By Don Lindich
Week 51, 2017
Q. My wife and I have been discussing electronic personal assistants. Which do you prefer, Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri?
-G.R., South Bend, IN
A. That is an easy one, though one is a smartphone assistant, the other more of a home assistant. I much prefer Amazon’s Alexa, first of all because it actually works, almost 100% of the time. I can’t say the same about Siri these days. I don’t know what happened but Siri has become so unreliable for me that I now refer to it as a personal irritant, not personal assistant. It has been screwing up simple commands like, “Call Dad” with increasing regularity and sometimes it takes several tries to get a response at all.
Alexa is very reliable and I use it regularly at home. An Amazon speaker with Alexa, even the $49 Echo Dot, makes the greatest alarm clock ever. Every night I say, “Alexa, set an alarm for 7:30 am,” and the speaker replies that the alarm is set. Then I say, “Alexa, set an alarm for 7:40 am,” so I have a backup. When the alarm goes off in the morning I say, “Alexa, cancel alarm” or “Alexa, cancel all alarms.” If I don’t know what alarms I have set, I say, “Alexa, what are my alarms” and it will tell me.
Alexa and linked devices can do reminders, timers, serve as a household intercom, control your thermostat and lighting, shop, play music, and provide information, news and weather from anywhere in the world. You can make phone and video calls, integrate a security system with cameras and pet monitors, and even play Jeopardy! via voice commands. It is easy and fun to use, and you can start with a single Echo Dot and expand from there. If you want quality music playback as well, check out the Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Show.
Q. I have heard that new vinyl records (of old albums) have very poor sound quality and you should buy used, original versions to get the best sound. Is this true?
– G.D., Atlantic City, NJ
A. I do not buy much new vinyl these days as I already have thousands of albums, most of them purchased used. One of the beauties of owning a turntable is the ability to expand your music collection very inexpensively, across a wide variety of musical genres, by buying used records. I probably pay an average of only $3.00 per record at stores like Half Price Books and Music and Jerry’s Records.
To answer your question I consulted my friend Erik, who is an expert record collector. He confirmed that some new releases of old material are phenomenal and some are horrible. Plan on doing your due diligence before buying.
Questions like yours inspired me to create a new website devoted just to vinyl, part of an expanding web of Sound Advice sites with my column website,soundadvicenews.com, serving as the hub. Sound Advice Vinyl is located at soundadvicevinyl.com and features turntable, cartridge and accessory reviews, a glossary, tips on system setup and cleaning your vinyl, with much more to come, including record reviews. The other two topics I get the most questions about are speakers and headphones, so I launched Sound Advice Speakers (soundadvicespeakers.com) and Sound Advice Headphones (soundadviceheadphones.com) as well, all to better serve readers. As with all my websites, there are no annoying and intrusive pop-up ads so visiting is a pleasurable, frustration-free experience. The sites are small now, but will be growing rapidly. Please check them out and help me make them better by sending your questions, suggestions and review requests. Thank you!
Questions, comments or need a product recommendation? donlindich@gmail.com