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Yamaha displays FireWire-endowed audio/video components at Comdex '97

Digital audio took another lurch forward at Comdex '97 with the display of Yamaha's FireWire-to-PCM converter technology.

Two product mock-ups were shown, both with 1394 (FireWire) connectors providing the means for moving digital audio between components. In a modest display, a multidisc CD changer was tethered to a middle-of-the-line Yamaha A/V surround-sound receiver via a single 1394 cable. More important, the FireWire jacks on the back of these components were the only connectors present for propelling audio, the exception being the speaker output posts on the receiver.

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McCormack Gets New Lease on Life

Rumors began surfacing last month that McCormack Audio might be on the ropes. Long known for their value-oriented high-end products such as amps and preamps, the company had been struggling for the last couple of years (for reasons not connected with the quality of its products). But a savior has appeared that looks to put the company on a sure footing.

On Friday, July 10, the assets of McCormack Audio were purchased at an auction in Southern California on behalf of a new corporation, McCormack Audio Corporation of Virginia, in which Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson are shareholders. Conrad…

Sony BMG Highjacks Consumers' Computers, "Apologizes" With Shoddy Fix

On November 1, Window OS expert Mark Russinovich revealed that his root kit detection utility had uncovered the presence of some well-hidden, poorly written code that was clogging computer resources and could potentially crash his computer or, if removed, disable his CD drive.

This is quite common in the world of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, etc), but in Russinovich's case, there was a really interesting angle: The hidden software was not the product of some antisocial hacker, but rather came from a CD he had legitimately purchased from Sony BMG (Van Zandt's Get Right With the…

Adding Wireless into the Audio BREW

Please bear with us a moment here—we know most audiophiles react to MP3-related news with a serious case of ringing ears, but tracing where the lo-fi market is currently headed can be instructive for understanding the distant hi-fi future. And if the new technology previewed last week at Qualcomm's BREW conference in San Diego is any indication, some parts of your audio future may, in fact, be wireless.

Qualcomm's BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) platform is expected to soon encourage developers to create applications that operate on mobile handsets. Anticipating the need to…

Home Entertainment 2004—Day Two

Friday, the first public day of HE2004, was entirely different from the press-only day that preceded it. Friday, the audiophiles arrived and the excitement was palpable. Rooms filled with music lovers; halls thronged with excited gear-heads. Now that's entertainment.

And with press conferences out of the way, we could finally get own to the business of listening to some of the systems set up for public consumption.

THEMUSIC.com was showing a nifty little system built around reference 3A Royal Virtuosos ($4000/pair); Antique Sound Labs' AQ 1009 stereo triode power amp ($5995),…

First DVD-Audio Single to be Released Soon

The worldÆs first DVD-Audio single will soon be out from the rock group Full on the Mouth. "People Mover" is a track from the groupÆs forthcoming album, Collide. "We felt a 5.1 surround-sound mix would be a great medium to showcase the capabilities and technology of DVD and the electronic elements of Full on the Mouth,'' said Charlie Lico, chief executive officer of the bandÆs label, Pioneer Music Group, which is a subsidiary of Pioneer Electronic Corporation.

Full on the Mouth, the first act to be signed by Pioneer Music Group, has been together eight years. The band's debut album…

Australia's Halcro Has Some Explaining To Do

We always keep an ear out for new and interesting audio developments each time we attend the annual CES show in Las Vegas. This year, one company that garnered repeated buzz around the Alexis Park, and even at the main convention center was Australia's Halcro. As we reported from the show, Halcro builds gorgeous-looking power amplifers shaped in the form of an "H" that range in price from $10,000 for its dm 33 three-channel amplifer up to $30,000 for a pair of the dm 68 225W monoblocks.

What has raised the eyebrows of the audio community, however, is a bold claim, repeated on the company…

DVD Jon Strikes Again

Norway's one-stop hacking expert, Jon Lech Johansen, has now reverse-engineered the encryption coding in Windows Media Player that prevents .NSC files from being accessed by users of other platforms.Geek-to-nerd translation: An .NSC file carries information about a media stream, including the port name and file address of the stream server. When Media Player opens the file, it decodes this information and connects to the stream server the code specifies. Johansen doesn't believe there's a rational reason to encrypt this information since, upon opening the stream, the information is usually…

The (Really) <I>Ultimate</I> Audio System?

For lifelike audio presentation in your living room, what could be better than the real thing? When it comes to putting the sound of a piano in your home, nothing comes close to, well, a real piano. For more than a century, several companies have marketed player pianos, first using rolls of punched paper, and most recently sophisticated MIDI programs. But if a real piano represents the ultimate audio performance in your living room, who has the ultimate real piano?

Yamaha thinks they do, in the form of their new Disklavier Pro 2000, just now heading into dealer showrooms at a chart-…

The Straight Story

Loudspeaker designer and manufacturer Richard Vandersteen has heard enough: He is embarking on a crusade to right an egregious wrong he sees being perpetuated by the marketing scribes and salesfolk working in the consumer electronics business. Though he was miles away, at his company headquarters in Hanford, CA, his passion for spreading the audiophile word came through the telephone loud and clear.

"There is a common misconception today," Vandersteen states, "one that has been aided and abetted by a strong marketing effort from certain Hollywood firms, that the requirements for a home-…