Do Coat Hangers Sound as Good as Expensive Audio Cables?

I gotta get me one of these shirts. Click the image to see how.I hate being pressured to spend extra money for "premium" audio and video cables.  When I needed to replace an HMI cable for a TV, the guy at the store tried to sell me a six-foot cord for $149, insisting that it provided better sound and better picture quality.  I went elsewhere.

Last night, LL forwarded this from Consumerist:

Can you tell the difference between music that passed through a pricey Monster stereo Cable, and a coat hanger? A reader forwarded us a post from the Audioholics Home Theater Forum and its author says no.

He says his brother ran an experiment on him and four other audio aficionados listening to a new CD from a new group blindfolded. Seven different songs were played, each time heard with the speaker hooked up to Monster Cables, and the other time, hooked up to coat hanger wire. Nobody could determine which was the Monster Cable and which was the coat hanger. T

The kicker?

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Flashback: Megadeth's Dave Mustaine Worries About the New World Order

This isn't new.  In fact, this post dates to late 2009, but I just stumbled across it last night.  (Don't ask how I ended up at Alex Jones' site.  It was an accident.)

Part two of this interview can be found here.

The Boombox Turntable. You Heard Me.

I'd forgotten about this unit from Sharp, which featured a vertical tracking turntable (i.e. it plays the record standing up instead of on its side).  As a bonus, you could play both sides of the record without flipping it over.  This was cutting edge stuff in 1982, kids.

(Via Boing Boing)

Co-Director of the Beastie Boys Most Famous Video Dies

Ric Menello, one of the minds behind the Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)" has passed away.  He co-directed the with the three guys in the band after producer Rick Rubin met him working the reception desk at his dorm at NYU.  

Menello later went on to become a screenwriter including Two Lovers (starring Joaquin Phoenix) and a new film called Lowlife.

A Lyric Video for Lovers of Typography

Lyric videos have become rather popular over the last couple of years.  Instead of spending big dollars on a traditional music video that most people will watch on a tiny screen, artists simply run the lyrics of their song over the audio.

This accomplishes a couple of things:  (1) It gives the song a legitimate presence on YouTube and elsewhere; (2) it satiates the need many people have to know the official lyrics, thereby subverting all those lyric sites that often get things wrong.

But running words over audio can be boring.  Unless you get creative, of course.  Witness this lyric video from the French band, Husbands.

(Via Fast Co Design)