The current flatness of the audio business and the widespread and growing enthusiasm for all things Internet are making some of these manufacturers rethink the time-honored model of geographic distribution—or are at least inspiring them to…
search
The Internet offers unprecedented opportunity for manufacturers to bring their products directly to their markets, but many companies have been reluctant to embrace it for fear of upsetting their established dealer networks. This has been especially true of mid-to-high-end audio companies, who have traditionally sold their wares through specialty shops.
HE2006 will feature concerts galore—everything from live classical music to jazz to electronica.
Friday, June 2
11am–Noon
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Classical Guitar
Sponsored by Telarc
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, recognized as among America's premier instrumental ensembles, is one of the most charismatic groups performing today. Popularly known as the LAGQ, these four virtuosi—John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant, and Andrew York—bring a new energy to the concert stage with their eclectic programs and dynamic musical interplay. Their critically…
With its new Walkman music player, Sony has broken with its tradition of promoting its own proprietary formats. The NW-HD3 will let users import and export tracks in the MP3 format, a concession to the format's near-universal popularity and an admission of the failed appeal of Atrac, Sony's own music-playing software. MP3 compatibility should give the player appeal to a wider audience than a Sony-only machine.
The NW-HD3 features a 20GB hard drive and should be available in the UK by the end of the year at US$462 (£249) and throughout Europe in early 2005 at around €369, according to…
iTunes is proving every day that some music fans love to procure music through the Internet. On the other hand, audiophiles often complain about the poor sound of the "CD quality" compressed files that Apple and others offer for download at similar prices to those of their uncompressed CD counterparts.
But audiophiles can still be optimistic about downloading if they observe that, bandwidth issues aside, there is no technical reason why the audio resolution offered by online music services needs to remain low-rez. The AAC codec used by Apple, Real Audio's codecs, and Microsoft's WMA…
Long-simmering disputes about peer-to-peer file sharing, or P2P, will finally come to a boil sometime next year. On Friday, December 10, the US Supreme Court agreed to examine whether online services Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks, Inc. are liable for copyright infringement. Both services enable users to share music and other forms of copyrighted material, and both derive revenue from advertising.
Sued by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. and several associated entertainment companies, Grokster and StreamCast were exonerated by two lower courts earlier this year, including a…
Denmark's Peak Consult is well known in the European market as a loudspeaker brand, but the company has received scant notice elsewhere. To remedy its low profile Stateside, Peak Consult reports that it has signed with Stereovox to distribute its products in the US.
PC was originally planning to enter the US market with its former distributor, TMH Audio, but TMH terminated its distribution arrangement with PC in August of 2003. PC shared a display with Stereovox at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and decided that the two companies would be a good fit. PC's Per…
Last August, we reported that brick-and-mortar retailer Tweeter Home Entertainment Group had aligned itself with online retailer Cyberian Outpost to leverage each company's respective strengths, both on- and offline. The trend continues as, last week, brick-and-mortar retailer Harvey Electronics announced that it has reached an "agreement in principle" with CoolAudio.com (see previous story) to merge the two companies through an exchange of common stock.
This is not the first time that Harvey has partnered up with a web business, as evidenced by its announcement last April to sell used…
Audiophiles and classical music lovers often risk falling into a repertorial rut. The classical standards are constantly being rerecorded—often to the point of needless repetition. How many versions of Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony or Ravel's Bolero do you really need? Rather than fill up your shelves with recordings of the same tired compositions, I suggest you look into some of these more obscure pieces—all of them perfect for playing on the first day of April. Below, a list of fresh "basics" that any good audiophile should own:
Beethoven: Symphony 69, "Erotica." Bernard Hijinks,…
J. Gordon Holt, founder not only of Stereophile but also of high-end audio journalism as we know it, reveals all in a comprehensive interview with writer Steven Stone: 35 Years and Just Getting Started.
Also this week, John Atkinson experiences the "ground-pounding audio excitement" of car audio shows in Sounding Off! Next, Barry Willis examines the underground world of gray-market goods in Invaded by the Grays, providing a measure of solace for those bitten by the monster. As BW writes, the gray marketeer "is variously reported to blow in like a zephyr or strike like a hurricane; to take…
Onkyo released a tantalizing bit of news on February 25: Sometime before summer, it intends to release a remote interactive dock (RI) for "specified iPod models and many of the Onkyo products (as many as five million worldwide) produced over the past 10 years."
Details are scanty, but here's what we do know: Over the last decade or so, Onkyo, like most mainstream electronics companies, has emphasized inter-operability features, such as built-in RI capabilities, which command separate components through a single remote control. Press the "play" icon in the CD section of your Onkyo remote and…