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Added to the Archives This Week

Martin Colloms reviewed the Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage loudspeaker back in 1994, finding that "Sonus Faber provides a fascinating and challenging insight into the art of high-quality sound reproduction." But does the diminutive Guarneri breathe real music? Colloms reports.

From the 1988 archives, John Atkinson lends an ear to the Celestion SL700 loudspeaker. Having used the company's SL600 as a small speaker reference for five years, JA set out to determine whether the SL700 could take its place.

Next we have a recent follow-up by Jonathan Scull on the Wadia 27ix & 270, first…

BMG-EMI Merger Draws Nearer

The "Big Five" of the recorded music industry is one step closer to becoming the "Big Four," according to late-January reports from Frankfurt, Germany, home of Bertelsmann AG. Bertelsmann is the parent company of Bertelsmann Music Group, which has been in merger discussions for several months with the United Kingdom's EMI Group PLC. Discussions are near completion, according to a BMG official.

Both BMG and EMI are dominant players in the music business. United, they would control more than 25% of the global market, more than Vivendi's Universal Music, Sony Corporation's Sony Music…

Web Fee Agreement

Webcasters will pay a new royalty rate to the recording industry, as of April 3.

Representatives for webcasters, musicians, and music publishers have agreed to a deal that will allow nonsubscription webcasters their choice of payment schedules—0.0762¢ ($0.000762) per performance, on a per-performance, 1.17¢ per aggregate tuning hour, or 10.9% of gross revenues. These rates are for commercial Internet broadcasters, and don't apply to noncommercial enterprises, to radio stations that offer Internet simulcasts, or to small webcasters, who last year agreed to a separate rate schedule under the…

CDnow Tops Chart, Expands into Europe

The numbers are up for CDnow. The world's largest online music retailer reported April 30 that its first-quarter sales increased 288% over the same period in 1997. The company took in $10 million in revenue through the period ending March 31, an increase of 26.4% over the previous quarter, in which revenue totaled $7.9 million.

CDnow has registered 432,000 customers since it went online in 1994. 135,000 of those have been added since January 1 of this year. Costs, however, seem to track revenue: the company reported operating expenses of $10.7 million in the same period, and $7.6…

DVD-A, SACD Releases

There are probably only a handful of recorded works which could successfully survive the transition from the original two-channel release to a 5.1 surround remix. Queen's 1975 release A Night At The Opera is certainly one of them, and, in fact, the recording was originally scheduled to hit the streets last November as a 5.1 DVD-Audio disc from DTS Entertainment.

A Night At The Opera missed its 2001 DVD-A release date, but it has been rescheduled to appear later this month with revised 5.1 remixes created by Elliot Scheiner, along with Queen's original producer, Roy Thomas Baker, and…

Building Better Bits

Texas Instruments says it is on a quest to provide "high-performance audio solutions" for the home entertainment market. To prove it, last week the company announced its first stereo analog-to-digital converters supporting the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) specification and the Super Audio CD format (SACD).

According to the company, its new PCM1804 is a differential input 24-bit ADC with a 192kHz maximum sampling rate, a dynamic range of 112dB, and THD+N at -102dB. TI says, "Previously, audio ADCs have required delta-sigma modulators with a 2-bit or greater digital-to-analog converter in a…

More Layoffs; Japan Unemployment a Record

Just as the Asian economic crisis a few years ago dealt a big blow to American high-end audio manufacturers, the slowing American economy is causing repercussions for Japanese companies.

In August, electronics industry stalwarts such as Hitachi, Toshiba, and Kenwood all announced massive cutbacks in their workforces. Slowing demand for computers, integrated circuits, and consumer electronics in general has forced the companies to make deep slashes in order to stay afloat.

Hitachi announced that it would post a loss in excess of one billion dollars for the year, and stated that it…

Phase Technology and Audyssey play dARTS!

In this, its 50th year of company operations, Phase Technology announced and demonstrated a new type of loudspeaker system. The series, named dARTS for Digital Audio Reference Theater System, is obviously aimed at the custom-install, home-theater market, but the components and concepts are applicable to music reproduction in any number of channels. As described by PT's director of sales and marketing, Tony Weber, the dARTS system is (1) modular and (2) actively powered and equalized by DSP, incorporating Audyssey's MultiEQ XT for digital room correction.

The modular speaker…

Industry Roundup

Parasound wins design award: Only a week after receiving a Stereophile 2003 "Product of the Year" award at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for its excellent Halo JC-1 monoblock power amplifier—Richard Schram is shown accepting the award (right)—Parasound Products won a 2003 "Good Design Award" from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design. The company's Halo C1 preamp/surround sound processor emerged on top in the museum's annual design competition, "one of the oldest and most important such events in the world," according to a January 16 announcement from Parasound…

Added to the Archives This Week

Winter had just touched down in Santa Fe two days before the recording sessions were to begin, leading Wes Phillips to wonder if the damp air would wreak havoc with tuning. But he needn't have worried, writing that violinist Ida Levin "played with such intense concentration that sometimes she seemed about to levitate off the floor as she chased a melodic line into the ether." In Duet: And Two to Carry Your Soul Away, Ida Levin and John Atkinson join Wes Phillips in chronicling the recording from both musical and technical perspectives.

Few audio components have lasted as long in the market…