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The European Commission isn't especially fond of joint ventures by international media conglomerates. Last year, the EC successfully squashed a proposed merger of EMI and Warner Music Group on the grounds that WMG's parent company, AOL Time Warner (then simply Time Warner), combined with the UK's biggest name in music, would create "a virtual monopoly" of the European music market. A few months later, merger discussions between EMI and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) similarly went nowhere. EC investigators also looked into price-fixing in the European CD market early this year.
Kalman Rubinson gives a long listen to the 1998 Stereophile Editor's Choice winner, the Z-Systems rdp-1 digital preamplifier. Like many audiophiles, Kal eschewed tone controls in favor of the purist approach—until he met the rdp-1. As he puts it: "Now, the time has come for DSP to give the audiophile some powerful tools to tailor frequency response and to correct faults in the recording."
While he was reviewing the rdp-1, Kal Rubinson also put the NAD 118 digital preamplifier under the sonic microscope. He writes: " . . . they differ in terms of capabilities, intended applications,…
Linear buys Sunfire: Following its acquisition of Imerge and Niles, Linear, LLC, a division of Nortek, Inc. has acquired Sunfire Corporation, manufacturer of high-end amplifiers and speakers. No details of the deal were disclosed, other than to say that Bob Carver "will remain with Sunfire."
Hafler no more: Recent visitors to Hafler's website have been greeted with the following notice:
"Dear Hafler Enthusiasts,
"Hafler Professional products are no longer being manufactured.
"If you are in need of product information, specifications or owners manuals, this website is fully…
Cirrus Logic has become the latest chipmaker to license audio watermarking technology from San Diego–based Verance Corporation. Cirrus will integrate Verance copy-prevention and copy-tracking technology in "a new line of high-performance chipsets for DVD devices," according to a November 20 announcement. Cirrus Logic's entry into the DVD-A arena may help boost market acceptance of the DVD-A format, executives conjectured.
Cirrus recently unveiled a programmable DVD platform, the CS98200, described as a "multi-functional chip designed to help bring advanced consumer features such as DVD-…
I've been thinking about women. All weekend long. While that, by itself, is nothing unusual for me, here at Home Entertainment 2005, I''ve been thinking particularly about the small number of female enthusiasts within the hobby of high-end audio.
"It's a male sport," says Moscode designer, George Kaye.
Ninety-eight percent," agrees Lorraine Janeway, president of Aperion Audio.
We're standing in Aperion's static display room, and I’ve just asked the question I’d been waiting all weekend for, without knowing who to ask before I was fortunate enough to meet Lorraine. And now, we’re…
Recently, Analog Devices announced the worldÆs first High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) decoder chip with 32-bit internal precision. The ADSP-21061 SHARC programmable digital signal processor will enable HDCD decoding to be incorporated into a wide variety of consumer audio and home-theater products, according to an AD press release dated March 26. The SHARC DSP can perform up to 150 million operations per second, and includes one megabit of onboard memory, six DMA channels, and two serial ports. The highly integrated decoder is claimed to perform HDCD decoding without external…
For the first time in five years, New York City will play host to the largest hi-fi and home theater show in the US. Home Entertainment 2001 promises to be the largest and most comprehensive such event to date when it takes place this spring at the Hilton New York & Towers Hotel on May 11-13, 2001.
Co-sponsored by Stereophile, Home Theater, and Stereophile Guide to Home Theater magazines, Home Entertainment 2001 is expected to draw an audience of more than 10,000 audio and home-theater enthusiasts. It is the ultimate showcase of the latest in consumer electronics products and the…
Respondents to our weekly Stereophile polls often tell us they would buy more CDs if the prices weren't so high. So would their European counterparts, according to a survey released February 18 by the International Federation of Phonograph Industries (IFPI). Prices for recorded music are even higher in Europe than they are in the US.
A reduction in value-added taxes (VAT) on music recordings would reduce total retail costs and boost music sales by 95% to 160% in the five countries surveyed—Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Increased sales would offset losses to governments from…
In a press conference held January 9 at the 1998 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Classic Records announced the debut of the Classic 24/96 digital audio disc "DAD" series of audio-only DVD-Videos. (Video information is included on the disc but represents only a tiny fraction of the data space.)
The original analog master tapes are converted to 24-bit/96kHz digital data through a Muse Model Seven A/D converter and a proprietary hard-disk recording system developed by Muse's Kevin Halverson. After the analog signal is encoded and the data stored on the hard drive, post-…
Most audiophiles probably consider low-fi media such as podcasts irrelevant. But this may change when accessories manufacturer Boston Audio Design launches its new HiFi Industry Podcast Series later this fall.
Podcasts are simply digital audio files, usually very low-resolution MP3 files, that contain a talk program or news or special-interest report featuring spoken word. These files can be subscribed to or downloaded and then played on a portable audio player or computer, or burned to a CD and listened to in the car.
Boston Audio Design's Austin Jackson says its podcasts will be in…