360 DEGREES Weblog

There’s classical music and then there’s Classical Music. Yo-Yo Ma defined the latter, carving out best-in-class recordings for the entire history of classical music. Now fans of this musical genius are given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own the definitive collection.

Yo-Yo Ma 30 Years Outside the Box, out now from Sony Music, features a mind-blowing 90 CDs, every original album Yo-Yo Ma has recorded to date (including 15 Grammy award winners) and two bonus discs featuring the first release of John Williams’ Suite from Memoirs of a Geisha for Cello, all entirely re-mastered with DSD technology. The limited-edition, numbered set comes packaged in a velvet-lined cello box complete with a beautiful hard-bound book full of rare archival photos, essays and more.

Yo-Yo Ma created modern classical music, collaborating with artists from Bobby McFerrin to Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer, to recording his interpretations of an entire genre of music, with his groundbreaking Obrigado Brazil record. Throughout his career he has worked to bring classical music to young people. Such an extraordinary collection only befits such a legendary man. Give the music lover on your list this amazing collector’s set, and trust us, they’ll be set for life.

The entire collection retails for $789.98 and is available from Amazon.

Yamaha have been quietly plugging away at their soundbar technology for a while now, and their latest model looks to be the most alluring yet.  As ever, the concept is straightforward: why have a room stuffed full of speakers when a single row of them – together with some clever digital processing – can reproduce the same effect.  Targeted at TVs up to 50-inches (as well as projector setups), the Yamaha YSP-5100 packs 120W and five HDMI ports.

There’s no shortage of sound format support, either, with the YSP-5100 content with dts-HD, dts ES and Dolby TruHD/Digital Plus/Digital/ Digital EX/Pro Logic and Pro LogicⅡ/x.  You’ll get pseudo-7.1 surround sound and there are apparently a total of 42 individual speakers hiding behind that grill (forty 2W speakers and two 20W speakers) plus a separate subwoofer output.

The YSP-5100 will also play nicely with your iPod, and if you have the Yamaha YIT-W10 wireless transmitter you can stream audio directly from the Apple PMP to the speakerbar.  It’s expected to land in Japan by the end of 2009, priced at the equivalent of $2,280.

Bluetooth handsets score over hands-free earphones because they literally come with no strings attached! If you travel a lot and want to do it in style, then Sennheiser has created the luxury M 450 travel headset just for you. Priced around a staggering $480, the product is compatible with a wide array of Bluetooth enabled devices. It promises crystal-clear sound quality with its active noise reduction capabilities and A2DP stereo Bluetooth profile. Packaged with airplane direct cable adapters, the headset also comes with a closed-capsule design and built in volume control features. A lithium-polymer battery that can be charged with a USB chord sums up the entire package.

For The Beatles, getting to digital downloads is a long and winding road. A new special limited edition release, though, brings us a step closer. On December 7th, the entire remastered Beatles catalog will be available to buy on a USB stick shaped like an apple.

Yes, you heard right. EMI is hawking a plastic apple, out of which slides a stick of flash memory containing 14 albums, documentary films, photos, cover art and liner notes. All this can be yours for under $300.

Of course, The Beatles’ music has been available digitally since it came out on CD, and of course those CDs were ripped and scattered to the four corners of the internet long ago. But this novelty box-set is actually a rather good deal for the fan. Not only does the music come in DRM free, lossless FLAC format, it is 24-bit, better than CD. 320 Kbps MP3s are also included so you don’t have to rip them yourself (tip: convert the FLAC to Apple Lossless for, well, lossless audio that will play on an iPod). The whole lot fits on a 16GB USB stick, inside the aforementioned apple.

I was cynical to begin with, but this actually looks great, and the fact that there are “only” 30,000 of them, along with the December release date, should mean they sell out in hours. I’m starting to think that The Beatles shouldn’t even bother moving in to the iTunes Store. After all, anyone who likes the music surely has it all already.

Whether you’re a seasoned jazz fan or just getting started, consider dropping some coin on The Complete Columbia Album Collection by Miles Davis ($330). This exhaustive set includes 52 albums spread across 70 CDs, a previously unreleased DVD of Live in Europe ‘67, featuring performances by Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, a 250-page color book with a biography, annotated discography, and song index, tons of unreleased and rare audio recordings, and more.

$330

As a Steve McQueen fan you can just dream away on the wonderful 60’s tunes from the soundtrack of Bullit (’68) by famous  Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin. Schifrin has also been responsible for the soundtracks of Dirty Harry, and Mission Impossible among many others.

Itunes €7.92

Sonos introduced a much newly designed remote control – the Sonos Controller 200 (CR200). It fits nicely in one hand; featuring a 3.5-inch capacitive VGA touch-screen and a super easy to type on keyboard. The CR200 is easy to use; it turns on instantly, fast and reliably dedicated to your ultimate music experience. It can be used anywhere in your home all for a price of $349 ($50 less than the CR100 went for), which includes the charging cradle. Wow, finally!

Most people have MP3s on their computer, compressed audio files that don’t sound as good as records or CDs, but don’t take up much space. But audiophiles, if they use their computer for music, are more likely to have uncompressed files such as FLACs that don’t leave any audio quality out. For them, there’s the Neuhaus T-2 Amplifier.

This $800 amp takes the music playing from your computer, converts the sound to analog and then amplifies it using vacuum tubes, making the sound warmer and richer. Think of it as a way to make your music sound like it’s being played from a record player when it’s really being played from your laptop. Just don’t waste its power on MP3s.

The burned hair of Michael Jackson lost during the shooting of Pepsi advertisement in 1984 [video here] will be turned into diamonds. LifeGem, a US-based company known for making high-quality diamonds from the carbon of a loved one’s body as a memorial to his or her life, has unveiled a bizarre plan to produce 10 diamonds from the locks of the late pop legend’s hair to give a few fans a unique way to remember their idol. The hair was collected by the executive producer of the videograper Ralph Cohen, when the star’s hair was set on fire after a stunt went terribly wrong. He saved this important piece of history for 25 years after which he sold it to John Reznikoff, an avid collector of celebrity and historical hair. Now, Reznikoff has inked a deal with LifeGem to produce an exclusive set of diamonds from a portion of the hair, although the rest will remain in his collection. The company has previously worked with the collector to create diamonds from Beethoven’s hair in 2007 and one of them was sold for around $200,000 on eBay. The latest collection is also likely to rake in a good amount when it goes on sale.

Of all the images snapped during the original Woodstock weekend, one stands above all: a young couple huddled together in a blanket, standing alone in a sea of people lying on wet ground.
It’s an enduring image of love, care and protection that earned iconic status through its placement on the cover of the original “Woodstock” album in 1970, as well as on the movie poster.
Forty years later, the couple in the photo - Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both 60 - remain together. They married two summers after the fabled weekend, and they still live less than an hour’s drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y., and within spitting distance of where they both grew up.