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Added to the Archives This Week

With two new high-rez audio formats on deck, is a CD-only player still relevant? John Atkinson listens to, and then measures, the Classé CDP-10 CD player to discover why it sometimes takes 20 years to perfect a format.

Paul Bolin then wires up the Aesthetix Rhea phono preamplifier, musing that "trickle-down technology is a grand thing," when it leads to "a tubed phono preamplifier of exceptionally distinguished lineage."

Next, Kal Rubinson surrounds himself with multichannel components and recordings for "Music in the Round #2." KR profiles the McCormack MAP-1 multichannel analog…

De-Crackle, De-Pop, Burn

Bringing old albums out of the vaults and onto the market as CDs is a pretty standard process these days. First you get the licensing straightened out, find the original cover art, and locate the first-generation master tapes. In a pinch, the safety copies of the masters can be used, but if these also can't be located, what next?

Burn a CD master from a vinyl LP of course.

Waves, a company that develops and markets audio signal processing software for the pro-audio and multimedia markets, is releasing next month its new "Restoration" software bundle, which the company claims will…

NHT Gets EQCalibrated

One of the more compelling live demonstrations at last year's 2001 Consumer Electronics Show was in the room at the Alexis Park hosted by Australia's ClarityEQ. As reported last year, using a $350 pair of NHT Super One speakers driven by mass-market consumer gear, the company's PDC-6.6 DSP correction system noticeably improved the midrange tonality and imaging we were hearing each time it was switched into the circuit. This prompted us to give the company the "proof of concept in a hotel room" award for that year.

ClarityEQ was back in the Alexis Park at the recent 2002 CES, and announced…

D&M Holdings to Acquire Boston Acoustics

More consolidation in the audio biz: D&M Holdings, owner of Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Laboratory, ReplayTV, Rio, and Escient, took another big gulp last week and made a move to acquire Boston Acoustics.

Boston Acoustics was founded in 1979 (interestingly enough, not in Boston, but in Peabody, Massachusetts), and quickly found success in the home loudspeaker market, creating such classic bookshelf designs as the A70 and the diminutive A40. In the late 1980s, the company expanded into the car-audio and custom-installation markets and then on to OEM design and manufacturing. In recent years…

Mission to the US

British loudspeaker manufacturer Mission has announced a major marketing push into North America with the launch of its new distribution arm, Mission U.S.A. The company, founded in 1977 and noted for using one of the first polypropylene-cone drivers in 1978, had been distributing its products in the US through Denon Canada.

In a statement, Mission says it will take advantage of its "longstanding heritage in loudspeaker design, while also expanding into new territory with unique, high-performance audio and video products that utilize today's most advanced technologies." John Atkinson…

Levinson Misattributed; New Cello Amp Due in Fall

Every month, we get dozens of press releases about new developments in the audio industry. Many of them, detailing minor changes in product design, company policy, or personnel, are less than newsworthy. A disturbing number are written in an odd variant of English—PR Speak—In Which Every Word Is Capitalized And Quotes Are Used "For Emphasis." Others clearly have been penned by folks not fully in command of the language: Many are thus improved features of great desire and will invite happiness to include in next model.

Extracting the facts—we assume that's what they are—to include in news…

2002 CES Day Three

There's no denying that traffic at the Alexis Park is down from last year. But in spite of this, high-end audio continues to evolve and impress. There were plenty of two-channel audio systems to go around, including vinyl front-ends, while multichannel and video made a modest showing. It's hard enough to get decent sound out of two speakers in a hotel demo room, let alone five or six.

Braving the multichannel waters, however, were companies like Bel Canto Design, which had its new PRE6 multichannel balanced analog preamplifier on display. The new preamp is expected to ship in a couple…

Independent Music Shops Surviving Despite Online Competition

Internet traffic doubles every 100 days, according to some statistics. This growth has been accompanied by an increase in the amount of online shopping---a phenomenon that has had a significant impact on retailers. Independent bookstores, for example, have been squeezed not only by the expansion of large-scale operations like Barnes & Noble, but also by the popularity of Internet discounters like Amazon.com and Borders.com. Online sales of recorded music by both record clubs and start-up resellers have put a dent in the bottom lines of many mass-market music stores---although not a…

Entercom Moving onto Radio's Center Stage

A company unknown outside the broadcast industry is poised to become the next big player in radio. Entercom Communications Corp, based in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, has moved to the head of the pack in the race to buy 31 FM and 15 AM stations from Sinclair Broadcasting Corporation. The $824.5 million purchase is being financed in part by a public stock offering that Entercom floated last January.

Another stock offering will help seal the deal, giving Entercom a total of 88 stations nationwide and making it the fifth-largest radio broadcaster in the US. Entercom has been aggressively…

FCC Gives Green Light to Low-Power FM Stations

The FM radio spectrum could soon get a lot more crowded, thanks to rules recently adopted by the Federal Communications Commission. New stations with broadcasting power of between 1W and 100W will be cropping up soon in communities all over the country, provided they don't interfere with existing stations, and provided they remain strictly noncommercial.

The move to empower community radio has been an ongoing controversy at the agency, which for several years has been fighting radio "pirates" in big cities and small towns. The availability of inexpensive audio and broadcasting equipment…