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Like the proverbial camel who took over the tent after getting just his nose in, it appears that once copy protection is given an inch, it will inevitably try to get in all the way. At least that's how it appears with an increasing variety of CD copy protection systems now currently being tested en masse by the major record labels. Latest to announce a new "evaluation agreement" is BMG Entertainment, which will use and evaluate SunnComm's MediaCloQ "digital content cloaking technology", first put to the test earlier in the year on a Charley Pride CD (see previous).
Drummer Billy Higgins started his remarkable career backing up R&B musicians such as Amos Milburn and Bo Diddley around the LA area before embarking on his jazz path with the Jazz Messengers (led by Don Cherry and saxophonist James Clay) and Dexter Gordon. But it was his association with Ornette Coleman, starting in the mid 1950s, that electrified the jazz world and made him a force to reckon with. His first recordings, with Coleman and Red Mitchell, were released in 1958. In 1959, he performed with both Coleman in New York and Thelonious Monk in San Francisco, and from that point on,…
One of the more popular monthly columns in Stereophile these days is Jonathan Scull's "Fine Tunes." To keep our online readers fit and tweaked, we are going to be adding Scull's columns to the online Archives section on a weekly basis, starting with the first column he wrote for the magazine, back in July 1998: "Fine Tunes #1." "I think I just got 2000 bucks' worth of difference," writes a reader about the value of the advice contained in J-10's first installment.
We dig a little deeper into the vault to unearth a seminal and oft-requested 1990 piece by J. Gordon Holt: "Tweaking Your…
The online music world has been hit by one jolt after another as the record labels go after anyone they can slap with the "music pirate" label. In response, the e-sharks smell blood and are circling. Internet music-distribution company EMusic sent out a press release recently making the assertion that "now that Napster and MP3.com are both on shaky legal ground, many downloadable-music fans are going to be looking for compelling, 'legitimate' alternatives."
But what makes EMusic believe that Napster fans, notorious for being college-age freeloaders, are going to want to grow up and go…
Spring typically sees Stereophile release its coveted "Records To Die For" feature, wherein everybody working for the magazine gets to make like a music critic and add their two cents about what gets them excited (musically speaking). R2D4 2000 is on newsstands right now, in the February issue of Stereophile; to commemorate its publication, we add the 1999 "Records To Die For" to the online archives.
Also this week, Jonathan Scull attacks the dreaded ground loop in "Fine Tunes" #10. Here's how J-10 concludes his primer: "I believe we can now say that you have a basic grounding in this…
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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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…
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…
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…
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),…