Having previous experience working for the CIA or the KGB may be a bonus on the resume of any aspiring audio industry applicant, it seems. In an effort to stymie the illegal copying and distribution of digital song files, record companies and hardware manufacturers have turned to increasingly complicated tracking technologies such as MPEG-4 and watermarking. The most recent addition to the anti-pirate bag of tricks: "fingerprinting."
On Tuesday, April 17, 2001, New York said farewell to John Lewis in a memorial ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Over 5000 New Yorkers from all walks of life attended, but the most visibly represented community was the musicians.
Is the consumer electronics business swimming, sinking, or simply treading water? It all depends on who's talking. Retailers don't appear to be suffering, despite widespread staffing cutbacks by large companies, but the gains are coming more slowly than they did last year.
Sam Tellig may apologize for contributing to the audiophile empty wallet syndrome, but that doesn't stop him from ranking the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/339/">Monarchy Audio Digital Interface Processor 24/96</A> "a must-have if you want to get the most from your upsampling MSB Link DAC III."
<B>JIMMY SMITH: <I>Dot Com Blues</I></B><BR>Jimmy Smith, Hammond B-3 organ; Russell Malone, Phil Upchurch, guitar; Reggie McBride, electric bass; Harvey Mason, drums; Lennie Castro, percussion. Guest: Dr. John, vocal, piano;, Etta James, vocal; B.B. King, Taj Mahal, vocals, guitars; Keb' Mo,' vocals. Horn section: Darrell Leonard, trumpet, arr.; Oscar Brashear, Leslie Drayton, trumpets; Herman Riley, Joe Sublett, saxes; George Bohanon, Maurice Spears, trombones<BR>Verve 314 549 978-2 (CD). 2000. John Porter, prod.; Rik Pekkonen, eng. DDD. TT: 60:43<BR>Performance <B>****</B><BR>Sonics <B>*****</B>
Those who have read this magazine regularly over the past five years know that Canadian designer Vince Bruzzese has been marketing his small, two-way loudspeakers under the Totem Acoustic brand name. Every review of one of these designs has raved about their strong bass response and three-dimensional imaging, but ends with a "but": "the sound is totally awesome, the imaging is holographic, and my wife thinks it looks terrific in the living room, but..."
Are format wars, such as the battle between DVD-Audio and SACD, worth all the trouble? Some would argue that they let the consumer decide what is best, while others feel that these battles should have been fought in the boardroom and standards committee meetings. What do you think?
During the past year, hardly a day has gone by without headlines announcing the latest twist in the fate of embattled free music service <A HREF="http://www.napster.com">Napster.com</A>. Lost in the hysteria was Napster's tiny rival <A HREF="http://www.emusic.com/">Emusic.com</A>, a three-year-old online music venture that always charged its subscribers for downloading tunes, and always paid the copyright holders. For news appeal, Emusic's paltry 10,000 subscribers and languishing stock price didn't compare to Napster's reported 75 million users and major league court battles.
In the perfect digital future, audiophiles would be able to drink from the purest of high-resolution audio datastreams with no worry that someone upstream had polluted the current. But in the real world, content providers and hardware manufacturers increasingly conspire to dirty the flow a little and limit unauthorized consumption by controlling the technology needed to filter out their toxic additives.
To balance or not to balance? That is the audio question that Martin Colloms sets out to answer in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/335/">Balance: Benefit or Bluff?</A> Although balanced capability is a fashionable feature in many expensive audio products, Colloms writes that "the High End could be paying dangerous, costly lip service to the received wisdom that balanced operation is the goal for an audio system."