I'm a tinkerer. From homemade audio isolation and room-treatment products to a local area network (LAN) connecting my Macintosh laptops, I'm always building or modifying something. One of my latest projects is a combination of parts swaps and custom-machined bits to better adapt the ergonomics of my exotic Italian Bimota motorcycle to my distinctly un-Italian 6'3" frame. But regardless of what I'm into, I can't resist the urge to tinker.
The fate of a new format is often tied to a great demo on the showroom floor. Has your local high-end audio shop done SACD and/or DVD-Audio justice?
<A HREF="http://www.xmradio.com">XM Satellite Radio Holdings</A> is now in a position to operate well into the fourth quarter of 2002, thanks to a $129 million stock offering underwritten by Morgan Stanley Company. XM made the announcement in a press release dated December 10.
The received wisdom has it that among the billions of humans on earth, no two have identical fingerprints, no matter how closely related they are.
As Larry Greenhill reports in his review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/469/">Sony SCD-C555ES SACD changer</A>, "I didn't know what to expect from multichannel SACD. Would a multichannel music-only disc give me high-energy dramatics? Would there be any room for meditative, closed-eyed, total progressive muscular relaxation?" As Greenhill says, "The best was yet to come."
It seems that all of the forces in the music industry have lately been conspiring against the music lover and audiophile. The record labels and their hired gun, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), have so far blocked digital outputs on high-resolution audio players, insisted that watermarks be inserted into both high- and low-resolution audio data, and have even started to <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11178/">restrict</A> consumer's fair use of compact discs and digital downloads.
Over-the-air classical music broadcasting is becoming increasingly rare, but classical has got a huge listenership on the Internet, according to a survey by rating service <A HREF="http://www.arbitron.com">Arbitron, Inc.</A>, which early this month announced that three classical music stations were among the five most listened to on the Internet.
