High-end audio equipment designer Ron Sutherland says he, too, found himself listening to his office PC often enough that he started to tinker with the audio possibilities. "When…
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Don't smirk, but a lot of audiophiles, including this writer and our esteemed editor John Atkinson, spend a considerable amount of time listening to music on their computers, especially at work. In fact, the results from our recent online poll about computers and listening habits indicate that at least 60% of our readers listen this way as well, with half of those using their PCs for music playback "quite often."
CEDIA, Monte Carlo Game Room, and Audio Video Interiors, Home Theater, Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, and Stereophile magazines challenge you to "Get in the Game" as they host this year’s Elf Foundation Charity Raffle and Blackjack Tournament at CEDIA Expo 2002.
Raffle tickets are available at www.ElfSystems.org. You could win one of many great prizes, including a Runco CL-700 video projector ($10,000 retail), a Sonance InCeiling home theater speaker system ($3000 retail), and a Yamaha RX-Z1 receiver ($4500 retail). Other prizes include a Lutron Car Visor Package, a Faroudja NR-300…
Forget SACD vs DVD-Audio or even DualDisc. DRM, or digital rights management, has become the biggest audio format issue this year, and will likely continue to be for the next several years. At stake is the future of all consumer interactions with, and uses of, copyrighted digital media.
The folks who control content (record labels, movie studios) continue to struggle with hardware and technology companies (Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, etc) over which form of DRM must be included in next-generation products before content will be licensed for new services.
For now, consumers are…
CBGB, the legendary Bowery club frequently cited as the birthplace of America's punk movement, is the latest in a growing list of urban nightclubs getting priced out of the neighborhoods they helped create. According to a February 11 article in The Village Voice, CBGB's lease will end in August, and its landlord wants to see the club's monthly rent increase from $20,000 to $40,000.
That's not unreasonable in a neighborhood where new retail space rents for $55/square foot, but CBGB owner Hilly Krystal points out that the monthly nut, not to mention his $80,000 yearly liability insurance,…
Some months back, a poll at the Naxos of America website asked visitors about their preferences among high-resolution and multichannel formats. At that time, Naxos had been releasing DVD-As (and DVDs) in the US, but only released SACDs elsewhere.
The poll results in this uncontrolled sample indicated a clear preference for SACD. Consequently, Naxos€™ US April releases will be available in both formats and, at least for the foreseeable future, the company will duplicate its multichannel releases in SACD and DVD-A.
The first three SACD releases, Holst's The Planets (6.110004),…
How would you like to make a full 650Mb compilation CD of your favorite music in less than 10 minutes? That's what TDK is promising with its new veloCD ReWriter drive, to be shipped to dealers later this fall.
The 8432ai CD-RW burner will be priced at about $350 retail, according to advance publicity. In addition to 8x write, 4x rewrite, and 32x read speeds, the veloCD offers a 24x digital audio extraction speed—meaning a three-minute track on an ordinary CD can be converted into a WAV file and burned onto a CD-R or CD-RW in less than 10 seconds. A 200MHz or faster Pentium microprocessor…
Last week, in Book Review: High Fidelity Audio/Video Systems: A Critical Guide for Owners, we ran Corey Greenberg's scathing review of an audio book that misses the mark by a wide margin. This week, in Book Review: The Complete Guide to High-End Audio, we examine a book written by erstwhile Stereophile consulting technical editor Robert Harley. He does not emerge unscathed!
Next, we bring you the final installment of John Atkinson's comprehensive three-part "Measuring Loudspeakers" series, which first emerged as a paper presented at the 103rd Audio Engineering Society Convention, in New…
The iPod is being very good to Apple Computer.
Apple sold 860,000 iPods in its third fiscal quarter ended June 30, more than twice the 336,000 it sold in the same period in 2003. During the same quarter, iPods outsold Mac computers by 24,000 units, helped by improved supplies of the new iPod Mini for the US market and by the introduction of the player into the global market. Approximately 6% of iPods sold were Hewlett-Packard branded devices. Counting business done by Apple's iTunes Music Store, music products now account for 27% of the company's revenue, almost five times last year's…
Napster may have finally won a round in court. The Federal District judge in the music industry's ongoing case against the file-sharing service has allowed for the possibility that the plaintiffs may have abused their own copyright privileges in the launch of their online music services, MusicNet and pressplay.
On February 22, Judge Marilyn Patel of Federal District Court in Northern California wrote that she "found reason for concern" that the industry's five major labels had colluded to create a virtual monopoly of the burgeoning online music business. "If Napster is correct, these…
Last year's media darling may be this year's has-been. Napster, the music file-sharing service that shook the music industry's foundations, remains shut down after US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that it cannot resume operations until it can prove that no copyrighted songs can slip through its filter. In a closed session on Wednesday, July 11, Patel ordered Napster to stay offline until she authorizes it to do otherwise.
The 99.4% blockage rate that Napster has been able to achieve is insufficient, Patel stated. "We are approaching a system that has a zero rate of error,"…