A fan of high technology and an ostensible free-marketer, Powell encountered widespread opposition to his efforts to loosen market ownership caps, a move that would have made…
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Powell calls it quits: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Michael Powell has announced his departure from the regulatory agency. Powell will leave his post by March of this year, according to an announcement made January 21. The son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Michael Powell was appointed an FCC commissioner by then-President Clinton in 1997 and appointed chairman by President Bush in 2001.
From the September 2004 issue, John Atkinson revs up the Simaudio Moon Equinox CD player, explaining, "When Simaudio's Lionel Goodfield offered me their $2000 Moon Equinox player for inclusion in my irregular series of CD-player reviews, I didn't need to be asked twice."
Listmania from Art Dudley for "Listening #21." AD lists obscure music, overrated music, and "twelve huge pop albums that everybody—critics, record buyers, radio programmers—got right."
Next, Jim Austin ruminates on "House Calls & Home Auditions," noting, "Conventional wisdom has it that you should listen to an…
The Secure Digital Music Initiative's move to establish a copy-prevention technology for commercial recordings has rankled audio engineers, who claim that the audible watermarking technique chosen by the organization could mar high-resolution recordings. Of particular concern are SDMI's testing methods and its rush to get a standard in place without commentary from engineers or the music-buying public.
Last year, SDMI conducted a series of blind listening tests on audio professionals in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville to determine the audibility of the final contenders among several…
Will the future of audio distribution be dominated by discs or downloads? Will we always have both?
Everywhere I go, I now ask this question. I'm often reminded by audiophiles that humans are hunter/collectors and we like to hoard piles of stuff. It's better if we can see and fondle this stuff. Therefore, there will always be discs, or some physical audio object, around to buy and store, they say.
When talking to music fans with hard drives crammed full of tunes, however, I find they often exhibit all of the hunter/collector tendencies, but emphasize that they can do it without all of…
Attendees at the Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association Expo 2001 will be the first to see new Aragon products, parent company Klipsch announced in late June. The Indianapolis-based audio manufacturer will unveil new Aragon/Klipsch home theater systems at the annual show held in its hometown the first week of September. The show's stature has grown to such an extent that many companies now choose to debut new products there rather than at the January Consumer Electronics Show.
Late in 2000, Klipsch quietly acquired Mondial Designs, maker of Aragon and Acurus electronics.…
The performance of deep bass is one of the most perplexing questions we face. Timeless as the search for eternal youth or the meaning of life, the quest for truly satisfying deep bass has engaged generations of philosophers and inventors. Until recently, the subject was primarily one of conjecture, opinion, and hypothesis. Even so, almost no hard science had been devoted to this enduring issue.
But recent research has led to some surprising and some not-so-surprising conclusions. Dr. Bobby Ray Tucker, a professor of marine biology at the University of Florida, recently leaked part of…
The future is still bright for satellite radio. On December 8, XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc. announced that it had signed a deal with Toyota Motor Corporation to begin factory-level installation of XM receivers in 2006. The most popular brand of automobile in the world, Toyota is the last large automaker to commit to either XM or its competitor, Sirius Satellite Radio.
Statistics quoted by XM chief executive Hugh Panero in the announcement indicate that about "60% of people who buy a car with pre-installed XM keep it after their free trial subscription runs out." Most drivers gain…
Looks like it might be a while before a profitable formula jells for selling music over the Internet. News this week indicates that one of the largest music retailers, Tower Records, is finally ready to challenge the market, while online distribution pioneer N2K will be scaling back operations until things steady a bit.
Did these companies simply miss the beginning of the race, or are they the sure-footed tortoises just now coming within range of jackrabbits like CDNow and Amazon.com? We'll know in the coming months, but Tower finally announced last week that their online retail operation…
The copy cat will soon be out of the bag down under. Australia's musical copyright society has reluctantly agreed to the deployment of CD-copying kiosks throughout the nation in exchange for what an Australian news site calls "a modest royalty payment" of about 6% of the $5AUS copying fee—or 30¢ per disc.
Coin-operated "Little Ripper" copying machines of undetermined legality are already in place in some Australian convenience stores. They could become commonplace in supermarkets, shopping malls, and music stores by September, thanks to an agreement between the Australian Mechanical…
The rumors were flying all week, and this time they proved to be true: CDNow Inc. and N2K Inc. jointly announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement on October 23. Both companies are well-positioned in the online music retail business, but face ever-increasing threats from new online rivals such as Tower Records and Virgin, as well as the ominous presence of Amazon.com who recently jumped into the online music business.
The merger will be effected through the formation of a new publicly traded company, initially to be called CDnow/N2K Inc., and is expected to be completed by early…