Coming Soon: Napster II: The Undead
Napster may rise from the dead and live again, this time as a commercial venture.
LATEST ADDITIONS
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HE2003, June 5–8 in SF
The Home Entertainment Show highlights the best of the best in home entertainment. With over 250 exhibitors, 80 demonstration rooms, an exciting live music program, and in-depth seminars, it is the largest and most comprehensive event of its kind! Learn the latest about HDTV, SACD, DVD-Audio, DVD, surround sound, two-channel audio, and more. <A HREF="http://www.homeentertainment-expo.com/exhiblist.html" TARGET=NEW>Click here for a list of exhibitors</A>.
Does it bother you when a disc is mastered with extra compression to make it sound louder?
In the June issue of <I>Stereophile</I>, John Atkinson writes about the disturbing practice of mastering music releases with unmusical compression and limiting. Is this a big deal for you?
Audiopax Model Eighty Eight monoblock power amplifier
Ah, Brazil...land of coffee, the samba, Pelé, Rio-by-the-sea-o, and tube amplifiers. All right, so perhaps the amplifier connection isn't <I>quite</I> as well-established. But one Brazilian amplifier designer, Eduardo de Lima, has published articles in <I>Glass Audio</I> magazine that are viewed by many as groundbreaking, and his evolving products have been seen at various specialist tube equipment shows. De Lima—president, founder, product designer, and principal owner of Audiopax Sistemas Eletroacusticos—is an electrical engineer who started out designing equipment for a telecommunications company, but since 1995 he's devoted his talents to designing a wide range of audio products, including speakers as well as preamps and power amps.
Do you listen to the radio more or less then you did five years ago?
In this week's Soapbox, reader Mike Johnston partly blames radio consolidation for music business woes. As radio ownership has changed over the last five years, have you found yourself listening to it more or less?
Music Biz News
Retail sales of recorded music in the United Kingdom sagged by an unprecedented 13% in the first three months of 2003, according to figures released May 14 by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). British music fans spent £216 million ($351 million) in the first quarter of this year, compared to £249 million ($404.6 million) in the same period a year ago. In unit sales, albums in the UK declined only 4.8% to 44 million, but prices dropped 9.4%. UK album sales totaled £200 million ($324.9 million); singles were off 42%, accounting for only £16.2 million ($26.3 million).
Dark Side of the Disc
The June issue of Stereophile, which hits newsstands this week, spills some ink on the 30th-anniversary reissue of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as a two-layer Super Audio CD (Capitol CDP 582136 2). Jon Iverson nominated the disc as June's "Recording of the Month," while I mentioned it in my "As We See It" column. This "fully loaded" SACD includes both multichannel and two-channel mixes encoded with the DSD system on a high-rez SACD layer and a two-channel "Red Book" transfer (16-bit word length, 44.1kHz sampling) on its CD layer.
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Is It Live Or Is It SACD?
Audiophiles will get a rare opportunity to discover the similarities and differences between SACD reproduction and the real thing at this year's <A HREF="http://www.homeentertainment-expo.com">Home Entertainment 2003</A> show in San Francisco. <A HREF="http://www.diversityrecords.net">Diversity Records, Ltd.</A> has announced it will record two performances by its artists at HE2003 on June 7 (1–4:30pm).
Industry News Roundup
Satellite radio services appear to be gaining sufficient market momentum to get them over the startup hump.
Added to the Archives This Week
Several readers have been asking "What's with all of the Musical Fidelity reviews in <I>Stereophile</I>?" Michael Fremer fearlessly wires the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/838/">Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista SACD player</A> into his system, noting, "Overachievers tend to rankle people after a while."