On March 24, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division stated that, "after thorough and careful review" (translation: more than one year) Sirius Satellite Radio's $5 billion offer to purchase XM Satellite Radio "is not likely to harm consumers."
Visitors to the 2008 International Auto Show, currently taking place at NYC's Jacob Javits Convention Center, might discover something different at the Bentley display: a high-end audio listening room. Bentley Motors and Naim have teamed up for the "Naim For Bentley" program, which will be offered as a sound package upgrade for all Bentley models by year's end.
"I thought starting an audiophile record label was hard," Chesky Records co-founder Norman Chesky told Stereophile. "That was nothing compared to this. We've spent three years developing HDtracks."
We get letters department: Here at Stereophile, we talk to people in the high-end audio industry all the time, and we frequently get fascinating emails from movers and shakers within the industry. This week we received one that got us thinking about outsourcing manufacturing and how it could affect high-end consumers.
Blender has just posted its nominations for greatest record industry screw-ups. I have a few quibbles, but as a whole, Blender tells a tale of monumental stupidity,from Decca passing on the Beatles because Dick Rowe was irritated that too many frantic teens were attempting to get into the Cavern Club to shutting down Napster without having a legitimate channel to replace it.
Even the most savvy Stereophile reader might wonder what a "network music player" is. Linn rightly considers a music server to be a combination of 1) stored digital files, 2) music-management software, and 3) a device that uses #2 to transfer #1 to your hi-fi. What Linn's Klimax DS is is a high-quality digital-to-analog converter (DAC) that receives digital data through an Ethernet connection rather than optical or electrical S/PDIF or AES/EBU inputs.
Here's an interesting article about Princeton University composer Dmitri Tymoczko, who has string theory mathematics to represent the relationship of musical chords to one another in a graphic form.
Wes Phillips
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