News

On Wednesday evening, June 10, The Academy Advancing High Performance Audio & Video held its 1998 Golden Note Awards at the Marina Del Rey Ritz-Carlton. Following an address by John Hoskins of the Advantage Performance Group, a sales consulting firm, the amiable awards ceremony was MC'd by Paradigm's own stand-up comedian, Rob Sample. AAHPAV's ceaselessly energetic Chairperson Sue Regan assisted in the presentations, as did Academy President Joe Picirilli. And the hard-working winners (drum roll, please) are . . .

Both Sonic Frontiers Inc. and The Lenbrook Group of Ontario, Canada stated June 5th that they will not be proceeding with a deal announced earlier.

Engineering facilities and a finished-goods warehouse at Altec Lansing Technologies' Milford, Pennsylvania, headquarters were damaged by fire late Sunday, May 31. The blaze was said to have been exacerbated by severe weather. No injuries were reported.

The practice of "Transshipping"---selling a product outside one's designated territory---is widespread in the audio industry. It's commonplace for dealers to sell not only to walk-in customers, but also over the telephone or Internet to customers in other dealers' territories, usually at discounted prices. While not problematic on a small scale, the practice favors large-volume dealers over smaller ones, and is almost always a violation of a dealer's agreement with a manufacturer.

Software giant Microsoft Corporation has entered the audio market with a satellite-and-subwoofer speaker system for use with personal computers. The Digital Sound System 80 made its debut at this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3), held May 28-30 in Atlanta's World Congress Center. The system was designed in conjunction with Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands, one of the world's largest electronics companies.

On May 26, N2K's JazzCentralStation launched the first officially sanctioned Miles Davis StarSite, MilesDavis.com. An all-star musical and multimedia tribute was held that evening at New York City's Birdland, hosted by Dr. Billy Taylor and recorded by Phil Ramone and Michael Cuscuna for a September release on N2K Encoded Music. May 26 would have been Davis' 72nd birthday.

In an effort to make computers more useful as audio systems, MusicMatch and Xing Technology recently announced MusicMatch Jukebox, a digital audio management software program for the consumer market.