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No Photoshop involved: This is a custom-painted Sonos ZonePlayer ZP100.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

For a while now I've been ribbing the folks over at Sonos, the leader in affordable multiroom audio, that I wished their products came in black rather than light gray/off-white. The fact is, if you have a lot of black components, you ideally want everything to match. That's why you see the XBox 360 in black--I mean, people want the choice, right?

Well, my dreams of black Sonos were realized when an anonymous donor (who wishes to remain that way) let us take some shots of a customized ZonePlayer ZP100. It's a fairly expensive proposition--companies like Colorware charge upwards of a $100 to refinish various products, including game consoles and PCs. But the end result is pretty slick and I think Sonos would do well with a black model, particularly for the larger ZP100's replacement, the ZP120, which usually ends up in a rack. You can tuck the smaller ZP90 or discontinued ZP80 behind a TV or wherever, so most people can live with--and maybe even like--the off-white. And I know it's a pain for companies to manage multiple SKUs, but I still vote for a black option.

Anybody else have an opinion?

Before the new paint job.

(Credit: Sonos)

Remember how you complained when your mom made you take violin lessons? You might have felt differently if they'd been your ticket to recording with Steve Albini. Anni Rossi--a viola player actually--turns plucked classical strings into an unconventional indie pop for Andrew Bird fans.

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As a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber, I received an e-mail on Wednesday "Announcing The New Sirius Channel Lineup" that confirmed my worst fears about the Sirius-XM merger.

That is, the inevitable cost savings would impact me personally. My favorite music channel, Sirius Disorder, is history, replaced with the near DJ-less The Loft. It seems rather bland, and I really do miss Disorder's morning guy, Ghosty, as well as afternoon host Meg Griffin.

Hey, Sirius has to keep forking over those hefty paychecks to Howard Stern, and somebody has to pay for it.

There's a lot more changes across the range of programming, and some great XM channels are now on Sirius.

If you're not getting the new lineup, or you're a little dazed and confused, here's how Sirius recommends catching up:

Please note that when you turn on your radio for the first time on or after November 12, it may need 2 (to) 5 minutes to receive the update from our satellites.

During this time, the audio you hear may not match what is shown on your display, and you may see messages such as "updating channels." While the radio updates, please do not change channels, as this will delay the update.

I know it's still early, and we are just starting to grasp the changes, but I'd love to hear Sirius and XM subscribers' views on the shake-up. Is it good for you? BTW, the Sirius-XM stock is now 25 cents (down from a 52-week high of $3.94), so please remind me why the merger was such a great idea.

Oh, anybody know if Howard Stern still has any stock? He was such a big booster of Sirius, wasn't he?

Bloc Party and Vampire Weekend are indie rock's premier polyrhythmicists (it sounds like it's spelled). Britain's Friendly Fires now enter the fray with their own drum shiftiness, and almost outdo the Party on alienation points with dense guitar clouds and strained vocals.

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There are a million ways to experience music, but for the purpose of this blog let's just break it down to two categories: live and recorded.

I don't know about you, but if I get to hear live music more than twice a month, that's pretty good. Sure, I can look back and remember some great concerts in my life, like the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in 1969, Miles Davis in a tiny club in Greenwich Village in the early '70s, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in the '80s. The Pixies in the '90s were definitely a high point.

I recently attended a concert with the Chelsea Symphony at St. Paul's Church in Manhattan. Sitting in the top balcony, the sound was simply awesome; I've never heard anything close to that sound reproduced by even the very best high-end audio systems. The orchestra certainly didn't need amplification; it was definitely loud enough. Not quite rock concert loud, but the Chelsea Symphony's eight percussionists can make a strong impression.

Better yet, the sound never hurt my ears. But the orchestra was far more viscerally dynamic than any rock band, and the sound of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion filling the acoustic space of the church was a thrill I won't soon forget. That is, you don't so much hear the sound of each instrument, you hear it filling the church. The sound of the entire orchestra floated, like a cloud, above the pews. The sound was beyond what I've ever experienced from an orchestra in a large concert hall.

In those and other experiences, the music connection was stronger than it could ever be from recordings, but for the most part I actually prefer recorded music. First and most obviously because it's a repeatable pleasure I can have any time I want it. Next, recorded music is, after all, perfected and approved by the artist(s)--live music is subject to the vagaries of chance.

Recorded music's production can't necessarily be duplicated in concert. Depending on where you sit, and how good or bad the sound system is, live music is a crap shoot. With a decent hi-fi at home, you can get better sound than most live gigs. Oh, and you can play it at exactly the volume you want.

"Live" recordings fall between the two extremes, and if the band's up for it, may be the best of live and recorded.

The Danish pair go a step further in their presentation of retro rock as something vicious. Surfy guitars, always packing switchblades, and dressed to kill, get matched with a sketchy programmed template. The genre's early days have been translated to its most modern.

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The great draw of portable MP3 players is quantity.

I remember when my wife and I took a six-month backpacking trip back in 1999. We never even considered bringing an MP3 player, which might have had a whopping 64MB of flash memory, enough for about a hour of audio compressed at 256kbps. Instead, we brought a Discman and about two dozen CDs in a soft case. We grew extremely bored with those CDs and ended up jettisoning or trading most of them.

In 2017, a 120GB player could seem as ridiculous as a 64MB player does today.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Today, you'd laugh if somebody told you they were considering bringing CDs on a trip--why would you, when all but the most hardcore collectors could fit their entire music collection onto a hard-drive based player like the 120GB iPod Classic? I've even taken a stand against the audiophiles who decry MP3s and compressed audio--I think portability is worth the quality loss you have to endure, as long as you occasionally listen to uncompressed (or better, live) music to remind yourself how great it can sound.

But I've always assumed that this is a temporary state of affairs. Kryder's Law--which says that density of data on magnetic discs will approximately double each year--is presumably going to continue, and advances in flash-based storage could lead to an exponential jump in capacity. Of course, we'll all be listening to lossless files on our portable player someday. Right?

That's why it surprised me when a report by Todd Bishop--a former Microsoft reporter for one of Seattle's daily papers, who recently helped start a new Seattle-based tech site called TechFlash--cited representatives from Amazon's MP3 store and Rhapsody saying that they weren't really thinking about lossless music.

Selling lossless files won't make sense for the next year or two because of space constraints and the fact that many players (such as the iPod Shuffle) can't play them. But what about in 5, 6, 10 years? Don't you think kids who grew up with compressed files would switch to better quality audio if it cost the same amount? Don't you think they would notice the difference?

I think so. And Microsoft apparently does too. A Zune representative told Bishop she has a hunch that lossless audio will become extremely important in the future (although today's Zunes don't support playback of any audio at a higher bitrate than 320kbps, meaning they won't play back any lossless files). Her stance is in keeping with Microsoft's corporate culture, which has always bet on the next generation of hardware. With the exception of Vista, which received a media drubbing in part because of the steep hardware requirements for the Premium versions, most of the time this has turned out to be the right bet.

The man accused of copyright violations after posting tracks from Guns N' Roses upcoming album--Chinese Democracy--has agreed to plead guilty, according to a published report.

Dave Kravets over at Wired.com reports that Kevin Cogill, 27, confessed to uploading nine songs last summer to his site, Antiquiet and now faces a misdemeanor charge of copyright infringement.

Los Angeles federal prosecutor Craig Missakian told Kravets that Cogill's guilty plea was part of a plea deal that will be entered on December. 8. Last August, Cogill became the first Californian charged under a 3-year-old federal antipiracy law that makes it a felony to distribute unreleased copyright works online.

As part of the deal, Cogill will only face up to one year in prison instead of the five years that a felony conviction could have brought.

With singer Morrissey (the patron saint of sad misfits) and guitarist Johnny Marr overseeing the project, the compilation of rarities and singles is both chronological and comprehensive. Its release seems perfectly timed with seasonal depression--in fact, the pairing of Morrissey's bittersweet melodies with Marr's multilayered musicianship might just provide the ideal soundtrack.

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It's too bad the term "seminal" has faded with overuse: it was made for work like this. The New York mixmaster was the influencer of influencers--the guy who raised sampling to new levels of eclecticism and art. New retrospective "What Does It All Mean?" is a must for rap students.

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