Heading the list is the 105th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, scheduled for San Francisco's Moscone Center, September 26-29. In addition to meetings of technical and standards committees, there will be over 350 exhibits occupying the Center's North Hall---the largest showcase for professional audio in the world. Exhibits will be open from 12 noon to 6pm Saturday, September 27;…
search
The autumn months will be hectic ones for the audio industry, with many gatherings vying for the attention of engineers, marketing executives, and journalists. Here are but a few of the coming events:
Some ultra-high-end two-channel specialists may still be singing the blues, but others in the electronics retailing business are humming happier tunes.
Eden Prairie, MN–based chain Best Buy Co. reported a rise of 5.7% in same store sales for the first quarter of 2002. In a press release dated Thursday, June 6, the retailer said it experienced stronger than expected sales, and predicted first quarter earnings of 21¢ per share. That compares well to the company's 26¢ per share for the same period in 2001.
Thanks primarily to sustained sales growth of digital televisions, DVD players…
It's bad enough for stores competing with each other for consumer loyalty—imagine how retailers must feel when the largest consumer-electronics company in the world decides to compete with you as well. This grim reality came true for dealers around the world last week, when Sony Electronics outlined its plans for SonyStyle.com, which the company describes as "an information-rich e-commerce website." The site is scheduled to be launched this fall.
This is not entirely new ground for Sony, which in the past has opened its own retail outlets in several major cities. But Sony's aggressive…
Ah, it's good to be home again. We have finally arrived at the Alexis Park complex, the enclave of specialty audio. It's a much more civilized venue than the Convention Center, but, here as there, new products prevail. Only drawback this year: Someone has apparently rerouted the airplane take-offs from nearby McCarran airport to directly overhead, making it tough to continue a conversation or demo for more than 5 minutes.
Martin-Logan has introduced several new affordable electrostatic-panel/dynamic-woofer hybrid loudspeakers: notably, the $1895 Scenario, which looks like the ReQuest's…
Lehmann audio has carved out a small niche for itself in the analog market with the Black Cube phono preamp (first noted by Michael Fremer in the October 1998 issue of Stereophile). The company now hopes to reach a wider audience in the US and Canada for the Black Cube and the rest of its products with a new distribution arrangement between itself and Hudson Audio Imports.
Lehmann's Norbert Lehmann says that its previous distributor, Audio Advancements, wanted to put more emphasis on its own specialty retail operations rather than distribution and marketing of products for others, and will…
Barry Willis remembers well the British invasion: "Really Big Hi-Fi came to live with me for a couple of months this past spring in the form of a pair of Tannoy Churchill loudspeakers." After a challenging delivery, Willis wrestles the Tannoys into place and files his report. Victory at last?
Next, Paul Messenger makes a careful appraisal of the Naim NBL loudspeaker. As Messenger writes, "My enthusiasm for Naim speakers has long been tempered by a feeling that mechanical aspects of the design are given priority over acoustics and styling." But as Messenger finds, things are decidedly…
The last week of July was a busy one for music industry attorneys, and by some measure a sucessful one. As almost everyone in the world is aware, on Wednesday, July 26, the Recording Industry Association of America won a round in its fight against Napster, a San Mateo, CA-based software company that enables the sharing of MP3 music files over the Internet. On that day, in a US Federal court in San Francisco, Judge Marilyn Patel decreed that the widespread sharing of music using Napster was a form of wholesale copyright violation, and ordered the service shut down effective Friday, July 28…
Citing the potential danger of "collective dominance" of the music business, European Commission members have nixed the proposed merger of American media conglomerate Time Warner and British music-industry powerhouse EMI. The $20 billion joint venture may still have some small chance at a future, provided the companies make further concessions to allay fears of monopolistic control of music prices in Europe.
Such concessions do not appear likely, however, in view of compromises Time Warner has already made to clear the way for its $127 billion merger with America Online, the world's…
One would think the last thing the music industry needs right now is to further alienate its customers who are still buying discs. But that is just what the record labels are doing by secretly experimenting with technology that restricts how discs are used, says a new report.
Stereophile's John Atkinson wrote in his October "As We See It," Selling the Benefits, that, if the record labels feel compelled to remove the "fair use" and "portability" benefits that music buyers currently enjoy, then those same customers may no longer feel compelled to buy new discs.
GartnerG2's new report…
Mastering engineer Denny Purcell let out a long sigh. "Does anyone in this room really believe that any of this is going to do any good?" he asked. Of the eight or nine people—each with decades of experience in the music and/or audio industries—hanging out at Georgetown Masters Studios in Nashville for SDMI's Phase II listening tests, no one said "Yes." The consensus: The watermarking issue will probably be dead and forgotten within a year.
Even those who believe that the music industry has legitimate justification for trying to develop some method of protecting its products have…