"Actually," Samuels confided a few weeks ago, "I had an idea about making a simple circuit using the highest quality parts available—and I keep getting comments from people that want to drive high-impedance headphones like the Sennheiser HD600/650, AKG 501, and Beyer DT880. At the same time, I knew that others would be using low-impedance in-ear phones like the Shures,…
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Ray Samuels Audio, long well-regarded for its tube-based home audio components, is developing a reputation for its portable designs, too. After reviewing the SR-71, I figured Samuels couldn't make things any smaller.
Internet audio continues to expand. Last week, at the first WebNoize conference, held in Los Angeles, JamTV/Rolling Stone Network and RealNetworks, Inc. announced the debut of Rolling Stone Radio, a new Internet audio service offering music in several genres. Rock star David Bowie announced that he would serve as a disc jockey for the new venture. Amazon.com has also signed on to participate as a music retailer.
Rolling Stone Radio combines advertising, electronic commerce, and user-interactive features---such as accessing biographical information about favorite artists---by…
Earlier this month, DirecTV announced that it is investing $50 million in XM Satellite Radio in an effort to capitalize on direct satellite-to-receiver broadcasting technology, which is intended to provide listeners in the car and at home with up to 100 channels of music, news, and entertainment available in North America. Additional XM investors include General Motors, Clear Channel Communications, and a private investment group.
XM reports that it has signed more than a dozen programming deals to provide content for the service, and plans more agreements in the future. According to the…
With the music industry in retreat from classical music, dozens of the nation’s symphony orchestras, opera and ballet companies have decided to bring their work directly to the people. On June 12, an association of 66 orchestras and opera groups signed an agreement with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) that will let them put their music on the Internet, without interference or fee extraction by the recording business.
The agreement was reached after a year of negotiations between the AFM and executives of the top classical organizations in the US, including management…
It's hard enough for established record labels both big and small these days. With the high-resolution audio formats SACD and DVD-Audio still fighting each other and struggling to launch, picking sides is an even bigger gamble for a brand-new record label's first releases.
Despite the odds, SFS Media has decided to do just that. The new label is the official outlet for recordings by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), whose music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, conducts the group in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.6 for its debut release, slated for February 5.
The disc was recorded live…
If Lydstrom, Inc. has anything to do with it, the next hot ticket in home audio won't be just another CD player, but a musical database manager capable of organizing and playing as many as 5000 songs, from CDs or from Internet downloads. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company announced June 30 that it has licensed Lucent Technologies' Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (ePAC) for inclusion in a product as yet unnamed but projected to be available by Christmas 1999.
The device is "targeted at the growing market for networked home entertainment systems," according to a news release, and will…
On July 4, a Brazilian website apparently posted some tools that allowed users of InterVideo's WinDVD to pull copy-protected data off DVD-Audio discs and store it on the user's hard drive rather than simply routing it to a sound card. According to Afterdawn, the tools didn't "do the decryption themselves, [but] instead patched WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card."
But don't go off looking to download those tools now—they've been yanked. As "rjamorim" (presumedly the same individual as "MaximA," who is credited with originally distributing the tool set)…
Having previous experience working for the CIA or the KGB may be a bonus on the resume of any aspiring audio industry applicant, it seems. In an effort to stymie the illegal copying and distribution of digital song files, record companies and hardware manufacturers have turned to increasingly complicated tracking technologies such as MPEG-4 and watermarking. The most recent addition to the anti-pirate bag of tricks: "fingerprinting."
Blame it all on Napster. In an effort that it hopes will keep the music business vultures at bay, the company announced last week that it has signed a…
All of us at Stereophile were saddened to learn of the death of audio pioneer David Hafler, who died Sunday, May 25 of complications of Parkinson's disease at St. Agnes Hospice in Philadelphia. Hafler was 84.
Hafler had an enormous influence on several generations of audiophiles and music lovers. A graduate in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, Hafler served as a communications specialist in the Coast Guard during the Second World War. In 1950, he founded Acrosound, a transformer manufacturer. In 1954, he founded Dynaco, a name that became synonymous with good sound and…
Time for early-adopter audiophiles to start saving those pennies. Panasonic has just announced delivery dates and suggested pricing for two DVD-Audio players: the Panasonic DVD-A7 and the Technics DVD-A10. Beginning this October, Panasonic says that both models will be shipped to dealers nationwide, with the DVD-A7 retailing at $999.95 and the DVD-A10 checking in at $1199.95.
Panasonic says that while the DVD-A7 provides "extraordinary audio and video quality," the Technics DVD-A10 is a step above and "designed to address the needs of discriminating audiophiles." As an example, Panasonic…