Sanibel Sound of Virginia recently announced it is now the exclusive distributor for the Perreaux line in the US. Sanibel's Steve Davis says his plan is "to offer the range through our well-established network of authorized resellers…
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New Zealand's Perreaux Industries began creating audio products 30 years ago, starting with the GS 2002 integrated transistor amplifier in 1974, and landed in the US in 1980 with the PMF 2150 amplifier. Dozens of new audio products have been developed since then, many of them groundbreaking, and the latest designs are again available in the American market.
Recordings more than 100 years old can now be heard on the Internet, thanks to a new program established by San Diego-based startup MP3.com. Among the sonic treasures is Thomas Edison narrating a "phonographic trip around the world" recorded in 1888. The site offers copies of Edison cylinder recordings and early 78 rpm discs, all available for free.
Music historian Michael Loughlin worked closely with the Edison National Historic Site to produce the recordings in MP3 format. "It is my goal to make MP3.com the premier place on the net to access historic recordings," Loughlin said. "With…
Jonathan Scull stuffs as many "relatively inexpensive" building tweaks as he can fit into "Fine Tunes" #21. Find out about basic room and electrical treatments on the relative cheap.
Designing loudspeakers is not a task for the faint of heart. But that doesn't stop thousands of would-be speaker builders each year from messing around with cabinets and parts in an attempt to improve on the other loudspeakers out there. Of those thousands of hobbyists, tens form companies, and perhaps one each year strikes gold.
To look at what makes such people tick, we present "Paul Barton: It Doesn…
The popular condensation of Darwin's theory of evolution is "adapt or die." The phrase could certainly have been addressed to the music-industry establishment by any one of four Internet entrepreneurs in a public discussion last week at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. The four---Gerry Kearby of Liquid Audio, Gene Hoffman of GoodNoise, Arnold Brown of AudioExplosion, and Andrew Keen of Audiocafe.com---gathered at the public affairs forum Tuesday evening, February 22, for a spirited discussion of "The Future of Music Distribution."
An audience of several hundred, including online (and…
The major record labels may put out most of the world's music, but they're doing so on a format first created by Philips and then further developed by Sony: the Compact Disc. In addition to the underlying technology, Philips and Sony established a strict standard for the format, insuring compatibility with all players around the world, which came to be known as the Red Book standard.
According to Philips, recent attempts to add playback restriction technology to new releases is not just a bad idea: Because the Red Book recipe has been altered, the discs no longer qualify as CDs and should…
Can you hear long passages of music in your mind? If so, your brain may be wired for sound like those of professional musicians.
Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, researchers at Germany's University of Tuebingen scanned the brains of eight professional violinists and determined that they can do something that amateurs can't—namely, hear music in their minds alone. The neuroscientists compared the neural activity of equal numbers of professional and amateur violinists, who were asked to "play back" the first 16 bars of Mozart's violin concerto in G major, first by tapping the…
Apple announced last week that music fans have downloaded over five million songs from its iTunes Music Store since its launch two months ago. In addition, the company reports that over 46% of the songs have been purchased as albums, and over 80% of the over 200,000 songs available on the online store have been purchased at least once.
Apple also announced that it shipped its one millionth iPod music player last week. Apple introduced the third generation of its portable digital audio player in April, edging out consumer electronics heavies like Sony, whose portable music players have…
Country music reached the peak of its popularity six years ago, when it claimed 18.7% of the recorded-music audience. Since then, it has steadily declined to its present 14.1%, according to the Recording Industry Association of America's 1998 Consumer Profile. Reasons for the decline include the increasing crossover of country stars into pop and rock styles, a phenomenon that has broadened many artists' reach and made acts like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain household names among folks who may not previously have paid much attention to country. Crossing over, unfortunately, also dilutes the…
It's been a tough couple of years for those who like to make digital copies of audio recordings. What started with SCMS copy-restriction schemes in DAT machines has quickly spilled over into current digital formats such as those proposed for DVD-Audio. But a glimmer of hope has shone through the haze.
Last month, Members of Congress Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Campbell (R-CA) introduced copyright legislation that would implement the copyright treaties negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) last December.
According to Gary Shapiro, Chairman of the Home…
After a May 10 announcement from the Federal Trade Commission that it had negotiated a settlement with the music industry's "Big Five" over a controversial pricing policy, enterprising private attorneys wasted little time initiating class-action lawsuits (1, 2) against them. By early August, some reports placed the number of suits nationwide at more than 100.
The minimum advertised pricing policy, or MAP, was used industry-wide in the mid-1990s, and put retailers at risk of losing co-op advertising funds from the Big Five if they promoted CDs below certain prices. The MAP scheme arose in…