Beginning next year, <A HREF="http://www.xmradio.com">XM Satellite Radio</A> won't merely offer 100 channels of news, sports, talk shows, and the entire spectrum of music nationwide. Thanks to a partnership announced May 30 with <A HREF="http://www.commandaudio.com">Command Audio Corporation</A>, XM will allow listeners to personalize their radio programming.
<IMG SRC="/images/newsart/he2002.viola.jpg" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=67 BORDER=0 ALIGN=LEFT>If you think the name Viola Audio Laboratories sounds familiar, wait 'til you hear the names behind it: Tom Colangelo, Paul Jayson, and Tony DiSalvo—all former officers at Cello. Viola, working out of Cello's former New Haven facilities, is now producing a complete line of electronics, from the $18,000 modular Spiritu preamp to the $12,000 Bravo Double Set monoblock amplifier. The company also manufactures audio cables and a modular loudspeaker, the $18,000/pair Allegro, as well as an $18,000 subwoofer, the Basso. The system certainly is elegant-looking, and it sounded impressively coherent in a small hotel room—and that was with both the Allegro's bass module and subwoofer disconnected!
Wandering around the show, we were struck by how good most of the speakers we were hearing were. Not just the cost-no-logic designs, but pretty much <I>all</I> of them. Are we audiophiles lucky or what?
HE 2002's first day was filled with press conferences, but none was more widely anticipated than Sony's. The pre-conference chatter was filled with insiders insisting they positively knew for a fact that Sony was confirming last week's rumor that Universal and Sony were discontinuing CD manufacture in favor of dual-layer SACDs—and also by insiders who insisted it was simply a rumor.
The record labels are becoming more brazen each passing week with new ways to restrict consumer use of purchased CDs. Does this inhibit your purchase of new music?
Russia has a new organization that will promote a legitimate music industry and fight industrial piracy, according to mid-May reports from the <A HREF="http://www.ifpi.org">International Federation of Phonographic Industries</A>.
Back in 1987, J. Gordon Holt & Martin Colloms set their sights on the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/585/">Audio Research M300 monoblock power amplifier</A>. "After having proven that vacuum tubes could do some sonic things better than transistors, Audio Research is now endeavoring to show that transistors can do most things better than tubes," says JGH, adding that the then-new M300 is a "hybrid amplifier . . . it's half tube, half solid-state."
The music industry was much in the news in late May, with file-sharing lawsuits launched, Web royalties deferred, the payola system attacked, and an artists-and-record labels coalition questioning the homogenization of radio.
Used-equipment junkies take note: eBay will bring its popular roving university to New York City for the Home Entertainment 2002 Show (HES 2002), May 30–June 2, 2002. Since its inception, eBay University has instructed thousands of eBay users on the ins and outs of buying and selling on eBay. The special seminar from eBay at HE 2002 will provide specific tips for attendees on buying and selling consumer electronic products.
The music industry's worst nightmare is coming true: feeble attempts to shackle compact discs with "protection" are falling prey to simple <A HREF="http://news.com.com/2100-1023-918273.html">felt pen hacks</A>. And it's too late to build use-restriction and tracking technologies directly into CD players and existing computer CD drives.