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New Publisher for <I>Stereophile</I>

John Gourlay, Stereophile's publisher since 1998, left the company at the beginning of November. John had been a valued collaborator and the moving force behind the launch of the 2004 Stereophile Buyer's Guide (see related story). We all wish him well in his future career.

Joining Stereophile as its publisher (as well as publisher of our sister magazines Home Theater and Stereophile Guide to Home Theater) is Jay Rosenfield. Along with the editors of the three magazines, Jay reports to the group publisher for Primedia's Home Technology and Photographic Group, VP Irwin Kornfield.

A…

Added to the Archives This Week

For the tenth consecutive year, Stereophile writers and editors ferret out those components that have proved capable of giving musical pleasure beyond the formal review period and have wrapped them all up as The 2001 Products of the Year. The envelope please.

John Atkinson spent months hearing voices as he helped put together the latest CD to exhibit his engineering acumen: Cantus. Both JA and Wes Phillips document the genesis of the sessions and subsequent release of choral music featuring traditional material from around the world arranged for unaccompanied male voice. Destined to…

Tweeter Group Reports Record Sales for 4th Quarter

The ultra-High End may be stagnant in some areas, but the rebound in mainstream consumer electronics is visible everywhere. Canton, Massachusetts-based Tweeter Home Entertainment Group has announced record results for the quarter ended September 30, 1999: an increase of 39.5%, or $74.6 million compared to $53.5 million in the same period last year. The results are similar to those posted recently by nationwide electronics chain Best Buy, which also had a record quarter. Tweeter's comparable store sales increased 5.2%, not counting results from the recently acquired Home Entertainment and…

Music by the Numbers

Media conglomerates have long hedged their bets by consulting demographics experts and marketing gurus. Now, music executives have real science to bolster their sometimes unreliable instincts about what will succeed and what will fail. It's an audio analysis program called Hit Song Science (HSS).

Using a database of Billboard-charting pop hits dating back three decades, researchers at Spanish company Polyphonic Human Media Interface (PHMI) have analyzed approximately 3.5 million successful tunes for "melody, harmony, chord progression, beat, tempo, and pitch," according to an insightful…

Vinyl Record Day Returns

Vinyl junkies who missed the first official Vinyl Record Day celebration last summer should mark their calendars for Saturday, August 16. On that date, the faithful will again converge in San Luis Obispo, CA's Mission Plaza to gawk at LPs, memorabilia, vintage gear, and to meet classic album cover notables.

SACD and DVD-Audio may be getting all the format news these days, but here's an interesting statistic: sales of vinyl so far this year total 661,000 units, trouncing the 234,000 units sold by DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD combined. The vinyl collectors market is also hot, and VRD's…

Harman Signs License Agreements with New Transducers Limited

On February 18, Harman International Industries Inc. announced that it had signed two licensing agreements with New Transducers Limited (NXT) relating to NXT's flat-panel loudspeaker technology.

Under the first agreement, Harman acquired the exclusive rights to sublicense the UK company's NXT technology to home audio and professional audio companies based in the United States. US-based companies seeking to license the NXT technology in any of these fields will now have access only through Harman International.

The addition of the NXT technology to Harman's current intellectual…

Engineer/Producer Tom Dowd Dies

Tom Dowd, a recording engineer and producer who created some of the greatest pop, jazz, and rock recordings of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, and who ushered in the era of multi-track tape recording and stereo playback, died Sunday, October 27 of emphysema at an assisted living center in Aventura, Florida, near Miami. He was 77.

Trained as a multi-instrumental musician, Dowd was drawn to physics and engineering at an early age. He worked on the particle accelerator at Columbia University after graduating from Stuyvesant High School at the age of 16. Two years later, during World War II, he…

Added to the Archives This Week

Back in June of 1992, Lewis Lipnick auditioned one of the era's benchmark products, the Cello Palette Preamplifier. LL comments, "The Palette Preamplifier gives the listener a glimpse of what performers experience every day on stage: total immersion in the music."

Back in May 2000, Brian Damkroger assembled the Bright Star Audio Rack of Gibraltar 2 equipment rack and put his components on its shelves. As BD notes, "Bright Star Audio's Rack of Gibraltar equipment racks are exceptional cases whose forms truly do follow their functions."

Next, we have John Marks reviewing the recently…

A Chink in the Armor or a Glimmer of False Hope?

As first reported April 8 in EETimes, Sony has made known its plans for the first generation of Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) players, to be released in Japan this May. For the last several months, Sony has been suggesting that the SACD format would be going head to head with the competing DVD-Audio format, despite overtures from the DVD-Audio Working Group to join in a single all-encompassing specification.

But at the last Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, several companies hinted at players that would play all formats. Prototypes shown by Yamaha and Denon led some to…

Added to the Archives This Week

"How much power do you really need? How much power can you actually use? What's necessary, and what's icing on the cake? And does anyone really need 1000Wpc?" Jonathan Scull takes the Boulder 2050 monoblock amplifier into the listening chamber to confront these and other pressing audio dilemmas.

Next, Paul Bolin listens to the Acoustic Zen interconnects, AC, and speaker cables remarking, "If the devil is in the details, then Beelzebub has taken up residence in the collections of cables we use to connect our components."

Robert Deutsch fires up the Balanced Audio Technology VK-5…