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Added to the Archives This Week

Robert Deutsch tackles the Balanced Audio Technology VK-40 preamplifier, noting "Few topics will get audiophiles into an argument more readily than a discussion of the relative merits of tubed and solid-state equipment."

Robert Baird reads a recent and revealing book about the king and interviews its author for the first in our Elvis pair: Elvis Presley: Baby What You Want Me To Do. Baird explains that "Writing about the final decade and a half of the life of Elvis Presley is, by any measure, a sad affair."

More Elvis! Baird digs into the back catalog for The Unmaking of Elvis…

Vacuum Tube Valley Hosts Antique Audio Show

San Francisco---Vacuum Tube Valley's tube and antique audio show here last week drew dozens of exhibitors and hundreds of attendees to the Airport Clarion Hotel over the Feb. 6-7 weekend. The heavy rains that caused mudslides in some Northern California communities, combined with high tides that flooded some freeways, kept attendance down. The show's turnout was "about half of what we expected," said VTV publisher/editor Charlie Kittleson.

The show was combined with a used-equipment flea market on Saturday, sponsored by the Northern California Historical Radio Society. A technical…

Audio Abounds at Macworld Expo

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is not the only major electronics event held in early January each year. Apple Computer and allied companies throw their own specialty shindig more or less concurrently.

This year's Macworld Expo, held January 11–14 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, wasn't simply devoted to the latest twist on Mac OSX or tutorials on Photoshop CS. Approximately 40,000 Apple faithful paid $40 each to ogle the newest products from Apple and others in the same hall that had hosted the Audio Engineering Society's convention just a few months earlier.…

DiAural Demo Converts Skeptic

Advances in audio reproduction typically proceed with tiny steps that, in time, add up to major systemic improvements. In this industry, quantum leaps in basic technology rarely happen. DiAural Doppler decoding may be one of them.

Five weeks ago we reported that Ray Kimber, of Kimber Kable fame, and his financial partner, Bruce Bastion, were in the process of bringing a new loudspeaker technology to market. DiAural, as they've named the technique, is claimed to eliminate what Kimber calls Doppler-encoding distortion---the modulation of high frequencies by low frequencies of higher…

Holiday Sales Up Or Down?

Feeling grumpier about spending audio dollars this holiday season? You may not be alone according to a new survey of consumer holiday buying intentions.

The NPD Group reveals that the 2004 holiday shopping season could be challenging for retailers. "Nearly 9 out of 10 consumers say they are planning to spend the same amount or less than last year," say the researchers. That breaks down as follows: 69% of American consumers indicated they plan to spend the same amount this holiday as last year; 18% plan to spend less than last year; and 12% plan to spend more. On average, consumers tell NPD…

Online Database Aids Music Search

Questions for music lovers: 1) Have you been racking your brain trying to remember who recorded Ruby Vroom? 2) Do you know how many Tim Hardin recordings are available on CD? 3) Which album featured Head East's "Never Been Any Reason," considered by some connoisseurs the greatest rock song ever?

Answers: 1) Soul Coughing. 2) 22. 3) Flat as a Pancake. If you knew these off the top of your head, you probably don't need an online database. If you didn't, you might want to click over to cddb.com and do a little exploring. CDnow, which bills itself as the "World's Largest Music Store," ties…

RIAA in Several Battles

The US music industry is fighting a war on several fronts—industrial piracy in foreign countries, casual piracy in the States, unhappiness among consumers, and disagreements with artists (see related story).

On March 19, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lashed out at industrial piracy in China, a phenomenon that it claims costs it $600 million a year. Efforts to persuade Chinese authorities to crack down on pirates have yielded few results, RIAA chairman and CEO Hilary Rosen told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington.

"Piracy in China for…

Digital Radio's Broadcast Flag: Threat or Menace?

Remember that whole "broadcast flag" kerfluffle? Well, it ain't over yet—not if the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) have anything to say about it. If you don't remember the broadcast flag imbroglio, or if you thought it had been vanquished by the DC Circuit Court in May 2005, here's an update.

The broadcast flag was "content protection" (aka digital rights management or DRM) that would insert a "do not record" signal into copyrighted broadcast material that all commercially available recording devices would have to honor. In other words,…

HE 2002: Day Three

If you think the name Viola Audio Laboratories sounds familiar, wait 'til you hear the names behind it: Tom Colangelo, Paul Jayson, and Tony DiSalvo—all former officers at Cello. Viola, working out of Cello's former New Haven facilities, is now producing a complete line of electronics, from the $18,000 modular Spiritu preamp to the $12,000 Bravo Double Set monoblock amplifier. The company also manufactures audio cables and a modular loudspeaker, the $18,000/pair Allegro, as well as an $18,000 subwoofer, the Basso. The system certainly is elegant-looking, and it sounded impressively…

Clear Channel Settles Lawsuit

Clear Channel Communications, Inc. has settled the first of what could be a long string of lawsuits over its purportedly monopolistic marketing tactics.

On June 3, the San Antonio–based radio and concert giant settled a suit brought in 2001 by the Denver-based independent concert promoter Nobody in Particular Presents, Inc. (NIPP) that accused Clear Channel of "monopolistic and predatory practices." NIPP charged that Clear Channel withheld radio play of musicians who signed contracts with other concert promoters and refused to advertise non–Clear Channel concerts on its radio stations.

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