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Added to the Archives This Week

Kalman Rubinson says he "anticipated the installation of the TacT Audio RCS 2.0 digital equalizer/preamplifier with mixed emotions." Would his hard work at setting up the perfect listening environment be rendered irrelevant in the face of digital signal processing? Or would the future of audio unfold at his feet?

In a related feature, Rubinson profiles and uses the ELAC Technische Software CARA 2.0 computer program, which attempts to model the properties of your listening room before you commit the big bucks. Even better than the real thing? Rubinson investigates.

Michael Fremer…

Added to the Archives This Week

We begin with a January 1993 article from Robert Harley called The Jitter Game. RH explains, "Clock jitter is a serious and underestimated source of sonic degradation in digital audio. Only recently has jitter begun to get the attention it deserves, both by high-end designers and audio academics."

From his December 1990 "As We See It," Harley discusses Digital Sound and a groundbreaking paper presented to the AES by Dr. Roger Lagadec. "Dr. Lagadec challenges the conventional wisdom that requantizing a digital audio signal with a digital fader produces only a change in level accompanied by a…

Sour Notes in the Music Biz

In one of his old comedy routines, Steve Martin imagines himself hauled into court for bank robbery. He seeks dismissal of the charges on the grounds of forgetfulness. "Your Honor," he pleads, "I forgot that bank robbery was a crime."

That sort of forgetfulness seems widespread and persistent in the music industry. On Tuesday, May 4, several major record labels and music publishers agreed to pay approximately $50 million to settle an investigation by the New York State Attorney General's office into unpaid royalties for thousand of recording artists. Among the list of underpaid performers…

More Anti-piracy Measures

US Senator Joseph Biden has introduced a bill that would give law-enforcement agencies stronger tools to pursue copyright violators, and would give copyright holders stronger grounds for suing pirates.

Intended to shore up holes in present copyright law, the bill, approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, July, 16 criminalizes copying not only of copyrighted content but also of the packaging that contains it. The bill makes it a crime to copy music, movies, and software, and to counterfeit "authentication devices" including watermarks, holograms and packages, and covers both…

HE2005: The Great Debate

Some say it dates back 50 years, to when the late David Hafler introduced a tube amplifier with a "better-sounding" ultralinear output stage. Others claim it goes back to the introduction of electrical recording and playback in 1927, when Gramophone magazine's founder and editor, author Sir Compton McKenzie, thundered that electrical reproduction was a step backward in sound quality. But whenever it started, the "Great Debate" between "subjectivists," who hear differences between audio components, and "objectivists," who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' over-heated…

CD Sales Up in '98; High End Stalls over DVD-Audio

Unit sales of CD players rebounded in 1998, rising 4% to $336 million, according to statistics from the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association. All segments of the CD hardware market---single-play, carousel changers, and mega-disc changers---improved over the big slump of 1997, when unit sales fell 60% and dollar sales fell 40%. Through November 1998, single-disc player sales were up 33% in units and 24% in dollar volume. Carousel changers, component-CD's largest segment, rose 15% in units and 7.5% in dollars during the first three quarters of 1998.

What might look like good news…

IFPI: Music Sales Off Worldwide

The international music industry is once again singing the blues, and CD burning is the refrain.

Sales of recorded music were down by 5% monetarily and 6.7% in units shipped worldwide for the first half of 2001, according to figures released September 28 by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPA). The IFPI reported declines of 20% in Latin America, 8% in Asia, and 5% in North America as well as decreases in other major markets. (Other reports, such as those appearing in the Wall Street Journal, quoted much higher figures, including a 30% decline in the Latin…

Dell Previews Digital Audio Receiver

One can almost imagine how it all started: "Hey, you got a computer in my audio system." "No, you got an audio system in my computer . . . "

No matter how it began, manufucturers are still trying to crack the "convergence" market with products intended to leverage the processing and connectivity abilities of computers with the popularity and ease of use of the home entertainment system.

Another twist on the convergence concept emerges this week as computer manufacturer Dell unveils the Dell Digital Audio Receiver during PC Expo in New York. Dell says that the new receiver is…

Canada Decides to Tax Blank Media

In a move that is sure to enrage users of blank digital media, Canada's Copyright Board has finalized plans to add a levy of 5.2 Canadian cents on CD-Rs and CD-RWs, 23.3 cents on audio cassettes over 40 minutes in length, and 60.8 cents on MiniDiscs and recordable audio CDs. In a market in which blank CD-Rs used for computer backup typically cost less than C$1 each, this represents an increase of at least 5% per disc. Interestingly, DAT tapes are excluded from the tax, as they are not seen as a threat to the music business.

Predictably, Canada's high-tech sector is outraged about the fees…

HitClips Are Hot

Where Pogs and Pokemon once ruled, HitClips have taken over. HitClips are hot. So hot, in fact, that Hasbro Incorporated's Tiger Electronics division has sold more than 20 million of them at $3.99 each. That's $80 million gross on a single product, a figure that probably no high-end audio company has ever reached.

Tiger Electronics has also sold truckloads of HitClips players at just under $20 each. But unless you happen to have kids under the age of 12, you've probably never heard of the format—and for good reason. HitClips are so far below the high-fidelity radar that audiophiles…