Formed after the music industry was blindsided by the rise of the MP3 file-sharing phenomenon, the SDMI has pushed hard for the development of watermarking technologies for high-resolution digital audio by establishing a research and…
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In a move that some cynics are calling "the beginning of the end" for the Secure Digital Music Initiative, the group's director has abruptly resigned. Leonard Chiariglione, who has headed the cross-industry anti-piracy organization since its inception more than two years ago, made the announcement Wednesday, January 24 at the first SDMI meeting of 2001.
Concord and Fantasy: Berkeley, CA–based Fantasy Records has been sold to Concord Records of Beverly Hills in a deal valued at $83 million, according to a December 4 report from Billboard. The music enterprise of film producer Saul Zaentz and partners, Fantasy is well known for its huge catalog of works by jazz greats Count Basie, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, and Sarah Vaughan, as well as soul and blues stars the Dramatics, Isaac Hayes, Albert King, the Staple Singers, and Johnnie Taylor.
Dave…
Tito Puente, the "Mambo King" who fused jazz with Latin rhythms, died Wednesday, May 31 at New York University's Medical Center from complications following heart surgery. Puente was 77.
Known to his fans as "El Rey" (The King), Puente recorded 119 albums in a career that spanned five decades. He fell ill in San Juan, where he was to perform with the Puerto Rican Symphony the week before he died. On June 1, the day after his death, the Puerto Rican government declared three days of official mourning. "He put Puerto Rico's name in lights," said the island's US Congressional delegate,…
Received wisdom has it that putting all your eggs in one basket isn't a good business plan, but that's exactly what Roxio, Inc. intends to do with its Napster online music service.
On August 9, Santa Clara, CA–based Roxio announced the sale of its software division to Sonic Solutions of Novato, CA for $80 million. The deal will divest Roxio of its popular CD and DVD recording, authoring, and photo and video editing application products including Easy Media Creator, PhotoSuite, VideoWave, Easy DVD Copy, and Toast.
Terms of the transaction provide Roxio with $70 million in cash and…
Many audiophiles eager to try their new high-resolution disc players have been disappointed to discover skimpy offerings of Super Audio CDs and DVD-A recordings at their local music marts. Fortunately, several online sources stock such discs, and are constantly updating their inventories.
Artegra is a great source for jazz and folk music. The site features recent releases by the Minneapolis-based Chris Lomheim Trio, including The Bridge, a collection of jazz favorites recorded using "tube and ribbon mics, Millennia Media preamps, Meitner converters, and DSD editing with the Sony Sonoma."…
For years, there has been concern in the high-end audio press about the effects of jitter on digital audio. Manufacturers spend countless design hours measuring jitter and trying to minimize its influence on the sound of their products.
Although the digital data on a CD can be shown to be an exact copy of the studio master and is rarely corrupted by a CD player, the timing of the datastream coming off the disc can get a little sloppy, hence the term jitter. These small timing errors can then disturb the digital-to-analog conversion process, resulting in noticeable and measurable changes…
According to a report released last week by Cahners In-Stat Group, a high-tech market research firm, the market for personal digital music players using audio compression technologies will experience a tremendous increase in growth through the next several years. Nearly $800 million in player sales are expected in 2003, spurred largely by widespread Internet access. The report also states that products in this segment will initially focus on downloading technologies like MP3, and over the next 12 months consumers should expect to see more features integrated into the players such as FM…
Analog and digital audio technologies should complement rather than oppose each other. That's Rotel's philosophy with its new RDV-1080 DVD-Audio player. Combining the best of Rotel's expertise in both realms, the RDV-1080 offers "stunning audio quality," according to Rotel general manager Michael Bartlett. "The RDV-1080 is Rotel's answer to those who have asked for a DVD-A player that focuses our Balanced Design engineering approach on the unique challenges of this exciting new format," Bartlett said. "Even though it handles the most advanced format today, DVD-A, the RDV-1080 is…
Record producer and critic John Marks, whose writing has appeared from time to time in Stereophile—his March "As We See It" triggered a deluge of letters—has started John Marks Recommends, a free e-mail newsletter on music and the arts. "Talking about my own work will be the exception rather than the rule," says Marks. "I tell people about great recordings, books, and videos, recipes, and an occasional wine recommendation."
Marks describes his newsletter, now ten issues old, as concise, text-only (no bulky HTML), family-friendly, and positive in tone. The first issues have included a…
Sidney Smith, revered audio engineer and a founding father of the modern audio industry, passed away on October 25, 2000 after a battle with cancer. He was 77. Sid, a family man, left a loving wife, Marilyn, three caring daughters, Jennie, Pattie, and Laura, and two grandchildren.
To say that every decision in Sid's life was informed by his relationship to music would be no exaggeration. He was drawn to his wife because of their mutual love of music. He worked in audio, sang leading roles in professional opera troupes around New York, built his church a pipe organ, rebuilt its carillon…