Late in 2000, Klipsch quietly acquired Mondial Designs, maker of Aragon and Acurus electronics.…
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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.
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…
During copyright protection hearings in Washington the last week of February, South Carolina Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings labored mightily to please patrons Michael Eisner, CEO of Walt Disney Company, and Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA). Hollings' questioning of panelists from concerned industries was generally even-handed, according to several reports, except for his treatment of Intel executive vice president Leslie Vadasz, whose opposition to government-mandated copy control provoked an especially vindictive outpouring of vitriol from the 80…
Paradigm's acquisition of Sonic Frontiers, Inc. is only the first step in salvaging the highly regarded brand, according to Bill VanderMarel, Paradigm's Director of Sales and Marketing. The next step will involve infusions of serious amounts of cash to expand the present network of dealers and to develop new products under the new Sonic Frontiers International banner---an amount VanderMarel expects will run as high as two or three times the purchase price of the temporarily defunct Ontario maker of high-end audio electronics. "Paradigm recognizes the necessity of such a sizable investment…
In the fall of 1999, a couple of Canadian high-end audio companies got together to pool resources with the idea that two heads were better than one when it came to certain new products. Simaudio of Boucherville, Quebec and Magnum Dynalab of Brampton, Ontario formed a strategic alliance with the purpose of sharing various technologies to further enhance each company's product lines.
Simaudio's experience in designing and manufacturing power amplifiers, preamplifiers, and integrated amplifiers combined with Magnum Dynalab's expertise in analog FM tuners, provided the foundation to develop…
Sony Electronics will soon institute some big changes in an effort to become more efficient.
Early in October, the company announced that it would move most of its consumer electronics marketing operations from Park Ridge, NJ to offices in San Diego and San Jose, CA. The move should begin in April of 2004, and will come in the wake of last summer's consolidation of Sony's consumer divisions under new president and chief operating officer Hideki "Dick" Komiyama. Park Ridge employees, now numbering about 1600, will be reduced to about 1000. The goal of the reorganization is to "bring Sony'…