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Added to the Archives This Week

John Atkinson gets his mitts on the PSB Platinum T8 loudspeaker and remarks that "talented loudspeaker engineers do not stand still, and neither do the resources and technology available to them." Does PSB's new flagship design live up to JA's expectations? All is revealed.

Next, Art Dudley waddles the Tannoy Dimension TD12 loudspeaker around his listening room to find the perfect sweet spot and finally sits down to listen. Also included: A short history lesson on the company and its "dual concentric" driver designs.

In his As We See It from November, Noise Pollution, Jim Austin notes…

Execs Will Depart BMG In Wake of Napster Settlement; Rumor of EMI Deal

Two top executives at Bertelsmann Music Group will depart in the wake of the company's recent settlement of its lawsuit against Napster. Citing irreconcilable differences with parent company Bertelsmann AG over company strategy, BMG chief executive Strauss Zelnick and chairman Michael Dornemann announced their resignations Sunday November 5.

Zelnick will leave on January 1; Dornemann will depart on July 1. Fifty-seven-year-old Rudi Gassner, a music industry veteran with more than 30 years' experience and a former BMG international operations executive who resigned last January, will…

RIAA <I>vs</I> ISPs

The past year has been a busy one for Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She suffered a humiliating defeat at England's Oxford Union Debates, celebrated new agreements with Silicon Valley companies, and led her organization in the attack on file-sharing service Kazaa. Rosen and the RIAA have also attacked college kids and put pressure on universities to police their students.

Rosen claimed her group would now go after Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in its battle against file trading. Speaking at MIDEM (Marche International du Disque, de l'…

Music Industry Sues Technicolor

In a never-ending quest to control what it believes is an epidemic of piracy, the music industry in recent years has gone after Internet file-sharing startups, fly-by-night CD duplicators, foreign pirates operating on an industrial scale, college kids with too much time on their hands, and street-corner vendors hawking badly-duped cassettes. At times the anti-piracy campaign has reached the fervor of a witch hunt, with blame laid on the innocent as well as the guilty.

Almost all of the industry's enemies have been outsiders. That's what's so unusual about a lawsuit filed in early April in…

Hearing Loss & Audio Pros

Have you ever been to a rock concert and come away mumbling, "Those engineers must be deaf"? After enduring three hours of an all-out sonic assault, you were probably just a tad cranky, but the facts are that those engineers probably were deaf, or well on their way.

That's the sobering conclusion of a seven-year study of hearing loss among music and audio professionals conducted by the House Ear Institute (HEI) in Los Angeles. Data gathered from hundreds of screenings at music and audio trade shows since 1997 reveal a consistent pattern of "high-frequency hearing loss from noise-induced…

Added to the Archives This Week

From 2000, Brian Damkroger checks out the seductive Oracle CD player, commenting, "I couldn't help but wonder if the Oracle's sonic performance would be as unique and spectacular as its looks."

The January 1999 Stereophile saw Kal Rubinson listening to a pair of disc spinners. First he auditions the Arcam Alpha 9 CD player and writes, "There are as yet no 24/96 CDs, and it's unlikely that there ever will be. So, what can justify the inclusion of a 24/96 DAC in a CD player?"

Next, KR reviews the California Audio Labs CL-20 DVD-V/CD player, noting, "At a price of $2495, the CL-20 sits…

FTC: No More Minimum Advertised Pricing on CDs

Retail prices of compact discs are likely to drop in the coming months, thanks to a Federal Trade Commission action ending an industry-wide price-support policy begun five years ago. On May 10, the FTC announced that it had reached an agreement with the "Big Five" of the music business—Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music, Seagram Ltd.'s Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG Entertainment, and EMI Group PLC—that will effectively end the practice of "minimum advertised pricing" (MAP) instituted as a response to music-retailing price wars in the mid-1990s. Under MAP, retailers were…

Cirrus Logic Introduces New DAC and DVD Controller ICs

"Digital audio quality at analog prices." ThatÆs how Cirrus Logic's Crystal Semiconductor division introduced a chip that may bring a new level of audio performance to a much wider audience. On April 6, Crystal announced its CS4334, an 8-pin, small-outline D/A converter. The 24-bit CS4334 will support sampling rates of up to 96kHz, and is being marketed as a low-cost, high-quality solution for computer, automotive, and portable audio applications, as well as DVD systems and set-top converter boxes. Crystal claims the new chip is the industryÆs smallest delta-sigma DAC.

The highly…

2001 CES Begins with Optimistic Predictions

The largest of six divisions of Royal Philips Electronics, Philips Consumer Electronics Mainstream intends to push the audio industry in several directions this year, according to a presentation made by the division's CEO Guy Demuynck at a January 5 press conference in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Long a dominant force in research and development, as well as in marketing consumer electronics, Philips has great hopes for every segment of the audio market. 2000 was a record year for the company, Demuynck said, and 2001 should be very good as well.

For those who prefer music by the ton,…

Dorian On The Block

While at the 2005 CES in Las Vegas, we received word that The Dorian Group had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. More details have emerged in the days following the show.

The Dorian Group has estimated debts of $1 million and filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, on January 5. The largest secured creditor noted in the filing is Portland, ME–based bank Banknorth N.A., listed with a claim for a loan of approximately $300,000.

Chapter 11 is often used to protect a company as it attempts to reorganize its obligations, and allows continued operations while creditors work out a…