CD burners are now standard equipment on most new personal computers sold in Germany, a fact that Gebhardt and his colleagues blame for a 10% decline in sales of recorded music in the country last year. Figures released by the GRIA…
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Echoing the sentiments of their American counterparts, German music industry executives are blaming the popularity of the CD burner for slumping music sales. "More music is probably being heard now than ever before," said German Recording Industry Association president Gerd Gebhardt, "but the music is not paid for, because copying has become so cheap and easy."
Stereovox has introduced a more affordable Studio series of cables to complement its extravagant Reference products. (John Marks raved about them here.) The new Studio HDSE (high-definition single-ended) interconnects are thin and flexible, but each cable is constructed from a single high-purity 0.008" thick copper tube, clad in a silver-plated copper woven shield, with pure tape-wrapped full-density PTFE Teflon dielectric and an FEP jacket. The Studio cables employ a new chrome-plated Xhadow™ Reference precision-machined RCA connector.
The HDSE's "microtube" construction gives the…
MP3 may be under constant attack by audiophiles, and by music-industry attorneys in the courts, but the format shows no indication of disappearing. Santa Clara, CA–based S3, maker of the Rio portable audio player, has reason to believe that MP3 has plenty of growth potential. The company is going after licensees for the Rio to make knockoffs, and has plans to produce Rio-type players for home and car audio this summer.
S3 will soon produce a Rio Receiver, a wireless device capable of accessing MP3 files stored on a user's hard drive anywhere in the home. The Rio Jukebox will be a…
Yamaha Electronics Corporation has introduced four new A/V digital home-theater receivers equipped with XM Satellite Radio capability (XM-Ready). The $649.95 RX-V757, $549.95 RX-V657, $449.95 RX-V557, and $349.95 RX-V457 will allow users to plug an XM Connect-and-Play home antenna into the Yamaha XM-Ready A/V receiver and activate the XM service to receive 150-plus digital radio channels—no other accessories or installation are required. Using XM's industry-leading chipset technology, as well as a new proprietary chip and signaling protocol, the XM Connect-and-Play home antenna is capable of…
Operating at the fringes of the audio world, binaural recordings have continued to maintain a hardcore group of advocates. Creating a convincing three-dimensional surround effect using only a two-channel source, binaural technology is especially impressive with headphones.
This past month, John Sunier, host of the excellent PBS radio program Audiophile Audition, has brought high-quality (for the internet, anyway) samples of binaural recordings to his website at www.binaural.com.
These files offer an opportunity for anyone with a set of headphones and a stereo soundcard to get a taste…
How much does it cost to license DVD-Audio patents to create players or discs? That information was revealed last week when the DVD6C Licensing Agency, which represents the founders of the DVD Forum (formerly called the DVD Consortium) in the area of patent licensing, announced that it expects to start global licensing of essential patents for DVD-Audio and recordable DVD products on or about January 1, 2003.
DVD6C—which currently represents AOL Time Warner, Hitachi, IBM, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC)—notes that licenses will cover both drives and media…
The word's largest Internet service provider has decided to forgo an MP3 search feature until it figures out how to distinguish legal recordings from illegal ones. America Online made the announcement August 11 after discovering that the feature, which it hoped would enhance its Winamp site, might encourage piracy of copyrighted recordings.
AOL had wanted to add a music-search function, but has postponed the project until a copyright-secure system can be developed. "Now that it's up, we see we don't have an efficient process for distinguishing between legal and illegal MP3s," said AOL…
At CES2006, we were pleasantly surprised to encounter Jim Shannon in Quartet Marketing Group's exhibit room at the Alexis Villas. "What are you doing these days?" we asked. He gestured around the room. "I'm a partner in Quartet," he said. "I've been here since July."
Why are we always the last to know?
Shannon brings formidable experience to Quartet. He began working for New England Audio Consultants in New Haven, CT, where he became familiar with the then-new Mark Levinson Audio Systems, before starting his own high-end store in North Hampton, MA. He later joined Madrigal as West…
If you've ever hunted for a song title or a performer's name on the Internet, you've probably used CDDB, the Compact Disc Database.
Operated by Berkeley, CA–based Gracenote, CDDB is the world's largest online database of CD album information, enabling music fans to access information about recordings by album or song titles, genre, or artist. The company's continually updated server computers contain information on 1.4 million albums encompassing 18 million songs, and are accessed each month by approximately 30 million users.
On June 17, Gracenote announced a plan to expand its…
Last week saw a flurry of announcements in the online audio and video streaming business, capped off by Yahoo!'s acquisition of Broadcast.com. Yahoo! says it has signed a definitive agreement with Broadcast.com whereby Yahoo! will issue 0.7722 of a share of Yahoo! common stock for each share of Broadcast.com common stock. In addition, all outstanding options of Broadcast.com will be converted into Yahoo! options. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 1999 and is valued at around $5.7 billion, including $4.8 billion in Broadcast.com common stock and $900…