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Marantz, Dolby Show off at CEDIA

The annual CEDIA show is mostly about home theater and whole-house entertainment systems, but high-performance audio often gets a share of the limelight, too.

Marantz took advantage of this year's gathering in Indianapolis to unveil a new line of universal disc players capable of full multichannel output from both DVD-Audio discs and Super Audio CDs. Due to arrive at dealers in October, the company's new top-of-the line disc spinner is the DV-9500, an approximately $2100 machine said to be the company's first with "upscaling HDMI output and full DVD-Audio/SACD bass management."

The…

One More Way to Charge Up a Walkman

For years, credit cards have allowed people to earn points toward air travel and automobiles, so earning credits for audio and video gear seems a no-brainer. Last week, Sony Electronics and Citibank launched the Sony Citibank Card, a co-branded credit card that allows consumers to earn points toward the purchase of a variety of Sony entertainment and merchandise.

The new card, dubbed by the two companies the "official currency of playtime," was developed to combine spending and entertainment by offering everything from movie tickets at Sony theaters and music CDs, to DVD players and…

Added to the Archives This Week

From the September 2004 issue, Larry Greenhill sets up the James Loudspeaker EMB-1200 subwoofer, remarking, "Powerful deep-bass response means more than just pure tones. Rather, it requires raw power, tactile surges of air pressure, and a mix of the senses of hearing and touch." LG reports on whether or not the EMB-1200 meets those standards.

Kalman Rubinson checks in with "Music in the Round #7," investigating the ins and outs of the Trinaural processor. KR also reveals his latest picks for worthy surround recordings.

Next, we have a Jonathan Scull interview from October 1998: Jack…

600 Audio CDs On Your PC?

Could the average computer hard drive soon be able to store the equivalent of over 80 DVD-Audio discs or 600 CDs? Last week, IBM announced that it is using just a few atoms of what it has termed "pixie dust" to push back the data storage industry's most formidable barrier, and will effectively quadruple disk drive densities in the next two years.

In the past decade, the data density for magnetic hard disk drives has increased at a rapid pace, first doubling approximately every 18 months and then, since 1997, doubling on average once a year (which is much faster than the vaunted Moore's Law…

Long Live Classical Music!

Last week, Reference Recordings of San Francisco announced that it is planning five new symphonic projects to be recorded by "Prof." Keith Johnson in 88.2kHz, HDCDr 5-channel discrete surround sound. These will be released on standard two-channel compact disc in the coming year, and eventually on DVD audio disc. According to RR, with these ambitious plans, the company hopes to reverse the industry-wide decline in new recordings of classical orchestral music

With Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra, at sessions in mid-February, RR will record music by Leonard Bernstein (Oue was…

Industry Update

New cable: River Cable has announced a new speaker cable called Flexygy 8, which employs eight conductors in a flat, flexible topology with "tremendous amounts of copper." Boasting a "unique ratio of low resistance-to-capacitance," Flexygy 8's capacitance is rated at 10pF/ft. Additionally, Flexygy 8 is touted as "an installation dream, [it goes] under carpets, along baseboards, with a super flexibility that can’t be beat in a cable with an aggregate AWG of 7."

Flexygy 8, like all other River Cables, "is individually tested and certified and is fully covered by a 30-day home trial guarantee…

Retailing: Mixed Results

The last months of 2002 were uneven ones for electronics retailers. American consumers, apparently trying to stretch their home entertainment dollars as far as possible, patronized discount stores while bypassing more upscale competitors.

Quarterly reports from most retail chains bear out this observation. In late December, Canton, MA–based Tweeter Home Entertainment Group reduced projections for its first fiscal quarter ending December 31. For the first three weeks of the month, comparable stores sales were down 15%, and were off 10% for the quarter to date as of December 21. Digital…

Added to the Archives This Week

Sam Tellig may apologize for contributing to the audiophile empty wallet syndrome, but that doesn't stop him from ranking the Monarchy Audio Digital Interface Processor 24/96 "a must-have if you want to get the most from your upsampling MSB Link DAC III."

Of all of the discs we sell online, the "Test" CDs are easily the most popular. Released back in May of 1992, Stereophile's Test CD 2 became an instant success and continues to help thousands of audiophiles set up and tweak their systems. John Atkinson, Corey Greenberg, and Robert Harley supply detailed background information on the…

Spectrum Analyzer for Pocket PC

The real-time spectrum analyzer (RTA) has long been one of the audio professional's most useful tools. Until about a decade ago, good RTAs consisted of separate signal generators, calibrated microphones, and bulky oscilloscopes. Then some manufacturers began offering handheld RTAs with inboard microphones and LED or LCD screens.

Now software developer Display Research Laboratory has taken the RTA into the shareware realm with the introduction of the "HandDee Spectrum Analyzer" (HandDee-SA) for the Pocket PC. "The HandDee-SA is a real-time spectrum analyzer for Pocket PC and Pocket PC…

High-Rez Releases

Recent news from Universal Music Group should bode well for the SACD format. It's not exactly a flood, but the world's largest music company finally made good on the promise it made at the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and announced last week its first Super Audio CD (SACD) titles to be released in the United States.

Starting with the first releases October 29, Universal says, it plans an ongoing program to make a combination of "best-selling artists and core catalog titles" available on SACD in major markets around the world. The label adds that a substantial number of these…