<I>Man</I>, has Balanced Audio Technology come a long way in a short time. I think partners Steve Bednarski and Victor Khomenko have comprehensively put the kibosh on the notion that newcomers can't succeed in high-end audio.
There are some wildly different speaker technologies out there with one common goal: accurate reproduction of music. In your experience, which approach works best?
The numbers are up for <A HREF="http://www.cdnow.com">CDnow</A>. The world's largest online music retailer reported April 30 that its first-quarter sales increased 288% over the same period in 1997. The company took in $10 million in revenue through the period ending March 31, an increase of 26.4% over the previous quarter, in which revenue totaled $7.9 million.
On May 1, <A HREF="http://www.nilesaudio.com/">Niles Audio Corporation, Inc.</A>, manufacturer of audio/video custom installation components, announced that it had "successfully defended its indoor/outdoor speaker line against would-be imitators."
The <A HREF="http://www.experience.org">Experience Music Project</A> (EMP), a 130,000-square-foot interactive music museum opening in Seattle in 1999, announced on April 30 that it has acquired 19 recently discovered audio tapes of rare Jimi Hendrix recordings from 1969 and 1970.
Just about a month away, <A HREF="http://www.hifishow.com">HI-FI '98</A>, The Home Theater & Specialty Audio Show, will interest thousands of audio enthusiasts when it visits The Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles, California from Wednesday, June 10 to Sunday, June 14, 1998.
Remember when you weren't too busy to make your own cassette tapes to play in the car? How you could link one song to the next by genre or theme or beat or musical key? Remember how much more satisfying it was to listen to those tapes than it was to listen to the radio? No commercials, no announcers, no filler---and you liked every tune.
The next generation of streaming media technology was unveiled last week at RealNetworks' Conference '98 in Burlingame, California. The star of the show? "Bandwidth-friendly" RealPlayer G2, which promises to make noisy audio and glitchy video a part of the Web's past.
<B>OLU DARA: <I>In the World, from Natchez to New York</I></B><BR> Atlantic 83077-2 (CD). 1998. Yves Beauvais, Olu Dara, prods.; Danny Kopelson, eng. Tom Schick, asst. eng. AAD? TT: 47:03<BR> Performance <B>****</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B><I>(But see final paragraph.)</I>
My wife's cousin Steve used to sell antiques. Whenever he would display in his shop's window an impeccable (and expensive) item such as a Colonial pie safe, someone would inevitably walk into the shop and demand to know its price. He'd quote a staggering figure, and the browser would get excited. "Why, I have a piece at home <I>exactly</I> the same as that one! Do you think I could get that sort of money for it?" Steve, having learned his lesson the hard way, would be noncommittal.