The Next Track
Episode Archive
Episode Archive
279 episodes of The Next Track since the first episode, which aired on May 21st, 2016.
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Episode #167 - Tuning the Perfect Music Listening Room
January 15th, 2020 | 35 mins 2 secs
Chris Connaker of Audiophile Style renovated the attic of his house and turned it into the ultimate listening room. He then tuned it using amazing speakers, acoustic treatment, and DSP (digital signal processing). He explains how he went about this, and how the room itself is perhaps the most important element in an audio system.
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Episode #166 - Our Year in Music
January 2nd, 2020 | 34 mins 53 secs
For the first episode of the new decade - the last one recorded in the previous decade - Doug and Kirk look back on their year in music.
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Episode #165 - Christmas Is in the Air
December 18th, 2019 | 34 mins 33 secs
As Christmas approaches, we have decided to re-run our Christmas episode of two years ago. Because it was so good. And because it took a long time to collate the show notes.
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Episode #164 - Sid Smith on the Life and Times of King Crimson
December 4th, 2019 | 39 mins 20 secs
Sid Smith is the official biographer of King Crimson. He recently updated his book, In The Court Of King Crimson - An Observation Over 50 Years, that tells the tale of this seminal band. We talk with Sid about everything Crimson.
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Episode #163 - Lewis Shiner on His Novel Outside the Gates of Eden
November 20th, 2019 | 32 mins 32 secs
Lewis Shiner's latest novel Outside the Gates of Eden is a saga that begins at a Dylan concert in 1965, then follows a musician and his friends as they age, up to the present. This novel has a huge scope, with moving scenes about music, and about a generation growing up. (Apologies for the sketchy Skype audio quality.)
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Episode #162 - Apple's New Improved macOS Media Apps
November 6th, 2019 | 32 mins 47 secs
Doug and Kirk spend a half hour or so discussing Apple's new apps that replace iTunes on the Mac. They rant, they praise, they shrug, they laugh, and they reminisce on what was, while imaging what could have been. It was a very good year.
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Episode #161 - Philip Thomas on Morton Feldman's Piano Music
October 23rd, 2019 | 34 mins 32 secs
Philip Thomas has recorded a 5-CD set of all of Morton Feldman's music for solo piano. We discuss with him one of the most interesting of 20th century composers and the unique nature of sound in Feldman's works.
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Episode #160 - Golden Years
October 9th, 2019 | 28 mins
Ginger Baker has died, and we reflect on older musicians and how they keep on performing, even without any new material, until their golden years.
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Episode #159 - Has Lossless and High-Resolution Audio Finally Come to the Masses?
September 25th, 2019 | 33 mins 9 secs
Amazon announced a new lossless and high-resolution music streaming service. Has high-res music finally come to everyone? We talk with Chris Connaker, of Audiophile Style, to try to understand Amazon's logic.
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Episode #158 - What We Did this Summer
September 12th, 2019 | 29 mins 34 secs
Doug and Kirk discuss some audio-related projects they carried out this summer, new Sonos gear, streaming audio in the home, the iTunes visualizer, and more.
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Episode #157 - Fake Fur-Covered Streams: Everything About CD Packaging
August 28th, 2019 | 36 mins 52 secs
Andy Doe joins us to discuss CD packaging. The types of packages used, such as jewel cases and digipacks, and the marketing behind those Big Classical Box Sets.
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Episode #156 - 10 Ideas About the Future of the Music Business
August 14th, 2019 | 35 mins 30 secs
We discuss the future of the music business, and come up with at last 10 ideas about how things will change in the next 10 years. Because 10 is a good number.
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Episode #155 - Running a Small Record Label: Another Timbre
July 31st, 2019 | 36 mins 46 secs
We welcome Simon Reynell, who runs Another Timbre, a one-man record label that releases experimental and contemporary music. Simon tells us how he started the label, and what it's like to run a record label in a niche of this kind.
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Episode #154 - Remembering the Walkman and Cassettes
July 18th, 2019 | 25 mins 43 secs
The Sony Walkman was introduced 40 years ago. When it first came out, it was the biggest change in musical listening since the record player. It ushered in an era of personal listening, and, with the popularity of cassette tapes, changed the music industry.
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Episode #153 - John Lysaker on Brian Eno's Music for Airports
July 3rd, 2019 | 33 mins 21 secs
Philosopher John Lysaker joins us to discuss his recent book about Brian Eno's Music for Airports. We talk about the idea of ambient music, and how Music for Airports defined a genre.
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Episode #152 - Flogging a Dead App: Is it Really the Death of iTunes?
June 19th, 2019 | 23 mins 54 secs
"iTunes is dead!!!" claim a number of websites and publications. Even on the TV news they were saying that "Apple has discontinued iTunes," that "it's the end of an era." Apple made big announcements at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in early June. Did they really kill off iTunes? We look at this subject, yet again, for what will be the last episode about the future of iTunes, at least until the next one.