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…
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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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
On July 11, Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas downloaded the 100 millionth song purchased from Apple's iTunes music store. Britten spent 99¢ for "Somersault (Dangermouse remix)" by Zero 7 and, in exchange, won a 17" PowerBook, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate entitling him to 10,000 iTunes songs (the approximate capacity of a 40Gb iPod). As Apple counted down to 100 million, it also gave "special 20GB iPods" to the consumers who downloaded each 100,000th song between 95 million and 100 million.
Apple's iTunes music service dominates the market for legal downloads, owning over 70% of the…
We've all heard of the entrepreneur who liked a product so much that he bought the company. Such bold steps are sometimes wildly successful. Case in point: Mark Levinson and his high-end startup, Red Rose Music.
More than a year ago, the founder of Mark Levinson Audio Systems broke away from his second company, now known as Cello Technologies, to form his third venture in the audio industry. Levinson was hunting for a line of electronics to combine with a new series of high-efficiency ribbon loudspeakers from Swedish designer Bo Bengtsson, now designated the Red Rose Music R1, R2, and…
Last week, eight consumer-electronics manufacturers announced the formal establishment of the Home Audio Video Interoperability Organization (HAVi) to promote the development of products based on the the HAVi 1.0 final specification, scheduled for completion in December 1999. (An evaluation version of the HAVi 1.0 final spec can be downloaded from the HAVi website.) The HAVi Organization was founded by Grundig, Hitachi, Matsushita, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, and Toshiba, which have been working together for over two years to develop a specification to permit interoperability among…