News

Rocky Mountain Audio High: The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest will be held at the Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel (4900 South Syracuse; Denver, CO) from September 30 through October 2. In addition to over 70 demo rooms, there will be seminars and musical entertainment. Details and pre-registration can be found here.

Aperion's charitable contribution: Aperion Audio has established a program that will contribute $50 to hurricane relief efforts for every home-theater system it sells between now and October 31, 2005. The company has also pledged to send representatives to the area to help with rebuilding efforts. Aperion encourages all concerned audiophiles to contribute to the Red Cross, Northwest Medical Teams, Mercy Corps, Habitat for Humanity, or any other organization helping in the Gulf Coast area. To make it easy, the company provides a link for donations.

Mulder Audio X-cables: Gary Mulder, familiar to many audiophiles as Ayre's erstwhile sales manager, has resurfaced with a company that produces high-end musical instrument cables: Mulder Audio. We haven't heard 'em yet, but they look interesting and include a triple-shielded stomp box cable that ought to tame that spaghetti monster on our pedal board, as well as cables specifically designed for Fender Super Reverbs, Princetons, and Super Champs. Given Mulder's prowess as a system set-up perfectionist, we expect these'll create quite a buzz—we mean won't create any buzzes.

Sheesh, you know what we meant.

RIP Qualia? On September 21, engadget ran a teaser announcing Sony's discontinuation of its luxe Qualia line. Searching for confirmation, we stumbled across an article on babelfish that, quite frankly, we could not make hide nor hair of. So is Qualia gone or not? Engadget chimed in later with an update: The US branch has been spared "as long as there is demand in the marketplace."

We're still not sure what that means, since the Qualia line has always puzzled us. Some products, such as the $27,000 Qualia 004 SXRD projector struck us as near definitive; others, however, such as the $3900 two-megapixel Qualia 016 digital camera, just seemed overpriced (although it did come in really cool packaging). Granted, we probably weren't in Qualia's market demographic, but we wonder how long "as long as there is demand" really means. And does this mean we might be able to get a pair of those sexy Q10 headphones for less than $3900?

All kidding aside, we do understand Sony's predicament in having established itself so solidly as a mainstream company that its cutting edge engineering might get (ahem) discounted. Establishing a "step-up" marque makes sense, but Qualia always seemed to push its products as "lifestyles of the rich and famous" accessories rather than a simple, easy to grasp "better." When Canon and Nikon bring out sub-$1000 digital SLRs that have pro photographers converting from film, a two-megapixel camera seems hard to justify, even if it does come in a slick aluminum briefcase—and $4000 buys a heck of a pair of headphones and a headphone amp and a pretty good source these days. We won't miss Qualia—especially if its demise forces Sony to take the lead in designing products that are clearly better, not just fancier. But, with its promise to lay off 10,000 employees by 2008, will Sony, under the leadership of Sir Howard Stringer, have what it takes to re-establish a leadership role in the industry? We can't wait to find out.