MacWorld sometimes produces an unexpected encounter. Today I managed to crash a demo be given by Killion of Etymotic. The demo involved various reproductions of what would happen when music was ripped from a CD and into a file and so forth. It seemed like pretty standard stuff to me (I can’t tell swell from hell, I’ve got terrible ears) but after the audio portion of the demo was done Dr. Killion started talking and it was clear that he was really into this stuff. In fact it became really obvious that he had spent years studying the topic. And indeed he has. He talked about response curve of the ear, a really awesome dummy they have, showed some more graphs. After a few minutes I could tell we weren’t really hearing about the earphones, we we learning about auditory stuff in general. It was like showing up at MacWorld and getting a free college lecture.

iPhone Matters will be reviewing some Etymotic stuff (not me, horrible ears and all) so keep your ears open for that.