Ferguson invoked piracy as the rationale behind his resolution. "With exciting new digital audio devices on the market today and more on the horizon, Congress needs to streamline the deployment of digital services and protect…
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No, you aren't reading an old newsdesk article that has inadvertently been published a second (or third) time. On March 2, congressional representative Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) introduced House Resolution 4861, "the audio broadcast licensing act of 2006." Ferguson's co-sponsors were Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Mary Bono (R-CA), Bart Gordon (D-TN), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
When CDs were becoming popular, Neil Young made no secret of his disdain for the sound of digital. Interviews from the period quoted him as saying that the sound "left him cold," and he would rather listen to an LP, thank you very much. To this day, his new CD releases also appear on vinyl, but with the advent of DVD-Audio, sampling and quantization rates have improved—enough, apparently for Mr. Young's approval.
On December 5, Warner Reprise Video will be releasing Young's Red Rocks Live, a concert performance video from two shows performed in September, 2000, at the Red Rocks…
While it's not exactly a stampede just yet, a small dust cloud is rising as several consumer-electronics manufacturers head toward the Internet to sell products. Last week, citing the need to "maintain the highest quality customer service in the new e-commerce era," Denon Electronics joined the online sales herd. In an effort to keep track of e-commerce vendors, the company has announced that it will establish a separate authorization agreement for retailers handling Denon and/or Mission products on the Internet.
Denon's Stephen Baker states that "E-commerce is an exciting new frontier…
Responding to scrutiny by federal legislators, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is backing away from the pursuit of small-scale copyright violators. After issuing more than 1000 subpoenas against alleged music pirates, the trade group announced on August 18 that it would go after only big fish in its efforts to contain the file-sharing epidemic.
The announcement was included in a response to an inquiry begun by Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Describing the RIAA's mass litigation as "…
Audiophiles cringe at the idea of downloading blurry, compressed representations of once-detailed recordings (even CD seems high-rez these days). But that hasn't stopped average music fans from trying online music services.
New findings from Ipsos-Insight's quarterly Tempo study of digital music behaviors reveal that in July of 2004, more than one-third (35%) of American downloaders aged 12 and older had paid a fee to download music or MP3 files off the Internet, a roughly 50% increase over levels witnessed in late 2003 (the figure was 22% in December 2003).
The researchers point out…
Those unhappy with today's over-the-air broadcasting choices will be glad to know that this is shaping up as a busy year for new radio formats. The commercialization of the IBOC AM and FM digital broadcasting system is about to be revealed at the same time that Sirius satellite radio announces that it will be accelerating its rollout schedule in an effort to compete with rival XM satellite radio.
Executives from the broadcasting, retail, and consumer electronics industries, along with iBiquity Digital representatives, are planning a press conference next Monday, April 8 at the National…
Any FM-radio DJ who was on the air in the US through the late '70s and early '80s will tell you that the song most often requested was easily Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" popped up regularly, but it was never a contest. So it comes as no surprise that Zep's epic hit would make the list of the 10 songs included in the "Millennium Mix" being presented this month by Dick Clark. (Never mind that the millennium actually ends December 31, 2000.)
The tally is the result of a national Millennium Mix contest that Philips Consumer Electronics North America…
"No doubt about it—Linn's top-of-the-line Komri loudspeaker is a queer-lookin' duck," says Jonathan Scull as he set up a pair in his listening lair. The claimed frequency response for the Komri extends out to 40kHz. "Why even bother going out that high, where even the most beautiful of women cannot hear?" J-10 explains why.
Larry Greenhill listens to the seventh iteration of Peter Snell's Type A flagship loudspeaker, the Snell Acoustics XA Reference Tower loudspeaker. "I first heard the original Snell Type A 22 years ago, at the Listening Room in Scarsdale, NY, when I was introduced to…
Never content to rest on its laurels, Texas Instruments continues to push the boundaries of chip performance, not only in the digital and video realms, but in the analog audio domain as well.
On June 10, the technology giant announced a new high-performance headphone driver with specifications that make it ideal for use with high-resolution sources such as DVD-Audio or SACD. The TPA6120A2 has astounding specifications, with dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio that exceed 120dB. Equally astounding is the chip's slew rate (ability to respond to signal changes) of 1300V/µs. Combined with…
On April 15, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), the music performing-rights organization, and Liquid Audio, a developer of secure online music delivery systems, announced a strategic alliance to protect ownership of music on the Internet. According to a Liquid Audio press release, the initiative encourages, streamlines, and simplifies music-rights licensing and reporting, and will benefit website creators as well as music writers, publishers, and composers.
Liquid Audio plans on working with ASCAP to encourage websites that use Liquid Audio's music-distribution…