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The DIY Chronicles, Part Six

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…

Music Retailers Converge

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…

Focus On Multi-Channel Music At AES

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…

NHT's Happy Ending

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…

Added to the Archives This Week

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."…

Crying Wolf Again?

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…

Added to the Archives This Week

First up, from the November, 2000 issue, is the Hovland HP-100 preamplifier. Michael Fremer writes, "While the HP-100 is Hovland's first publicly traded audio component, it is . . . the fulfillment of what's been Robert Hovland's goal all along: to bring such a product to market. Or so I was told. It's just taken 'some time to get it all right.' Given the company's history of more than 20 years, that sounds like an understatement." Fremer offers his sonic assessment.

Next, we've got Wes Phillips' review of the Mark Levinson No.39 CD player. Phillips writes: "To think of the No.39 as…

Genesis Advanced Technologies and Arnie Nudell Part Ways

On June 6, as we traveled back from HE 2006, we received near simultaneous press releases from Genesis Advanced Technologies and Arnie Nudell describing the same event.

From Nudell: "Arnie Nudell, co-founder of Infinity Systems and founder of Genesis Technologies, announces his resignation from Genesis Advanced Technologies, effective immediately.

"Nudell comments, 'After 3½ years acting as chief scientist of GAT, it became apparent that there existed fundamental disagreements with president Gary Koh concerning the marketing direction and future product development of the company…

DVD players thrive at Comdex '97

When I first attended Comdex several years back, it was easy to feel like a fish out of water. My core interests were always high-end audio---and the computer biz at the time would get excited about anything that sounded as good as a telephone. But I was still curious about what all the brainiacs were up to.

Zip forward to Comdex '97.

Audio folk would almost feel right at home here, and the video folk thrived in the main aisles. In fact, Comdex is now starting to sound like the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) we know and love. There was even that continual nausea-inducing…

DVD-Audio 1.0 is Set

Drum roll, please: As promised, the DVD-Audio 1.0 specification has been finalized by the DVD-Audio Working Group 4 of the DVD Forum, and will shortly be presented to the Steering Committee for final approval. A multitude of delays both technical and political popped up over the last two years, stalling the evolving specification until just recently. (It was orginally intended to be released months ago.) Still to be settled, however, is how DVD-Audio 1.0 will co-exist with Sony's and Philips' promise to promote their rival technology, Super Audio CD (SACD), as an independent and competing…