Naxos of America says it plans to begin offering downloads from approximately 200 titles from its extensive catalog of 2400 compact discs, with new releases added each month. The company says…
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Sam Tellig loves 'em and consistently sings their high-quality/low-buck praises as a cheapskate favorite ($6.99 per CD!). And now, classical music label Naxos of America is blazing new paths with its announcement last week that it and Liquid Audio have inked an agreement to digitally distribute downloads of selected Naxos recordings to leading retail and music web sites in the Liquid Music Network.
Music industry attorneys may not enjoy much of a summer vacation. The season got off to a litigious start with a flurry of lawsuits by and against record labels and music-based websites.
On June 3, a group of web-based music companies filed suit against major record labels in US District Court in San Francisco in an attempt to obtain legal sanction for business models that allow subscribers to create their own playlists. Plaintiffs include an online entertainment trade group, the Digital Media Association (DiMA), Viacom Inc.'s MTVi, Launch Media, Inc., MusicMatch, Inc., and Listen.com…
Corporate consolidation has been likened to gravity: an inexorable, hard-to-resist force of nature always lurking in the background. D&M Holdings, parent company of Denon and Marantz Japan, has clearly felt its effects, announcing last week its latest acquisition: McIntosh Laboratory.
D&M Holdings itself is the result of a merger that took place almost exactly one year ago when Marantz Japan and Denon combined operations. The seeds for that deal were sown a year earlier, in 2001, when Marantz Japan acquired the Marantz brand from Philips and established operations in Europe and…
Retailers Ultimate Electronics, Sound Advice, Harvey Electronics and Good Guys have all reported strong sales for their most recent quarters, leading into the holiday shopping season. The only sour note was posted by Circuit City, which has stated that earnings are below expectations across all product categories.
Ultimate Electronics operates 34 stores, including 15 stores in Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah under the trade name Ultimate Electronics, 11 stores in Colorado under the trade name SoundTrack and eight stores in Minnesota under the…
A common question in the audio newsgroups these days is, "Have you tried the new PS Audio Power Plant, and what did you think?" Stereophile's Robert Deutsch takes a seasoned look at the new product in his review of the PS Audio P300 Power Plant. Does it live up to all of the hype, and is it true that the P300 is "audaciously original in concept, yet makes so much sense that you wonder why no one ever thought of it before?" Mr. Deutsch explains.
Next we travel back in time to a contentious AES event, of which Robert Harley reports that, "as a card-carrying member of the Audio Engineering…
Italian audio journal Fedelta' del Suono (Sound Fidelity) has honored American startup Red Rose Music with "Product of the Year" awards for the company's Model 3 preamplifier and Model 2 power amp. The award is especially noteworthy in view of the fact that the monthly publication, based in Terni, Italy, does not normally fête products from new companies.
The Red Rose 2 and 3 were designed by Victor Tiscareno. The Model 3 was previously known as the AudioPrism Mantissa, and the Model 2 is the latest incarnation of the AudioPrism Debut Mk.II, formerly a Stereophile "Recommended Component…
Doug Sahm, of the Grammy-winning Tex-Mex group the Texas Tornados, was found dead in a motel in Taos, New Mexico on Thursday, November 18. He appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly a heart attack, Taos police said. Sahm was 58.
"Texas has lost part of its heritage," the San Antonio Express-News eulogized. The Texas native had a prolific career, recording a variety of genres for Mercury, Atlantic, and other labels. Sahm grew up in an ethnically mixed area of San Antonio, where he absorbed musical influences ranging from rock and blues to Cajun, country, and western. He was a…
The DAC performance envelope has been pushed further by Burr-Brown Corporation. The Tucson semiconductor company has just announced the commercial release of its new PCM-1704, an ultra-high-quality digital/analog converter chip boasting a 120dB signal/noise ratio. The new chip supersedes the company's PCM-1702, a DAC found in many high-end products and widely considered the state of the art.
The 1704---priced at $12.95 each in OEM quantities of 1000 or more---is a small 20-pin SOIC requiring a ±5V supply. It will accept input data words of 20- and 24-bit lengths at sampling frequencies…
New York City, one of the world's most diverse and eclectic cities, will play host to an outstanding group of musicians, who will perform live at the Home Entertainment 2001 Show, May 11-13, 2001 at the Hilton New York & Towers.
Show attendees will be treated to more than a dozen live performances by classical, jazz, and blues artists, including a special performance on Friday evening by David Johansen and a grand concert on Saturday evening, sponsored by Sony Electronics, featuring the multi-talented, Grammy-winning blues artist Keb' Mo'. Keb' will perform a variety of musical…
The escalating "anti-piracy" technology battle being fought by record labels has caught the attention and provoked the ire of consumers, who are finding their fair use rights quickly eroding away. But computer manufacturers are also feeling the effects of recent music-company attempts to restrict the activities of music fans, since many computers fail to play the altered discs.
It's no secret that music sales are plummeting month by month, for which the labels blame piracy. But what many CD buyers may not know is that, as a result, more and more of the discs they do purchase are being…