There's a basic rule that explains the audiophile's role in the audio food chain: The mass market accepts and then audiophiles perfect. Try to reverse that rule with something like, say, SACD or DVD-Audio, attempting to have sound quality drive mass-market adoption, and you get . . . the DualDisc.With the obvious mass-market success of Apple's iPod portable, it would follow that smart audiophiles would want to make it better. One company taking that route is PsiberAudio, the brainchild of Andrew Conley.
PsiberAudio has just introduced its first two products aimed at the iPod tweaker…
Don't bother to tell Music Lovers Audio that audio sales have slowed. At a time when many dealers have abandoned two-channel audio altogether or chosen between de-emphasizing music and calling it quits, this Bay Area audio retailer has opened a second store a mere 30 miles from the original North Berkeley location, across the Bay in San Francisco.Despite having heard advance hype that Music Lovers' new San Francisco store is one of the five best retail audio outlets in the nation, I was unprepared for what I encountered. The huge lobby, which extends much of the length of the…
Many audiophiles are incensed that the digital outputs on high-resolution disc players are limited to the 16bit/44.1kHz standard of the "Red Book" CD when playing DVD-Audio discs. To read some postings on audiophile newsgroups, you'd think it's a massive conspiracy to prevent people from adding their own processors to the playback chain. Putting as many boxes as possible in an audio system is a constitutionally guaranteed right, isn't it?The lack of such digital outputs is because electronics manufacturers have caved into demands by the music industry to block the availability of…
Last week, RealNetworks announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Xing Technology, a developer and provider of MP3 software. Xing has been developing standards-based digital audio and video encoding and decoding technology since 1990, but eventually ran into trouble competing with other Internet-audio startups such as RealNetworks and Liquid Audio.RealNetworks will acquire Xing in exchange for common stock in RealNetworks with a maximum value of $75 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 1999, with RealNetworks…
Chad Kassem is a true audio renaissance man. For years he has headed Acoustic Sounds, supplier of select recorded musical treasures from a variety of audiophile and specialty labels. Kassem also has his own label, Analogue Productions, which produces reissues, revivals, and a series of original recordings under the label APO Records.It is his love of traditional blues that drives APO's roster. It also inspired Kassem to purchase an old church in Salina, Kansas and get into the recording studio business, back in 1996. Six years and nearly $1 million of renovations and equipment…
The music goes round and round: An investment group led by former Universal Music chief Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is in the lead to acquire Warner Music Group (WMG) and Warner/Chappell Music Publishing from corporate parent Time Warner, according to reports issued the third week of November. Bronfman's group—a consortium of banks and venture capital firms—has offered $2.8 billion for Time Warner's musical properties, possibly forcing prior suitor EMI Group PLC to drop out of the bidding. On Thursday, November 20, EMI chairman Eric Nicoll told reporters that Time Warner had informed his company of "…
In the age before recordings, music was a service business. Composers wrote for their patrons, and musicians performed for money. In the days since Edison's inventions, music has become a commodity business in which record companies stockpile large inventories and attempt to move them into the market of music lovers through a dense network of distributors and retailers. For established artists, the service aspect of music---playing for pay---now exists primarily to support the commodity business. For developing artists, public performance is a form of self-promotion to aid the search for…
Two elements that keep the audio business interesting are the new companies and technologies arriving almost every week (see also BW's story). Some stick around for years, while others fade away between hi-fi shows. But amid the incessant change are a handful of characters who stay with it, continually evolving with the industry and reinventing themselves with each twist and turn.Mark Schifter has been here since his early days in retail, through the rise and fall of Audio Alchemy, and then on to Genesis Technologies. Recently, rumors have circulated about a new venture he was about to…
The DVD-Audio format's been around for a couple of years, but simultaneous DVD-A and CD releases of new music have been few and far between. Warner Brothers is hoping to improve on that record with the upcoming album from Fleetwood Mac, Say You Will.A few years ago, when DVD-Video was just getting started, Warner Home Video's Warren Lieberfarb stressed the importance of "Day and Date" release schedules. Lieberfarb's idea was that if the home video industry was serious about the then new DVD-V format, it shouldn't make consumers wait for the DVD-V release after the video tape version of a…
As expected, the Recording Industry Association of America held a press conference last week to announce the formation of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), with which they hope to develop Internet downloading technologies for music. The move comes after a rough year for the music business, which has seen thousands of unauthorized websites offer copyrighted material for free using the MP3 audio format.Joining technology firms including AOL, Sony, and Microsoft are several major labels, including BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music…
