It is shaping up as one of the big battles of the 21st century: content owners (who are not necessarily the artists who create content) versus the consumer electronics industry. On the one hand you have Hollywood with its record companies and the RIAA, and on the other, the manufacturers of products and technologies that facilitate the manipulation and use of digital content.
<A HREF="http://www.RedRoseMusic.com">Red Rose Music</A> is celebrating the launch of its Chicago store with a grand opening bash Thursday, September 26.
An expanded alliance between one of the High End's most respected speaker manufacturers and one of the most aggressive upscale retailers should bode well for both partners—and for music lovers nationwide.
There's something special about big tube amplifiers. No other audio component has such a primal appeal or can so quickly reduce grown (?) audiophiles to Homer Simpsons sighing, "Mmmmm...toooobs." EveAnna Manley, president of Manley Laboratories, understands the effect of high-powered tubes on the audiophile brain and shares the obsession. A Harley rider, mountain climber, and devoted music lover, she is one of the industry's most individualistic characters. You just have to appreciate a gal who ends each CES by blaring Rage Against the Machine at top volume.
Though each link in the audio chain is significant in its own way, we seem to spend more time agonizing over the choice and setup of loudspeakers than any other component. Floorstanding or stand-mounted? Full-range frequency extension or minimonitor coherence? Multiple-driver complexity or two-way simplicity? Pleasurable and forgiving or resolved and revealing? And even when money is no object, how much speaker do you really want...or need? It might sound splendid in the shop, but how will it couple with your room? How will it integrate with your other gear? Is it easy to set up and drive or will it involve specialized gear and a massive overhaul of your current rig?
Perhaps SACD has yet to reach critical mass in terms of consumer and industry acceptance, but halfway through 2002, it appears to be getting closer to that goal. Along with Sony and Philips (Universal Music), EMI is on board, as are many smaller, sound-conscious independent labels such as Chesky, Analogue Productions, Telarc, DMP, Rounder, Opus 3, Songlines, and the resurrected Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. For now, DVD-Audio, with its screen-driven menus, doesn't appear to be an attractive option for audiophiles not interested in merging audio with video. Perhaps the future will bring universal two- and multichannel playback devices equipped with LCD screens that actually live up to both formats' sonic potential, but I don't believe that day won't dawn any time soon.
There have been reports that some CD, and some combination CD/DVD/etc. machines, have trouble finding the CD layer on a hybrid SACD disc. If you've bought a hybrid SACD/CD disc, has it played on everything you own that can play a CD?
As the saying goes, there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Statistics can be used to help understand what goes on in the world, but, as any marketing exec or PR company knows, they can also be manipulated to tell a particular story.
On Wednesday, September 11, the <A HREF="http://www.nab.org">National Association of Broadcasters</A> (NAB) filed a brief with the U.S. Copyright Office seeking relief from the implementation of a webcasting royalty schedule announced this summer by the Librarian of Congress, James Billington. In June, Billington determined that commercial stations streaming their musical programming on the Internet should pay a rate of .07 cents per song per 1000 listeners, a rate less than half that suggested by the music industry–backed Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel.
Chip manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.cirrus.com">Cirrus Logic</A> announced last week that it has introduced two audio, high-performance, digital-to-analog converters (DACs) that it claims will enable manufacturers to bring more DVD-Audio players to the mainstream consumer market.