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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.

…

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…

Herb Papier Dead at 86

Stereophile was saddened to learn of the death of Herb Papier earlier this month. He was 86. A musician—he was an amateur trumpeter—music lover, and inventor, Papier was best known in the audiophile community as the designer and original manufacturer of the Wheaton Tri-Planar tonearm.

During World War II, Papier worked at the Naval Observatory repairing marine chronometers. He perfected fine machinist's skills during this stint and became a watchmaker after the war. He eventually opened a music store in Wheaton, Maryland.

In the late 1970s, after reading an article about modifying…

Industry Roundup

TrueSound Lounge: Headphone giant Sennheiser has opened an online music destination, the Sennheiser "TrueSound Lounge", providing web-surfers an entertaining selection of new music from company-supported emerging artists like Sugarcult and Jody Whitesides. The site also provides "fun, quick-witted web-video shorts from top commercial filmmakers and producers, fruits of the Sennheiser Invitational Film Project," and "concise info on Sennheiser's unequalled selection of personal listening products," according to a recent announcement.

Parasound phono preamp: San Francisco-based Parasound…

2003 CES, Day Three

Back to the Alexis Park for a press conference with Classic Records, which has decided to release its first DVD-Audio disc around February 15. Classic was one of the very first labels to take advantage of the original DVD specification's ability to hold a 24/96 two-channel audio track, and it started releasing DAD discs exactly five years ago. The company's first DVD-A release will be the Vanguard title Songs of the Auvergne, which will feature a 24/192 two-channel DVD-A track and 24/96 two-channel DVD-V track.

Classic's Mike Hobson says that the decision to jump into DVD-A was not made…