Transparent Audio is demonstrating several power conditioners, including the new four-outlet Power Isolator ($1500), and other products aimed at the custom installation and home-theater markets. Transparent also had a new line of in-wall speaker wire on hand, with…
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High-end audio in trouble? That's been the consensus the last few years, but the sheer number of new products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show hints at a steady trend in the opposite direction. New developments in power conditioning abound, and several brave companies are even testing the SACD/DSD and DVD-Audio waters.
The Napster saga continues. As reported last week, software maker Napster and several colleges were looking at a likely court battle, instigated by music group Metallica and others attempting to prevent their songs from being distributed via MP3 audio files without official consent or payment of royalties. After Metallica announced its suit, rapper Dr. Dre also jumped in, giving Napster until last Friday to remove links to his work.
Two schools named in the original suit, Yale and Indiana Universities, have decided to now ban the Napster software utility's use by students on campus…
Following a recent announcement of "diminished expectations" for the near future (see previous story) and a shakeup of upper management---in which Consumer Group marketing honcho Tom Jacoby was put out to pasture and audio guru Floyd Toole was promoted to senior vice president of acoustic and transducer engineering---Harman International Industries has put the finishing touches on a new 10,000-square-foot audio laboratory. At company headquarters in Northridge, CA, north of Los Angeles, the laboratory includes a 10,000-cubic-foot anechoic chamber for testing and measuring loudspeakers, and a…
On March 20, at the CeBIT '98 convention in Hanover, Germany, several leading manufacturers of CD-ReWritable (CD-RW) drives and media announced that the market for CD-RW products has grown much faster than originally predicted.
The announcement was made at a joint event hosted by Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, and Yamaha. Mikel Dodd, Chairman and CEO of Philips Optical Storage, attributed the rapid acceptance of CD-RW to improving software and hardware solutions, decreasing price points, and the increasing need for off-line storage and data interchange created by the…
SunnComm and others have been trying for years to find ways to prevent consumers from copying music discs. While their success in preventing digital copies has been mixed, lurking in the background was a problem many felt could never be solved.
This fundamental obstacle to effective copy restriction is typically known as the "Analog Hole." Once the audio signal is streamed into memory, or converted to analog output, the original analog music track can then be resampled to another digital recording device, captured by software in memory, or recorded from the speakers/pre-amp output and…
During this week's Home Entertainment Expo, high-tech entertainment fans will get to enjoy some of the best audio and video gear to be found on the planet. A few lucky ones will get to take some of it home—free.
Monster Cable will give away a Monster Home Theatre Reference PowerCenter™ HTS 5100 every day the show is open to the public—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The HTS 5100 is an advanced AC power filter featuring Monster's proprietary "Stage 4 v2.0" isolation and filter technology, claimed to prevent AC power line noise from affecting component performance.
Attendees need only…
PC, Communications, and Consumer Electronics Companies Unite to Establish Wireless Spec for the Home
Several companies spanning the personal computer, communications, and consumer electronics industries announced March 4th the formation of a working group that will develop a specification for wireless communications in the home. This specification will allow PCs, peripherals, cordless telephones, and consumer electronic devices to communicate and interoperate with one another.
The Home Radio Frequency Working Group (HRFWG) expects to publish the open specification for home wireless communications, called the Shared Wireless Access Protocol (SWAP), later this year. The HRFWG is led by…
Because they now realize that downloading music from the Internet is here to stay, it would seem the major record companies would love to see a world in which Web consumers no longer own a copy of a song or album, but simply pay each time they listen to it.
Last week, Cirrus Logic and InterTrust Technologies, two companies funding efforts to facilitate online music commerce, announced what they claim is the first "general-purpose, content-secure system-on-chips" for Internet audio players that support MP3 and Windows Media Audio. The companies say that by using InterTrust's Rights/PD…
Stereophile is proud to present the first edition of its new free monthly eNewsletter. The first Monday of each month, Stereophile will publish exclusive content for readers who either opt in with a subscription or sign up using the online form.
Veteran audio writers Ken Kessler and Wes Phillips will be offering you hot high-end news from around the world, the latest audio gossip, views on recordings and gear, interesting Weblinks—everything you need to know to complement the heavy-duty reviews and articles published in the print magazine and on www.stereophile.com.
Readers can sign…
"You'd be hard-pressed to find a company more protective of its reputation than Krell," says Wes Phillips, as he heads off to evaluate the Krell KAV-300cd CD player. WP ponders whether that reputation is still intact as the company tries to save its customers some money.
Michael Fremer finds that products like the Aerial Acoustics Model 8 loudspeaker prove it takes more than "a garage, a router, and a band saw" to become a great speaker company. MF provides all the details, along with added analysis from Thomas J. Norton.
Is John Curl a "design genius"? So declares J. Gordon Holt…