UPDATED There’s no doubting Jean Michel Jarre’s enduring talent as a musician and showman, so it’ll be interesting to see how he goes in his new role as an AV entrepreneur with his new speaker system AeroSystem One. Launched Thursday at IFA in Berlin, the EUR 800 (US$1000) stand-alone HD multi-directional sound tower contains a 60 W sub-woofer and two 30 W speakers all integrated to deliver a roomful of sound. How good is it? Sensational!
an iPhone and iPod compatible, HD multi-directional sound tower equipped with a full spectrum speaker, delivering stereophonic sound from a single multi-axial point. It is also possible to connect any other smartphones and MP3 players, laptop, CD / DVD and even vinyl turn-table.
The speaker looks amazing and we were surprised to find the quality of sound from the relatively affordable system is extraordinarily good, just as Jarre had promised.
Jarre came to world prominence as a composer and musician with seventies release of Oxygène and the subsequent Équinoxe album and has toured internationally quite regularly for a third of a century.
Jarre will be at IFA promoting the new system on Monday, 6th September. He will be present from 12 p.m. - 2 p.m. at the Jarre Technologies stall, in Hall 1.2.
His new system is the first product from Jarre Technologies®, which he founded in 2005 with the aim of putting decades of research in sound & vision technology to service the creation of a range of high-end, affordable and aesthetic home-entertainment products.
“With the progress of technology, the conditions of recording music in the studio have advanced considerably, whereas the means of listening in general have not ceased to regress: the vinyl has been replaced by the CD, largely inferior in quality, which has now given way to even more low-grade MP3 files”, said Jarre.
“We have progressively lost our emotional rapport with sound. Not that long ago, the Hi-Fi system was the centrepiece of our living-rooms, today we listen to music on small plastic speakers connected to our computers. As music has become nomadic, we have become less demanding of the quality of the listening devices. As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.”
“This brought me to think of what the ideal sound-system of the future should be: A product that can accept all digital formats, from MP3 to hard-disk files, as well as a vinyl turn-table or a CD player, with an aesthetic ambition while privileging optimum audio quality – with bass and a dynamic acoustic that correspond to our listening habits today - all at a most affordable price.”
“AeroSystem One is the result of my cogitation and technical research, the first of a range of audio products – a range dedicated to visual is to follow.”
It also appears that we owe Jean Michel an apology. In the first posting of this article, we referred a recent article which cited Jarre as predicting the demise of the internet.
It seems Jarre was significantly misquoted, which he explains in his personal blog (in French).
Here’s what Google translate makes of Jean Michel’s comments.
"Due to a misunderstanding or a bad translation of an interview I gave recently in the British magazine Uncut, I would like to correct the statements that are loaned me and running around on the internet since this morning.”
“I never said that the Internet was dead, nor have I mentioned the term "sham ugly" about the internet is a tool I did not praise the obvious merits!”
“I simply put forward the idea that after a time the Internet is considered an area of freedom, a large canvas on which all the fraternal world trade while more or less free, it may well be that the rebels next generation "go underground" Whereas the web has become the largest machine in operation of all times, controlled by multinational corporations more powerful than the major labels have not been, for example, in the field of music in recent years.”
“This is an example, among others, showing us that constantly circulate any information, no matter how, on the web. Our responsibility and the greatest challenge of our relationship in the years to come with the web, will be to check the veracity of the flow of information we receive every second, especially when the relays ...”
