The tests were administered by Sony engineering vice president Malcolm Davidson, and conducted in studios in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville using ABX switching of time-aligned high-quality playback equipment. (I participated in one of the…
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In December, after months of conducting listening tests with audio professionals in the US, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) choose a watermarking technology from Verance Corporation for DVD-Audio copyright protection. Test results had indicated that Verance's system was the least detectable of the contenders under consideration.
John Wright was one of the most important figures on the British hi-fi scene since the mid-1960s. His natural modesty and reticence made it easy to underestimate a working life that encompassed an unusually wide range of different roles: from inventor to speaker engineer to reviewer to businessman.
Both of his parents were music teachers, and while John himself was an accomplished pianist and organist, he developed a similar passion for the gramophone, and the challenge of reproducing the recorded music repertoire to the highest possible standards. While he both trained and practiced as a…
DVD-Audio is getting a big push from Panasonic this season. A promotion running from November 7, 2000 until January 31, 2001 includes rebates on the purchase of new players and free discs from a wide assortment of performing artists.
Buyers of a Panasonic DVD-A7 player will receive a $75 mail-in rebate; those who purchased a Technics DVD-A10 DVD-Audio/Video player (reviewed in the November Stereophile by Jonathan Scull) will receive rebate coupons worth $100. Those who buy "DVD-Audio Ready" Technics receivers—models SA-DA8K, SA-DA8N or SA-DA10N—on the same date will get additional $50…
Record labels have found that CDs with built-in restriction technologies have not worked in all CD players, have been incompatible with some computers, and have engendered considerable backlash from irate consumers. But why should that stop them?
Stealth MediaLabs announced last week that SunnComm has agreed to license its "StealthChannel" technology, designed to utilize a "hidden and virtually indestructible 'metaspace'" within compact discs. The companies say this will allow for a persistent watermark to be embedded in SunnComm's MediaMax music CD releases.
In an effort to add a…
"Some say it dates back to 1927, when Gramophone magazine's editor thundered that electrical reproduction was a step backward in sound quality," said the promotional copy for Home Entertainment 2005's opening-day event, "The Great Debate: Subjectivism on Trial." It continued: "But whenever it started, the Great Debate between 'subjectivists,' who hear differences among audio components, and 'objectivists,' who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' overheated imaginations, rages just as strongly in the 21st century as it did in the 20th." On April 29 at the Manhattan Hilton,…
We're still waiting to see even one official US release of DVD-Audio software, but reports are trickling in that the recording industry is nonetheless planning for the multichannel high-resolution audio landscape. The latest bit of news comes from mastering facility Future Disc Systems, which announced last week that it is now mastering DVD-Audio projects, and will soon be ready for high-resolution surround sound.
Steve Hall, chief mastering engineer at Future Disc, says that "Because the DVD process is complex, a project may be loaded and/or modified by several engineers in facilities…
As expected, the DVD WG-4 Audio Working Group announced at CES that it has released a draft of its DVD-Audio specification to the 10 original DVD consortium companies, and to music-industry associations RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), RIAJ (Recording Industry Association of Japan), and IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).
Details of the standard, two years in preparation, were sparse, but we find it significant that the chairman of WG-4, Bike H. Suzuki, felt it necessary to say that "The WG-4 recognizes that the music industryÆs top priority is…
Michael Brecker, the legendary tenor saxophonist, has been a staple in the recording scene for more than 30 years now—we were first bowled over by his work on drummer Billy Cobham's 1974 album Crosswinds, although we could have just as easily mentioned hundreds of titles where he supported other musicians as a first-tier studio player. Along with his brother, trumpeter Randy Brecker, he co-led the Brecker Brothers band in the 1970s and, since 1987, has released intelligent, challenging records as a headliner, including our favorite, 2001's The Nearness of You: The Ballad Book (Verve 549705 CD…
EMI Group PLC has gotten serious about surviving in a depressed market. In the wake of a disastrous multimillion-dollar payout to pop singer Mariah Carey, the UK music label has announced sweeping cutbacks in its workforce—including many American executives—and in its roster of artists.
On Wednesday, March 20, EMI's chief of recorded music, Alain Levy, revealed a plan to cut 1800 jobs, approximately 20% of its workforce. Sources say 27% of the jobs lost will be in North America. The company will also reduce stock dividends by 50%.
EMI will cut around 400 performing artists from its…
In this age of the major record labels maximizing music profits at all costs, even if it involves installing spyware on consumers' computers, www.Magnatune.com stands apart. The website offers entire albums' worth of music of high quality for download in a choice of formats, from highest-quality MP3 (three times the size of iTunes MP3 files) to CD-quality WAV files. It also gives 50% of the money it collects directly to its artists. Magnatune founder John Buckman, 36, who divides his time between London and Berkeley, chose the site's motto: "Internet Music Without the Guilt: Magnatune, the…