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Oh-oh, It's MAGIX!

We were walking back from lunch the other day with a fellow audiophile who announced that he was selling his audio-component–quality hard-disk–based recorder without ever having used it.

We asked, "What about your plans to convert all of your LPs to uncompressed audio files?"

"We had a baby, which pretty much took care of all that theoretical spare time I was going to spend marking tracks and de-clicking songs," he responded.

If his eBay auction hasn't ended already, MAGIX audio cleaning lab 10 just might automate the process and put his conversion scheme back on track. MAGIX…

Violin Like You've Never Heard It Before!

Did they capture the sound of her violin? Did the nuance of a 9' Steinway grand piano translate onto the disc with all of its dynamic range intact? Hear for yourself when Ida Levin and Delores Stevens mark the debut of Stereophile's latest recording, Duet, with two live performances at HI-FI '98.

For Duet, internationally renowned violinist Ida Levin has chosen three works, by composers Janßcek, Schulhoff, and Enescu, created in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars---a "ceaselessly fascinating" period when "composers flourished with particular expressiveness, moved in part by the…

EMI Will Try Digital Downloads

Digital downloading is all the rage with the major record labels. EMI Recorded Music, a unit of EMI Group PLC, announced May 10 that it will make some of its massive catalog available as digital downloads beginning this summer. More than 100 albums and 40 singles will be offered on a trial basis, according to a company press release dated May 10. EMI's musical spectrum covers every genre, including pop, rock, jazz, classical, Latin, Christian, country, rap/urban, and dance—a roster of approximately 1500 artists. Labels under the EMI umbrella include Capitol, Angel, Blue Note, EMI,…

NHT's "Room 2 Room" Series

"Whole-house entertainment systems" and "ease of use" may be anathema for many audiophiles, but they bring joy to the lives of many music lovers—as they seem to do for manufacturers with a keen eye on the bottom line.

Benicia, CA–based NHT (Now Hear This) is one such company. At this coming week's CEDIA Expo 2004 in Indianapolis, NHT plans to unveil a new series of stylish, compact electronics components designed to deliver high performance audio and composite video in up to four different rooms throughout the house.

Like NHT's Evolution series and Pro line of components, the company'…

Somebody Let Them Know It's Not Quite Set Yet . . .

In anticipation of the upcoming 1.0 DVD-Audio specification (see previous article), Sonic Solutions and Warner Music Group wasted no time in announcing their intent to collaborate in creating new multichannel high-density recordings to showcase the new format. Warner was one of the first major labels to deliver music via CD, and Warner's video division has never been shy in their support of Open-DVD for video. So it comes as no surprise that they're one of the first major music houses out of the gate for the audio version of DVD.

What is surprising, however, is that Warners decided not to…

Sony Qualia Announced

Sony announced last week that it has created a new brand product line intended to identify its highest end products: Qualia. Initially, the new line will launch only in Japan, and will include both audio and video products in addition to a small pocket camera. Sony President Kunitake Ando had previously suggested the line would launch by March 2003.

According to Sony, the Qualia project started in secret in May 2001, and the organization's network of companies planned and proposed a number of possible products. These proposals were reviewed by the "Qualia Committee," which is composed of…

XM Radio's Ups and Downs

Irony reigns supreme on this week's installment of XM Daze.

Just seven days after XM Satellite Radio, the larger of the United States' two satellite radio operators, triumphantly announced an expansive, three-year, $55 million deal with the Empress of Talk Shows, Oprah Winfrey, to launch a new "Oprah & Friends" radio channel in September, XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc.'s fourth quarter losses soared alarmingly to $270.4 million, or $1.22 per share, after dividends for preferred stockholders. In the same period a year earlier, losses amounted to $190.4 million, or 93¢ per share.

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KnowledgeLINK Launches GetPlugged.com

Hoping to "forever alter the way people shop for medium to high-end home entertainment products," KnowledgeLINK has launched its e-commerce website, GetPlugged.com, which it claims will "educate and entertain consumers, and seamlessly link them with the nation's best A/V specialty retailers and custom installers." The site offers what it calls "a highly informative, fun, uniquely interactive shopping experience for the audio-video consumer."

KnowledgeLINK founder Sunil Mehrotra describes his vision of making information and commerce accessible to a huge number of consumers via the Internet…

First Delivery of DVDPlus

One of the keys to SACD's potential acceptance within the mass market is the hybrid disc format, ensuring that all of those Stones, Dylan, or Pink Floyd discs can be purchased by consumers with regular CD players. Although the DVD-Audio camp has played with the idea of hybrid discs for its format, nothing has made it past the testing stages yet.

That hasn't stopped EnXnet and its marketing associate OneDisc Technologies: the firms have recently announced the first delivery to a consumer of a DVDPlus disc, which combines CD and DVD. EnXnet says that the unnamed customer has indicated "…

Surround On The Go

One of the drawbacks of the new DualDiscs released by the major labels to date is a lack of consistency when it comes to portability—the ability to easily transfer the music to any device the listener prefers, such as an iPod, media server, PC, or MP3 player, or to make a back-up CD for car use.

Silverline Records, a division of 5.1 Entertainment Group, has taken a different approach, and decided to include iPod/iTunes-compatible AAC files and PC/Windows Media–compatible WMA files on the DVD side of the two-sided discs.

But there's a small catch—or benefit, depending on how you plan…