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Do good things come in small packages? Audio technology over this past half century offers pretty good evidence that they do. Fifty years ago, the long-playing record amazed people with a half-hour of music per side, compared to the 78's few minutes. Thirty years ago, the cassette tape replaced bulky open reels, ushering in a new era of recording capability—and portability—for millions of people. Twenty years ago, the CD began to push the LP out of the way because it packed a little more music into a much smaller and more durable package. Personal radios have long been hugely popular, and…
The DVD Forum's Working Group 4 (WG-4) is expected to deliver the "0.9" version of its official DVD-Audio specification this month, with "1.0" to follow shortly. While information is scarce, it appears that WG-4 is talking about four different kinds of disc, each of which will be playable on one or two of three different kinds of players. And that doesn't include Sony's and Philips' "Super Audio CD" proposal (see Peter van Willenswaard's report on SACD a couple of weeks back on the website), or the Classic Records-led "DAD" format, which uses the provision of the DVD-Video specification for…
One of audio's true originals, Irving "Bud" Fried first made his mark in the late 1950s by becoming an early US importer of Lowther corner horn and Quad electrostatic loudspeakers. By 1975, he had established his own company and began releasing speaker models under the Fried nameplate.
Since that time, Fried has stuck to the principle of "evolutionary design development," incrementally improving his products by perfecting the use of series networks, satellite subwoofers, transmission lines, line tunnels, and distributed loading techniques.
Most recently, the company was acquired by…
Brian Damkroger's audio world may have been in a disorienting flux the last several months, but one thing remained a bastion of stability: the Simaudio Moon Eclipse CD player. Damkroger explains why in his complete report.
Next we have John Atkinson's As We See It from December 2000, Upsampling or Oversampling? JA steps into the controversy surrounding digital upsampling technology, examining what it is and isn't. A reply from mastering engineer Bob Katz is included.
In a related piece, a Follow-up to his in-depth analysis of ultrasonic audio—"What's Going on Up There?"—John…
Editor's Note: This is Part Six of a six-part series from reader Hervé Delétraz of Switzerland, who has chronicled the development of his DIY (do-it-yourself) audio amplifier.
Part One is here
Part Two is here
Part Three is here
Part Four is here, and
Part Five is here
Every human being has his or her own taste in music reproduction. I just tried to build what I believe is the sound I can hear live, with real musicians, without any electronic artifact between them and me. As mentioned before, I now plan to produce a small series of my DIY amplifier, the darTZeel NHB-108…
The music industry is facing its toughest business climate in recent memory, and slow sales are hurting not only the record labels, but music retailers as well. In the face of continuing sales declines, store closings, mergers and consolidations, layoffs, and seemingly intractable digital distribution issues, the industry came together last month for its annual National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) convention and trade show in Orlando, FL.
NARM reports attendance of 1600 at the event, which was kicked off with president Pamela Horovitz observing, "We know how to handle a…
Multichannel music was addressed by several seminars at this year's AES. On Friday, the Center Channel Challenge convened with a trio of recording engineers moderated by DTS's Jeff Levison.
Levison began by noting that the center channel has long been the audio image anchor for cinema, but has not enjoyed widespread popularity for multichannel audio. "We [the recording industry] resisted using the center channel for music at first, and mixed for a phantom center."
With a few years of multichannel music now under the industry's belt, Levison feels that "now we're seeing more and more…
If you read Stereophile's audio news regularly, you'll frequently see items such as XYZ Audio Acquired by Megalomart, Inc. Have you ever wondered about what that really means? I haven't, and I write those stories. Heck, now that I think about it, over the last eight years, Stereophile has even lived one of those stories.
On one level, of course, "acquisition" means that a company with money takes control of another company—one that needs money, most likely. In most cases, we assume (or, at least, I do) that both companies are more or less happy about this and that company A bought…
Thousands upon thousands of new discs are released each year, yet only a select few made it to the top of the heap for Records to Die For, 2001, number 11 of the annual rite of passage for the Stereophile staff. Find out what music made the cut and why.
The groundbreaking Linn Knekt Kivor hard-disk multizone music system is one of those rare audio products that presages an entirely new way of enjoying music. As John Atkinson writes, "Yes, it can be used to store MP3s. But the Kivor offers its owner the option of storing CDs in uncompressed form. I could have my cake and eat it too."…
The entertainment industry has been crying wolf about the impending death of its collective livelihood since the first recording device hit the market decades ago. In spite of those dire predictions, reel-to-reel tape decks, cassette recorders, and VCRs hardly dented sales, and may in fact have contributed to unprecedented world-wide growth.
But the labels are again braying about the copyright-bashing monster at the door, this time in the form of file-sharing systems such as Morpheus, Napster, and Audio Galaxy, as well as the CD burners that are found in most new computers. Independent…