iTunes continues to flourish, the major labels have been struggling to reinvent themselves, and CD sales keep stalling. What do you think about Radiohead's business model of allowing fans to decide how much they should spend on the band's new CD, <I>In Rainbows</I>?
That, somehow, the "absolute sound" of live music is locked up within the grooves or pits of the discs we play and can be retrieved in its entirety if only we had a a good enough playback system is one of the enduring myths in high-end audio. Yet the art of recording is just that, an art, and it is entirely possible that a better playback system will sound worse with some recordings. And with the mainstream press telling would-be audiophiles that low–bit-rate MP3s are of "CD quality" and that even CD is overkill for audiophile sound quality, why would anyone need high-resolution recordings?
On October 4, a federal jury in Duluth, MN found Jammie Thomas liable for copyright infringement, imposing a damages assessment of $220,000 ($9250 for each of 24 songs). It was the first jury trial resulting from the series of lawsuits the recording industry began in September 2003. Since most of those suits were settled out of court (average settlement: $4000) or defaulted, <I>Capitol Records v. Thomas</I> was the rare case to actually go to court and in front of a jury. It was interesting in ways other than its seemingly high damages.
Radiohead, whose last recording, <I>Hail to the Thief</I>, debuted at number three on <I>Billboard</I>'s top 200 chart in 2004, announced that its new recording, <I>In Rainbows</I>, will be available as a DRM-free download on October 10. The new twist, however, is that consumers can pay any amount they wish for it.
ArkivMusic.com has just signed a deal with Warner Classics to reissue, on demand, out-of-print recordings from Teldec, Erato, and Warner Classics. The site's first 300 offerings from the Warner USA catalog, available at the end of October, will join the more than 4000 other out-of-print titles from EMI, Sony/BMG, Universal Music Group, and two dozen independent classical music labels now available on demand from ArkivMusic on ArkivCD. An additional 1000 ArkivCD reissue titles should become available by the end of 2007.
Tweaks come and go. When a new one creates a buzz in audiophile circles, I generally prefer to wait and see if it's still around after the initial excitement has subsided. I'd heard about "audiophile" fuses some time ago, and although the likelihood of them making a significant difference didn't seem as farfetched as such tweaks as the "intelligent chip" or the "clever little clock," I didn't feel inclined to try them. I was persuaded otherwise by the confluence of two separate influences: a report by Michael Fremer, in the February 2007 <I>Stereophile</I>, that the HiFi-Tuning fuses produced a "subtle but noticeable" improvement in the sound of his Musical Fidelity kWP preamplifier; and an encounter at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show with Robert Stein of importer Ultra Systems (the HiFi-Tuning fuses are made in Germany), who said that they produced a <I>big</I> improvement and offered to send me some samples.
Huckleberry tries to smirk some extra kibble out of me.
Bagheera is convinced that her ancestors on the savannah hunted the colossal wooly queen-sized bed.
Make mine music: "Music training, with its pervasive effects on the nervous system's ability to process sight and sound, may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than learning phonics."
