THREE-wAy STEREo

Ever since base model Hyundais got more computing power than the Apollo 11 moon shot I have held one truth of electronics dear: electronics are now so fast, so cheap and so reliable that their only limitation is our ability to think up new uses for them.

Yes, it’s as weird as you’re already imagining, but the story behind its invention is even stranger and, for good measure, Rod Easdown has found something that’s even more electronically outlandish!

Mind you, we’ve come up with some rippers so far. Skype, for example. Satellite navigation and on-line Scrabble. I like the fact that all my CDs can be stored digitally at full quality, I like Pandora and I like that my phone always presents the correct time.

But some others, well, not so much. Hackers have got into Japan’s computerised toilet seats and there’s Dolby Atmos which, with the simple inclusion of four speakers in the roof, turns your 7.2 surround system into a 7.2.4. Doubtless when they introduce Dolby But Wait There’s More you’ll be able to add floor speakers for a 7.2.4.4. What about a roving speaker bopping about like a robot vacuum cleaner? And now there’s three-way stereo. Have you ever seen folk younger and more foolish than yourself sharing stereo ear-buds? You know, the kid on the left has the lefthand ear-bud in his right ear and the kid on the right has the right-hand ear-bud in her left ear, and they’re both listening to half of whatever is playing? Probably in MP3 at maximum compression. So how can clever electronics improve their lives?

A dance band called Night Bus has now recorded a single called ‘When Night Time Comes’ in three-way stereo. The right hand channel carries a mid-tempo guitar version of the song with a male vocalist while the lefthand channel is a more upbeat, electronic dance track with a female vocalist. Thus two people can listen through just one set of earbuds at the same time and get a full and different version of the song. Admittedly in one ear only.

But wait, there’s more.

If you listen to both tracks at once—right ear-bud in your right ear and left in your left, you get a third version of the song as both tracks come together. Yes, they are fully complementary. ‘The idea is to make it sound like three totally separate recordings of the song,’ Jack Kennedy, 28, one of the band’s two singers and its resident producer, told the New York Times. ‘When you listen to them individually they have different vibes, but when they combine they still work, and they don’t clash.’

The recording has been released by S-Curve records and three-way stereo originated when the teenage daughter of S-Curve’s founder, Steve Greenberg, complained that some songs sounded bad when she and a friend listened to them while sharing a set of ear-buds. Duh.

‘The more stereo you put in the record,’ Greenberg laments, ‘the less each kid gets of the full song.’

Oh, that such misery could be inflicted on those so young! Instead of smacking her on the head and telling her to go buy another set of ear-buds and a splitter plug (total cost about ten bucks) Greenberg has become responsible for yet another piece of technology we patently do not need. Producer Kennedy said the final result took him about 70 hours on his computer.

Did you spot the irony there? The creation of three-way stereo did not involve singers or musicians or anything quite that passé, it was all done with a bunch of ones and zeros.

Kennedy insists, of course, that three-way stereo Is Not A Gimmick. ‘In pop production, some of the abilities for using stereo are kind of overlooked,’ he declared, possibly without considering why they are overlooked, and compared three-way stereo to 3D film-making.

‘People did a lot of dumb things with 3D, but then eventually then they made ‘Avatar’ and ‘Gravity’.’

Yep, and 3D televisions too, and look at what a success they’ve been.

Three-way stereo, however, does not get my nomination for dumb idea of the month. This goes to the Mr Wolf digital clock radio.

This is built like the original digital clock radios of the 1960s. There’s no LED readout, rather there are rotating metal plates that ‘puck’ as they flip over every 60 seconds to reveal the latest minute. Except that in this case they don’t.

What they show is a collection of pictures and your job is to guess the time those pictures represent. At five minutes past the hour you get Churchill’s V for victory. A black cat comes along with 13 and at 40 you get a picture of the XXXX brewery. At eight minutes to the hour there’s a plane. It’s a B52.

The hour display makes you work harder, possibly because you’ve got an hour to figure it out. At 8 a.m. for example, you get ‘Have a nice day…’ and at 10 p.m. there’s a map of the stars.

If you’re now trying to figure out the time shown in the picture, it’s 11.08. Makes you feel kind of foolish not to have realised that, hey? And it’s only $180.