Jon Iverson

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Blue Smoke Black Box Music Server
CES 2010
Jon Iverson  |  Jan 11, 2010  |  6 comments
Music server manufacturer Blue Smoke returned to CES this year as part of the Rockport Technologies suite in the upper echelons of the Mirage. The company's product is the $6,995 Black Box music server where they focus on creating an optimal environment for digital music on the hardware side and assume the customer will choose a Windows compatible music player and interface. For their demo, Windows Media Center was used with a Dell touchscreen (seen on the right) and keyboard/mouse combo for the control functions. A MSB DAC, located under the Black Box in the photo above, converts the data to analog.
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Blue Smoke's "The Black Box" Music Server Revealed
CES 2009
Jon Iverson  |  Jan 09, 2009  |  First Published: Jan 10, 2009  |  16 comments
The touchscreen music server market has picked up a new face with the official release of Blue Smoke's "The Black Box". Demonstrated in prototype form at last year's CES, the final version is a sleek, um, black box with a single disc slot on the front and an array of connectors on the back. Retail is $6995 and should be hitting dealer shelves Q1 2009.
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BMG Joins the Digital Download Club
News
Jon Iverson  |  Aug 27, 2000  |  0 comments
Last week, BMG Entertainment, the music and entertainment division of Bertelsmann AG, revealed that it will join several other major labels (see previous stories EMI and Universal) by bringing its own digital downloads to the Internet this September. The company says that it will start with approximately 50 songs and 50 complete albums, to be made available via several retail Web outlets at prices ranging from $1.98 to $3.49 per song and from $9.98 to $16.98 per album.
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BMG Plans to Have It Both Ways
News
Jon Iverson  |  Oct 15, 2000  |  0 comments
The most common complaint about record companies: CD prices are too high. In fact, many blame Napster's runaway success on the insistence of "greedy labels" on pricing discs at $15 or higher. Apparently BMG Direct, a division of BMG Entertainment, has put two and two together and found it equals $9.99.
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BMG Restricts Discs
News
Jon Iverson  |  Sep 14, 2003  |  0 comments
More compact discs that attempt to restrict how you use them are coming to a record store near you. BMG announced last week that its Arista Records division will be the company's first label in the US to release a commercial CD using copy-restriction technology.
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Bootmarks Are Coming
News
Jon Iverson  |  Mar 30, 2003  |  0 comments
It's no secret that the music industry has added watermarking to its arsenal in an effort to restrict how audio content is used. With SACD, DVD-Audio, and now CD, audio watermarking has been used mainly for digitally stored content. But the music business also has problems with live concert bootlegs as well as bootlegs surfacing after special broadcast events.
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Both DVD-Audio and SACD Get Much Needed Software Boost
News
Jon Iverson  |  Dec 24, 2000  |  0 comments
If it's the software that sells a new format, then several recent announcements bode well for both SACD and DVD-Audio. Last week, DTS announced plans to begin shipment of the first DVD-Audio music recordings produced by its company-owned DTS Entertainment record label by late February 2001. Also, the first multichannel SACD to be produced by a major label from an original multitrack master, Mike Oldfield's recently remastered 1971 classic Tubular Bells is due for release from Virgin Records in February 2001.
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Boulder 1021 Disc Player
CES 2009
Jon Iverson  |  Jan 14, 2009  |  First Published: Jul 13, 2009  |  1 comments
I'm still amazed at the sheer number of new high-end CD players announced at this show. Either someone didn't get the memo about the disc format's impending demise, or else we've entered that phase, as with turntables, that playback advances will continue to win new customers with big collections.
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Boulder 1021 Updated
CES 2010
Jon Iverson  |  Jan 07, 2010  |  First Published: Jan 08, 2010  |  19 comments
Boulder has updated their 1021 disc player, reviewed by John Atkinson last July, adding an ethernet jack on the back and an iPhone app to control multiple streams of content such as a NAS drive on the network or media server. Boulder's Rich Maez says the new player is currently in the debugging stage and should be available near the end of January for $24,000.
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Boulder 2120 DAC/Streamer
CES 2015
Jon Iverson  |  Jan 16, 2015  |  0 comments
The first thing you notice is the ginourmous display on the front, which you're tempted to tap like an iPad. But it's just a display and apparently very popular in some overseas (read Japan) markets. There are buttons on both sides of the screen however, so you can operate the 2120 with those or with an iPad. (Though it may be hard to tell from this photo, this is a large product, and that display is larger than an iPad mini.)

The 2120 is a UPnP streamer and should be available in a couple months for around $55-60k. It will support up to 32/384 PCM and DSD and there is a complete set of inputs on the back. Under the main box in the photo is the power supply.

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