search

Added to the Archives This Week

J. Gordon Holt and various other Stereophile writers are brought together to create the definitive review archive of the Audio Research SP9 preamplifier. The SP9 review was controversial in its day, and the complete review archives include manufacturer and reader comments.

Starting in 1994, Dick Olsher, Martin Colloms, Sam Tellig, and finally Thomas J. Norton detailed their impressions of the Cary Audio Design CAD-805 monoblock power amplifier. As Tellig noted in 1998, "It takes courage to buy an amp like the Cary CAD-805C—so retro in its technology and its look."

Back in 1985,…

Added to the Archives This Week

John Atkinson and Arnis Balgalvis audition the Avalon Eclipse loudspeaker, whose quasi-anechoic TDS response prompted JA to exclaim, "Boy, that's flat!" But is flat where it's at? AB thought so: "The sound I heard was truly outstanding."

A different tag-team takes a listen to two generations of the PSB Stratus Gold loudspeaker. Both Thomas J. Norton and John Atkinson sit in the sweet spot and turn in their score cards. JA's notes, "Even without careful setup, it was obvious that something good was going on: the midrange was clean and uncolored, the stereo imaging well defined and stable…

SDMI Director Chiariglione Calls it Quits

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.

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…

Music Notes

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…

Latin Jazz King Tito Puente Dies at 77

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,…

Roxio Pouring All into Napster

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…

Hi-Rez Resources

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."…

Jitter in, jitter out...

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…

A Future of Digital Audio Watermarking and SDMI?

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…

Rotel Debuts DVD-A Player, Yamaha Announces High Capacity CD Recorder

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…