One of the music industry's "big five" will soon begin offering its wares as digital downloads. Seagram, Ltd. chief executive Edgar Bronfman, speaking on Friday, March 3 at the Jupiter Consumer Online forum in New York, said his <A HREF="http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group</A> will start selling music online this spring.
Wes Phillips writes: "If, as some would have it, <I>Audiophilia nervosa</I> is like the dark night of reason, then certain audio epiphanies must necessarily stand out from a distance, like a grove of trees 20 miles away thrown into stark relief by prairie lightning." In his review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/207/">B&W Nautilus 801 loudspeaker</A>, WP recounts that "the B&W Nautilus 801 has the stuff to keep me in fireplace fantasies throughout my dotage, and probably well into my (hyper)active middle age to boot."
High-resolution digital audio got a big boost on March 2, when Yamaha Electronics Corporation announced the release of its new RX-V1, a multichannel receiver featuring Burr-Brown PCM 1704 24-bit/96kHz DACs for all 10 channels, including two subwoofer outputs. Six of the channels are full-range with amplifier power of 110W each, with claimed frequency response beyond 100kHz.
When the format is finally launched around the world, DVD-Audio discs will have the ability to store and play back video information such as lyric sheets and pictures from recording sessions. Is this important to you?
How many of you out there know what a Nuvistor is? Michael Fremer takes a look at this unique device and its application in the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/205/">Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300 power amplifier</A>. "Enclosing its vacuum in metal rather than glass, the Nuvistor was designed as a long-lived, highly linear device with low heat, low microphony, and low noise—all of which it needed to have any hope of competing in the brave new solid-state world emerging when RCA introduced it in the 1960s." Musical Fidelity decided to use the Nuvistor in a limited-run amplifier, and therein lies an interesting tale, which Michael skillfully uncovers.
An Internet startup being organized by Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and auctioneer Ted Owen will offer John Lennon's 30-year-old Steinway piano for auction some time in July. The piano is now on display in The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool and will remain there until October 9, which would have been Lennon's 60th birthday.
In a move that could save exhibitors a considerable amount of money, the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is being rescheduled for a day earlier than previously announced. Originally planned to run from Sunday, January 7 through Wednesday, January 10, 2001, the show will now begin on Saturday, January 6 and run through Tuesday, January 9.
Conventional wisdom has it that, compared to men, few women express much interest in consumer electronics, and especially audio equipment. In fact, according to Consumer Electronics Association statistics, women accounted for only 22% of the $81 billion spent on consumer electronics in 1999. Prognosticator Jupiter Communcations predicts that, in spite of this, women will account for 46 million online buyers by 2003, and will overtake men in online purchasing.
A slump in the music business is officially over. Sales of recorded music in the United States last year totaled $14.6 billion, an all-time high. The figure is a 6.3% increase from 1998's total of $13.7 billion, the previous record, according to a recent <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/021800.htm">report</A> from the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industries Association of America</A> (RIAA).
In a statement that may have far-reaching ramifications for the online digital music-distribution business, last week <A HREF="http://www.sonic.com">Sonic Solutions</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sony.co.jp">Sony</A> announced at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in Paris that they would collaborate to integrate Sony's ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3) into iMaster, Sonic's suite of tools for the preparation of compressed audio for Internet distribution.