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The DIY Chronicles, Part Four

Editor's Note: This is Part Four of a six-part series from reader Hervé Delétraz of Switzerland, who is chronicling the development of his DIY (do-it-yourself) audio amplifier. Part One is here, Part Two is here, and Part Three is here.

The prototype board was built in November 1999. I assembled all of the parts on a 6mm-thick aluminum plate and plugged it into the wall. Some buzzing noises for a while, then Waoum! Four devices in Heaven!

Well, the simulation was obviously working better than the real thing! I spent a few more nights—and transistors—and found some things that…

Tweeter Group Continues Expansion; Numbers up for Best Buy, Sony Electronics

Large companies may be chopping jobs by the thousands, but there are signs elsewhere that the economy is still booming. Recent figures from electronics retailers Best Buy and the Tweeter Home Entertainment Group and from Sony Electronics indicate only a partial slowdown in spending for quality audio/video gear.

Canton, MA–based Tweeter Group reported April 4 that its second-quarter revenue increased 36.8%, with same-store sales up 3.6%. The company has been expanding consistently for the past three years, acquiring successful upscale regional retailers in the mid-Atlantic states, the…

Sony Introduces Walkman with Download Capability

The Walkman is 20 years old. As part of its celebration of one of the most successful audio products in history, Sony has introduced its first personal music player with the capability of downloading music from the Internet. The new Walkman employs Sony's "memory stick" technology to store audio files as large as 32 megabytes. The latest Walkman, which was unveiled last week in Japan and New York, is expected to retail at approximately $400 and should appear in stores in January.

Prior to Sony's entry, the market for portable digital music players was predicted to grow to 6.67 million…

Radio, Radio

Traditional music radio has been taking a beating since the mid '80s, when declining audience numbers entered a ratings freefall. Reader Bard-Alan Finlan argued in his Soapbox a few weeks back that perhaps digital radio could cure the market's over-the-air terrestrial broadcast ills, if only it were implemented with adequate bandwidth and marketed correctly.

"Without a doubt, radio's future is digital," concurs Dale Mowry of Harris Broadcast. In an effort to move In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) digital radio forward, equipment manufacturer and IBOC promoter Harris says it will be launching the…

MusicNet, Pressplay Tunes Won't Travel

While audiophiles obsess about extracting another iota of resolution from our already high-rez systems and recordings, the rest of the world is going crazy for portable music.

Despite the legal shackles slapped on Napster, the MP3 format is alive and well. File-sharing continues unabated, and high-tech solid-state music players are one of the audio industry's hottest trends—a trend so hot that computer companies like Apple have eagerly joined the fray with devices like the iPod, a player no bigger than a cellular telephone, but capable of storing a thousand songs. If the experience of the…

Added to the Archives This Week

After the bungled launch last year of DVD-Audio, where is a digital audiophile to turn? John Atklinson provides some answers in "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution," from the April 2000 Stereophile. "So while the DVD Forum argues about increasingly arcane aspects of the DVD-Audio medium, and John Lennon's record-industry 'men in suits' retreat further into their lawyer-built fortresses, I have bypassed all they have to offer . . . "

Continuing our series of reviews of Thiel speakers, Brian Damkroger listens intently to the Thiel CS2.3 loudspeaker: "The Thiel CS2.3 and Magnepan MG1.6/QR are the…

Industry Roundup

Audio retail revival: Electronics retailers throughout the US are ramping up their commitment to audio separates, according to a June 21 report by Joseph Palenchar in TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics). Palenchar describes the new emphasis on audio components as a response to declining margins on "home theater in a box" (HtiB) systems. Through April of this year, factory-to-dealer audio component sales rose 29.8% to $344.6 million, with April sales up 41.9%, hitting a four-year high of $86.9 million.

Audio sales aren't growing as a result of new interest in music, however, but as…

DVD-Audio Promises Unprecedented Realism

On October 1 and 2, engineers, marketing executives, and journalists filled the Hyatt Regency conference center near the San Francisco airport for the DVD-Audio Forum. A long afternoon of technical lectures left us numb. "Therapy for insomniacs" is the only way to describe the seemingly endless Power Point presentations. Microsoft's Power Point seems to be the standard format at all large gatherings, and it's as soporific as hearing a professor read from a textbook.

Technical descriptions of the new format, while dry, do offer some insight into its potential---one intriguing aspect of…

Added to the Archives This Week

Back in April 2001, Jonathan Scull got his hands on the Sony SCD-C333ES SACD/CD player—a carousel model no less—and filed his report. "So I loaded up five discs for the evening—a process quite different from choosing and playing one disc at a time—and imagined the angle on the bumper shot I'd have to line up for this review!"

Michael Fremer reviewed the Naim CDX CD player more than five years ago and asked a question that may still be considered relevant today: "Should you buy your last CD player now? Or should the CD player (or processor/transport) you already own be your last—your next…

Ultimate Electronics' Great Leap Forward

Growing pains aren't always unpleasant. In the case of Denver-based Ultimate Electronics, they might be completely enjoyable.

On November 7, the up-scale 57-store retail chain announced an astounding 34% increase in sales for the quarter ended October 31, compared to the same period in 2001. Dollar totals were $177.8 million for the quarter, compared to $132.8 million for the same period last year. Year-to-date sales grew 26% to $462 million from $365.5 million for the first nine months last year.

The huge surge was largely due to the opening of 10 new stores in the past 90 days, 9…