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Police Raid TARA Labs

Ashland, OR cable maker, TARA Labs, was raided by a combined force of federal agents and local police, acting on a warrant issued after investigators found sufficient evidence that the company may have mislabeled some of its products as "Made in USA."

Long known through its advertising as the maker of "the cable that God uses," TARA Labs was unable to invoke divine intervention to prevent law enforcement officials from seizing more than $600,000 in inventory, along with computers and company records in a day-long action.

TARA may have violated US customs laws by labeling foreign-made…

Added to the Archives This Week

Want to know how Michael Fremer is able to tie a story about his baffled plumber into an equipment review? Find out in his report on the Audio Physic Virgo loudspeaker. About the speakers, Mikey writes: "Clearly, the Virgos disappeared, leaving one of the most credible three-dimensional soundstages I've ever experienced in any of my listening rooms over the years."

Thomas J. Norton writes, "When Pioneer commissioned Allen Boothroyd, a British industrial designer best known for his work with Meridian Audio, to come up with a unique appearance for its new surround-sound speaker system, they…

Watermarking, High-Resolution Audio Big Topics at AES

For the 109th convention of the Audio Engineering Society, the main floor of the L.A. Convention Center was transformed into a bazaar of new tools for audio professionals—but the panel discussions upstairs were where the real action took place. On Friday, September 22—just an hour before researchers Dr. Stanley Lipshitz and John Vanderkooy of Ontario's University of Waterloo presented a paper offering a mathematical proof for the "imperfectability" of one-bit delta-sigma recording systems—Sony Corporation issued a clarification of the technical standards for its Direct Stream Digital…

Several Beach Boys Classics Remixed to 5.1 Surround Sound

Last week, Capitol Records announced that it will release expanded DVD and VHS editions of Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story. The documentary, produced by Stephanie Bennett and directed by Alan Boyd, made its US television debut on VH1 in 1998. A soundtrack CD of Endless Harmony, originally released to coincide with the VH1 airing, is also available.

But what may prove most interesting to Stereophile readers, especially in light of many of the comments from last week's Vote!, is that in addition to the typical DVD bonus materials, there will be several new 5.1 surround-sound mixes of…

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In a landmark special feature, Chris Dunn & Malcolm Omar Hawksford thoroughly dissect the vicissitudes of the digital interface and jitter in Bits is Bits? The authors note, "The theoretical performance obtainable from the 16-bit linear PCM format sampled at 44.1kHz is superior to any analog sources available to the consumer."

From September 1992, the late Peter Mitchell proves remarkably prescient with "A Question of Bits." PM writes, "Someday we may speak wistfully to our grandchildren about the 'golden age' of digital audio when consumer formats contained a bitstream that was an…

SDMI Watermarks Tested In Nashville

Last year the music industry was jolted from its complacency by the rise of MP3, a scheme for the quick and easy transfer of digital audio files over the Internet. Legal attempts to block the format as a form of copyright violation failed, and the industry began scrambling to find a way to prevent the wholesale piracy of higher-resolution formats to come. The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), an alliance of more than 240 hardware, software, and music-publishing companies, has been working overtime trying to develop an unobtrusive technique for preventing unauthorized copying—something…

Is the Best Seat in the House Now in the Garage?

Audiophiles are just warming up to the debate on how (or why) they should set up multi-channel audio in the home (see previous story). But perhaps the listening room will ultimately take a back seat to a more obvious choice for a multi-channel environment: the automobile. Several multi-channel products are being announced for the autosound market, including a new Fujitsu DVD player with 5.1 audio.

Announced by Fujitsu Ten's Eclipse car stereo division last week, the new product is called the DVD Source Unit 55090, and—when combined with the Digital Decoder 39011—it will provide 5.1…

Kathy Gornik to Chair CEA Board

During the week of October 14, Thiel Audio Products president Kathy Gornik completed an unprecedented triple play.

A longtime volunteer for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Gornik was elected chair of the CEA's Board of Directors and Executive Board for the coming year. Her election makes her the first woman, the first executive of a small manufacturing company, and the first representative of the high-end audio community to serve in that position.

"In addition to being the first female to serve as chair, Kathy will provide us with the point of view of a small-business…

Consolidation Nation

The slippery slope established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 could soon get much slipperier. Three major media conglomerates have teamed up to pressure the Federal Communications Commission to drop the remaining restrictions on the ownership of broadcasting stations.

The three media giants—News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, Viacom Inc. (parent company of the CBS and UPN networks and Paramount film studios), and General Electric Co.'s NBC division—have jointly petitioned the FCC seeking elimination of the ownership caps, which have been gradually loosened since the first major…

Audio Sales Continue To Go Boom

According to numbers just released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), April audio factory-to-dealer sales shot up by 13% to $611 million, representing a year-to-date increase of 10%. The CEA says that audio revenues in all categories except aftermarket autosound experienced double-digit growth in both monthly and year-to-date sales. Aftermarket autosound remained steady, keeping pace with its record-breaking sales in 1999.

Also noted: revenue from portable audio sales grew 24% during April, reaching a total of $172 million. The CEA adds that almost every subcategory in this…