The Electro-Voice 635 is great for feedback - creating it, that is. Sound Artist Nicolas Collins continues our conversation on audio experimentation, and when an audio "issue" isn't really an issue. Read more from Collins in previous Gearwire articles.

Choose a product category that relates to your area of expertise. In your opinion, what are some of the best and worst products currently available in that category, and why?

I seldom buy any musical "products". I make or program most of my stuff, or begin with commercial devices that are flawed in some way and then adapt them for my peculiar use. That said, the Electro-Voice 635 is the best mike in the world for feedback, I've been using it since 1972, it's cheap and indestructible - a world without them would be a very sad place indeed. The only product I've ever felt close to hating is Bose speakers. My music is pretty forgiving of sound systems, but it always sounded so bad through those Bose boxes that were common in the 1980s that for many years my technical rider specifically prohibited them.

What are some of the biggest challenges that students have posed to you? How did you address them?

Thanks no doubt to the proliferation of computer-based audio production, the majority of my students never seem to develop an intuitive feel for how mixers work - especially the bus structure. Every year I try a different metaphor, but nothing seems to work. This is probably irrelevant if they continue to work in software, but is essential to studio production, live sound, and the wonderful experimental world of artists like David Tudor.

What is your take on the issue of audio quality, in terms of a generation growing up listening mainly to mp3s? Do you think it's a problem? Why or why not?

I think file sharing is magnificent. Thanks to Limewire and the return to the singles mentality, personal playlists are so much more varied than during the age of expensive LP and CD albums. But the earbud generation is going to get quite a shock if they ever shift over to amps and big speakers -- the noise and artifacts of compressed audio will make them pawns in the record industry's endless attempt to get people to duplicate all their favorite music in a newer, "better" format. Plus, I worry about the impermanence of a digital music collection: disk crashes are a lot more common than the house fire that reduces one's vinyl to an arty black blob, but most people still don't bother to back up.