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-…
search
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.
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…
We've learned to pretty much ignore consumer electronics company announcements for their latest CD and DVD players/burners. The usual "breakthrough" turns out to be yet another faster record/playback speed bump, or a longer list of compatible formats (Panasonic's latest recorder, announced last week, can handle—take a deep breath—DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, and CD-ROM discs).
But here's something completely different in a CD recorder. Last week, Yamaha Electronics introduced its DiscT@2 Laser Labeling System, which takes advantage of the…
Thanks to an agreement reached in October, musicians, rather than their record labels, will receive royalty payments for the use of recordings distributed over the Internet or broadcast over cable and satellite systems. Royalty collection agency SoundExchange will distribute payments directly to performers, regardless of their contracts with the record companies, according to a statement issued the second week of November.
SoundExchange paid out $5.2 million to artists and music publishers in October, the first month that the agreement was in force. The agreement was signed by…
The month of December was particularly hard on the music world, which lost three of its greatest talents within a few days of each other: Curtis Mayfield, Grover Washington, Jr., and Charles Earland. All were in their late 50s.
Perhaps the best known of the three, soul singer and songwriter Curtis Mayfield, died on Sunday morning of the 26th at North Fulton Regional Hospital, outside Atlanta. He was 57.
The decade had been a rough one for the trailblazing musician, who was paralyzed from the neck down by a freak accident at a 1990 outdoor concert, in which a lighting rig fell on him…