For those of you who are not indoctrinated to the Irish cum Mexico super-acoustic savant duet… well, get in there. RyG are amazing acoustic guitar technicians. And this cover of Led Zeppelin is not even their best work, if maybe their most accessible.

Anyways, the studio recording of this track is in my company’s demo playlist, and I can say first hand that on more than one occasion, it has been mission accomplished when highlighting our system’s clarity, precision, and lack of distortion.

Enjoy. Peace.

Apple has got to be loving themselves a little something extra today. Their accessory ecosystem is finally mature enough to warrant a March-madness-themed comparison test. Isn’t that like some kinds of holy grail or something?

Claiming they are judging primarily audio quality, Gizmodo kicked off a battle royale with participants from all corners of the iPod speakerdock playing field. With brands whose reputations for audio do not precede them, such as Griffin, XtremeMac, and Kensington, competing against middle-of-the-road audio brands like Altec Lansing, Logitech, iHome, and the likes of audio brand-heavies like JBL and Bose… it should be interesting to see if Gizmodo’s gizolden ears pick us a winner, or a wiener.

I can already see how their bracketing is flawed. They didn’t seed the players properly. They should have done this by price. Instead they’ve set us up for a really weird semi-final between an XtremeMac Tango ($199) and Apple HiFi ($349). Whereas, anyone who knows anything about these products would tell you the smart money should be on a finals between the Logitech AudioStation and the Apple HiFi.

I call bull-shit on the whole thing already. Give me my money back, nerd-boys.

But I could be wrong… so I too will track the results here.

Mats put me off on a mild rant last week regarding DRM.  The brewing debate and distaste for the current state of DRM is shared by folks with plenty of other more important things on their mind.

With respect to music and digital rights management (DRM), Mats makes a vital point. In attempting to protect (i.e. feed) the artist, the recording industry and music marketers are damaging the end-user experience. As such, DRM hurts the consumer, and so ultimately, hurts the artist.

Is this permanent? Probably not. But what it means is that during this period of non-transparent copy protection, and alphabet soup (WMA, AAC, MP3, Playsforsure), people will want to try something different, devious, or altogether abandon the technology to give consumers what they want.

Doesn’t the world understand??? People just want to…

1. Buy their music

2. “Stick” it in a player

3. And enjoy!!!

Until then, the consumers (and hackers) will demand a better way, and the only people who should apologize are the supply-side technologists and business-types who stand between the artist and their audience. Stay tuned…