Each section in our Buyer's Guide is headed by an essay on the basics by veteran audio writer Wes Phillips. In the categories for which we don't yet have listings—cables, audio furniture, portables, and…
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The 2004 Stereophile Buyer's Guide hits the newsstands this week. Within its 228 jumbo-sized and color-coded pages you'll find listings of every audio component currently available in the US (other than boomboxes and other portable players), along with their specifications and prices. It also includes what we feel is the most complete listing of audio manufacturer websites on the planet.
Almost every audiophile, whether hobbyist or professional, has taken a stab at building loudspeakers. Combine the fundamentals of cabinetmaking with some basic electronic theory, connect a few good drivers to a well-designed crossover network, and you're on your way to pretty good sound. And now, with widely available resources like crossover design software and high-quality prefabricated cabinets, the task is easier than it's ever been.
Amateurs and would-be professionals alike thus have an excellent chance of producing decent-sounding speakers on their first or second attempts---a fact…
At the recently concluded SAE-CEA Digital Car Conference in Detroit, representatives of the recording industry joined Panasonic for a DVD-Audio love-fest hailing the format as the "in-car music delivery system of the future." Panasonic's automotive electronics division used the conference and exhibition to introduce and demonstrate its first mobile DVD-Audio systems for OEM distribution. The company also hosted seminars exploring how it imagines DVD-Audio will specifically apply to and benefit the automobile industry.
Panasonic's Doug Pergament notes, "Vehicle manufacturers have powerful…
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has lost a couple of important rounds in its fight against file sharing.
On December 19, a US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a previous ruling by a trial judge ordering Verizon Communications to reveal the identity of an Internet subscriber suspected of illegally trading music recordings. On the same day, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that makers of file-sharing software Kazaa cannot be held liable for copyright infringement of music or movies traded by its users.
In the US case, Verizon had appealed an…
The Recording Industry Association of America has recently been getting press ink by the bucketful for its defense of the music business against the perils of the Internet. But the Future of Music Coalition is urging the US Copyright Office to be wary of efforts by the RIAA to establish itself as the sole and exclusive collection agent for digital performance royalties for sound recordings. Instead, the Coalition has proposed that an independent body would be a more appropriate vehicle to collect and distribute these and other monies, including Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 royalties.
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Flat frequency reponse in an audio component is good, right? Well, maybe not always, explains J. Gordon Holt in Down With Flat! JGH: "Many times in past years I have been impressed by the incredible flatness of the measured high-end response of some speakers. . . . In every such case, I have been equally amazed at how positively awful those loudspeakers sounded—so tipped-up at the high end that I could not enjoy listening to them."
Next up is Michael Fremer's review, from June 1999, of the Sonus Faber Amati Homage loudspeaker. Fremer claims that this design is Sonus Faber designer…
Show attendees at Home Entertainment 2003, the hi-fi and home-theater event of the year, will be treated to nearly a dozen educational seminars to help guide and inform them about what and how to buy the new and sometimes confusing home audio/video and home theater products available today.
As technology rapidly changes, consumers need to stay up-to-date and be armed with the right information. HE2003 will help unravel the mysteries with a variety of interactive seminars on subjects including "Custom Installation," "HDTV," "Super Audio CD," "Well-Tuned Rooms," "Why DLP?" "Surround Sound…
As an audiophile manufacturer, the odds are stacked against you getting a great sounding demo up and running under show conditions. The rooms are generally skimpy and oddly shaped, the construction materials and walls unpredictable, and there's the need to set up fast with only what you've thought to pack in.
Yet, many displays overcome these obstacles to become an oasis of transcendental audio bliss. Partially hidden at the back of the St. Tropez, in a group of large demo rooms called the "Golden Section" by show organizers, was just such a room. I was invited in to one of these rooms by…
The format battle over what goes into your audio player's disc drawer could soon be rendered moot. Forget SACD and DVD-Audio: it's the format war taking place on your desktop that may determine the real future of audio. And, believe it or not, audiophiles might win, too.
We sat down with David Caulton, the group product manager for Microsoft's Windows Digital Media Division, to discover what was behind the Windows Media Audio logos that are starting to pop up on consumer electronics gear (such as the new Pioneer Elite multichannel receivers), and also learn how the future for high…
Digital Versatile Disc (DVD)---the well-publicized successor to VHS tapes, compact discs (CDs), and CD-ROMs---will struggle in the video and music industries, but be a major success for the personal computer industry, according to a recent report from Forrester Research. The report concludes that PC manufacturers will rapidly embrace DVD, resulting in an installed base of 53 million DVD-equipped PCs by 2002.
The next five years will prove less favorable for the video and music industries' DVD efforts, however. In 2002, only 5.2% of US households will own a DVD-Video player, while only 2…