"We are very pleased to be announcing version 1.0 of the Super Audio CD specification," said Wally Heijnemans, Director of standards R&D within Philips System Standards & Licensing. "Achieving this milestone allows…
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Last week, Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation announced the completion of Version 1.0 of the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) format specification. According to a statement, the format specification will be released to licensees early this month to allow hardware manufacturers and software providers to begin preparing products for launch in the coming months.
American fans of Jadis products take note: Pierre Gabriel Acoustic recently announced that it has acquired exclusive distribution rights to Jadis Electronics in the USA. Jadis is based in Villedubert, France and manufactures tube-based audio electronics.
Based in Québec, Canada, Pierre Gabriel Acoustic was established in 1990 and has distributed both Jadis and Gryphon in Canada for several years. The company also manufactures and distributes its own line of high-end loudspeakers and silver-wire interconnects.
As a result of the new agreement, PGA says, it has recently relocated to…
Michael Fremer heard that the Alesis MasterLink ML-9600 Hard Disk/CD-R Recorder "can sound better than all but the absolute top-drawer analog," and, of course, had to investigate. Mikey 'splains why audiophiles should take note of a machine generally used as a mastering tool by the recording industry.
"I must admit, right from the outset, that I find reviewing electronic components harder than reviewing loudspeakers; the faults are less immediately obvious," says JA as he is about to take on the Mark Levinson No.26 preamplifier and No.20 monoblock power amplifier. JA reveals what, if any…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…