Prolific singer/songwriter, Ryan Adams, is back for his latest studio album, Prisoner, an anthology of break up songs inspired by the musician’s split from wife of six years, Mandy Moore. Staying true to his style, Adams’ Prisoner is a blend of tragic lyrics and buoyant arrangements. The opening track, “Do You Still Love Me?” starts with a bang, flourishing under Adams’ soft-rock aesthetic. It’s followed by the mellow sorrow of the album’s title track. The “Break up Album” is not a new category, certainly not for Adams who has produced his own fair share of music in the genre, but in Prisoner, earnest lyricism and playful sonance breathes life into bygone love.
On this day in 1966, Barbra Streisand aired her second television special for American audiences. Broadcast on CBS and called “Color Me Barbra,” the program was one of the very first to be filmed in color (hence the title). The special was split into three distinct acts: the first act was filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and featured Streisand singing seven songs, including “The Minute Waltz” and “Gotta Move.” Act II was a comedic medley filmed at the CBS studios in New York. The set was designed to look like a three-ringed circus and was furnished with an array of animals, including a tiger, an anteater, a llama, a baby elephant, penguins and more. During this segment, Streisand sang (accompanied by her creature companions) “Animal Crackers in my Soup,” “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?” The final act was a traditional studio concert, with her fan club members selected to sit in the audience, singing “C’est Si Bon,” “It Had to be You,” and more. The TV Special was a massive success and was nominated for five Emmys that year.
Back in November, we took an in-depth look at Traffic Independent Synchronization (TIS), a Blackfire Research technology which allows precise syncing of your wireless speakers. And last week, we discussed Real-Time Packet Management (RPM), a technology for streaming music to your speakers without excessive buffering. Today, we’re finishing off the series with Dynamic Stream Balancing (DSB).
Dynamic Stream Balancing (DSB) is the way Blackfire makes the best use of your available WiFi bandwidth. If you have a wireless, multi-speaker system that uses conventional WiFi protocols, chances are that some of your speakers may be more affected than others by interference and heavy network traffic, which causes your music to break up and for speakers to go out of sync.
DSB monitors special multipoint, real-time feedback signals from each speaker to identify the effect of noise on the audio data stream. By precisely identifying which packets are statistically most likely to be affected, DSB then uses the available WiFi bandwidth to selectively and predictively resend data to the most vulnerable speaker before interference can cause any audible drop out. So less data is needed in the buffer, which means delays in the audio stream are reduced from 10’s of seconds to 10’s of milliseconds.
This is especially necessary when using a wireless surround sound system to watch video. With DSB, your Blackfire wireless system has minimal lag between the video on your screen and the audio through your speakers; in HD Audio, up to 24-bit/192kHz Studio Quality, and even HD Video can be streamed to any device from any room, losslessly.
DSB, as well as TIS and RPM, is embedded into all Blackfire enabled products. Together, these technologies create FCP: Firecast Protocol – Blackfire’s solution to streaming music and video over your regular WiFi network, flawlessly.
Tourist In This Town is the debut, full-length album by Alabama native Allison Crutchfield. Crutchfield is not new to the music industry, having formed notable bands since her teenage years (P.S. Eliot and Bad Banana) with twin sister, Katie of Waxahatchee. On Tourist, Crutchfield ditches compromising with bandmates and focuses on the self. Accompanying the 80’s inspired rippling synths that sail through the album are Crutchfield’s easy vocals and anxiety-driven lyrics of love, heartbreak, loneliness, and change. Standouts on the album include opener, “Broad Daylight,” “Charlie,” and “Expatriate,” with open, honest lyrics: “I love myself, or I’m figuring out how.”
On this day in 1956, The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, released his debut studio album, “Elvis Presley” by RCA Victor. It was the first Rock and Roll album to hit #1 on the Billboard charts, where it remained for 10 weeks. The album catapulted the rockabilly to superstardom, introducing a predominantly conservative US audience to a more provocative style of music, featuring the now classic covers of “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.”
