy with the sound my stereo has been putting out for quite some time now; plus it’s a bitch to turn on. The sound was as if I was listening to my old vinyl records…not the 33 LPs but my 78s…on Edison’s original phonograph. I went online and did my research for a stereo that was easily switched on by a tail. Once found, all I needed was a set of speakers to reproduce highs well outside of human hearing range. Well lookie what I found. (This is functional kitsch; the wrong becomes...

Can any of my Freeper brethren help me out here?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New twin spacecraft are helping scientists track pesky solar storms from the sun to Earth, where they can disrupt satellites, communications and sometimes the electricity supply, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday. Even though the STEREO spacecraft are struggling to get into their final orbits, they are already sending back images that have experts re-evaluating what they know about these storms, called coronal mass ejections, project scientists said. "These are big powerful things that leave the sun," Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told reporters. "They are storms...

Two NASA probes designed to take a continuous three-dimensional look at the Sun are poised to ride a Delta 2 rocket spaceward Wednesday. NASA's 1,364-pound (620ikilogram) STEREO spacecraft are slated to launch during a 15-minute window that opens at 8:38 p.m. EDT. The planned space shot has weathered a series of various delays, including a spacecraft fuel leak in August, and the need for future leak checks and other concerns on the Boeing-built Delta 2 rocket. One STEREO (short for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecraft will take up an orbital position just ahead of Earth while the other is bound...