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Office System

"Do you miss me yet?" she asks again.

"Nope," I say.

On this warm and sunny day, Elizabeth and I moved from our shared cubicle space and into our own private offices. At once, this is huge and nothing at all. While I can no longer see her, I can still hear her singing and coughing. We still share a wall, but that wall is now made of something more than just dusty cloth and goes all the way up to the ceiling (where the cockroaches dance and play).

We have windows. Our windows allow sunshine to blanket our skin, and our windows rise to offer fresh(er) air. I can…

Retail Bouncing Back?

Retail may be bouncing back. Best Buy, North America's number one electronics chain, reported an 18% gain in total sales for its third quarter ended November 29. The Richfield, MN–based operation posted $6.03 billion in total sales, with same-store sales up 8.6%.

The numbers were the company's best in more than two years. Best Buy operates 600 stores under its own name in the US and 19 in Canada, as well as 108 Future Shop stores in Canada and 22 Magnolia Audio Video stores in the US Pacific Northwest. US sales rose 15% to a $5.43 billion total, with strong performance in the flat-panel TV…

CES Debutantes

Audio manufacturers love to make big announcements at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (which runs January 8–11, 2004), and the upcoming show is no exception. In addition to Fried Products' aggressive relaunch (see related story), several other companies are heading in new directions.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL), known to audiophiles around the world for its meticulous re-releases of select vinyl, CD, and now SACD discs, has decided to take some of what the company has learned from several decades of pushing audio systems to their limits and apply it to the real…

Total Audio Sales Up Nearly 10% in First Quarter

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) reports that factory-to-dealer sales of audio products soared in March, with dollar volume increasing by 14% over March 1999, to a total of more than $721 million. According to the CEA, sales in the first quarter of this year were 10% ahead of first-quarter 1999, at approximately $1.75 billion.

The CEA says that "Sales of separate home audio components showed tremendous growth," increasing by 16% over last March. The industry group states that growth in component sales was fueled by strong sales of the three main components subcategories:…

Music Biz Bounces Back

Is the music industry in the midst of a turnaround?

A mid-year report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) notes the first serious upswing in CD shipments to retailers since 1999. For the first half of 2004, ended June 30, shipments of CD albums were up 10.2% compared to the same period in 2003: 270.2 million versus 245.3 million the previous year.

Dollar value of CDs shipped to retailers hit $4.43 billion, a 3.4% gain over the $4.25 billion posted for the first half of 2003. RIAA stats indicate that the average retail price of a CD was $16.39 during the first six…

Added to the Archives This Week

Bothered by bounce? Jonathan Scull offers some solutions for turntable owners with problem floors in "Fine Tunes" No.20. He also describes how impoverished audiophiles can make their own low-cost anti-vibration shelves. Stereophile readers respond with their own experiences—and a warning.

"Thiels aren't exotic enough," feels one of Sam Tellig's hair-shirted audiophile pals. The indefatigable Mr. T. sets out to prove that exoticism is not necessarily a virtue in his enthusiastic report on the Thiel CS1.5 loudspeaker. This floorstanding two-way offers a lot of musical performance for…

Phil Jones no longer with Platinum Audio

Phil Jones, the loudspeaker designer who pioneered the resurgence of metal-cone woofers with first Acoustic Energy in the UK, then Boston Acoustics' Lynnfield series, and finally his own company, Platinum Audio, is no longer with Platinum.

Platinum speakers have been favorably reviewed in Stereophile by both Sam Tellig and myself; they had gotten an excellent reputation for producing excellent bass performance from relatively small enclosures. Phil's plans were unclear at the time of writing, but he intends to remain in the loudspeaker business. He can be contacted by fax at (603) 437-…

Best Buy Reports Record Quarter

Nationwide electronics retailer Best Buy has reported a record $59 million in profits for the second quarter of its fiscal year. Profits were up 34% from the previous year, according to a September 15 report in the Wall Street Journal. The Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based chain is one of the largest outlets for consumer electronics, and is Circuit City's only serious rival.

The encouraging report was mitigated somewhat by Best Buy's statement that its profit margin would shrink during the next quarter. The company has pushed back its launch date for e-commerce to early next year. Best Buy…

Stalking the Bobcat

In my report on Red Rose Music's HE2005 debut of the Burwen Bobcat, I complained about the lack of before and after demonstrations of the technology, as well as the difficulty of extracting information about what the product actually did. In the last week, I have received correspondence that sheds light on both cavils.

Mark Levinson writes, "I didn’t want to get into comparative listening in a show environment. Maybe it wasn’t the right decision, and am sorry you were turned off. This industry needs a solution to the PCM problem and BB really works. Maybe you’d like to stop by to do some…

John Robinson Pierce 1910-2002

John Robinson Pierce, a wide-ranging engineer, inventor, writer, and psychoacoustics researcher, died April 2 at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA. The cause of death was complications from pneumonia. Pierce was 92.

A native of Des Moines, IA, Pierce earned his BS, MS, and Ph.D from the California Institute of Technology. In 1936, the year he left Caltech, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, an institution that harbored some of the most creative minds of the mid-twentieth century, and one that originated many of the technologies that have become ingrained in…