LATEST ADDITIONS

How much power do you really need? How much power can you actually use? What's necessary, and what's icing on the cake? And does anyone really need 1000Wpc?

Several weeks ago, we reported on the revival of McCormack Audio by Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson, who purchased the company's assets at an auction in Southern California. This past week, McCormack Audio has announced that one of the original co-founders, Steve McCormack, has rejoined the company as Director of Research and Development. McCormack had worked at the company from its inception in 1982 until 1996.

In anticipation of the upcoming 1.0 DVD-Audio specification (see previous article), Sonic Solutions and Warner Music Group wasted no time in announcing their intent to collaborate in creating new multichannel high-density recordings to showcase the new format. Warner was one of the first major labels to deliver music via CD, and Warner's video division has never been shy in their support of Open-DVD for video. So it comes as no surprise that they're one of the first major music houses out of the gate for the audio version of DVD.

A few years ago, when media pundits began discussing the possible ramifications of 500 channels of television, the concept of "narrowcasting" quickly became the buzzword du jour. The idea was that programming in the future would be aimed at increasingly better-defined markets. Rather than an all-sports channel, an astute broadcaster would operate multiple channels devoted to individual sports: an all-basketball channel, for example, or round-the-clock motor sports. Advertising tailored for a tightly defined market might prove more efficient than its shotgun-effect equivalent.