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Hard Rock Muzak?

In a world where brand is everything and making money is the bottom line, it should come as no surprise that if there's a buck to be made, any deal is possible. But who would have imagined, 30 years ago, that the bad boys and girls of rock'n'roll would be married to the then-much-scorned icon of safe, watered-down elevator music?

Let's have a moment of silence (or should that be a burst from a Les Paul through a Marshall stack?) and absorb the fact that this is now the era in which the terms "Hard Rock" and "Muzak" can happily appear on the same contract.

Last week saw the Hard Rock…

November Audio Sales Achieve Highest Monthly Increase in Five Years

Last week, the Consumer Electronics Association reported that sales of audio products during November constituted the largest monthly increase since August 1994. Total revenues for the month reached $901 million, representing a 16% increase over last year's figure. The CEA adds that November's sales brought total year-to-date sales to $7.5 billion—2% ahead of the same period last year.

According to the CEA, "November saw growth across all four audio sectors, with the most dramatic increases in audio systems and aftermarket autosound." Statistics reveal that total sales of audio systems…

Finally Time for a Tune-Up

They don't turn over quite as fast as computer equipment, but mass-market audio component product cycles typically last about a year, until the next Consumer Electronics Show comes around. High-end audio products, however, enjoy much longer life spans—sometimes stretching to several years.

And then there's Magnum Dynalab, who have finally decided to replace one of the key products in their tuner line—after almost 15 years. Introduced in 1987, the company's FT101A tuner is finally facing retirement, to be replaced by the new MD-90, which takes advantage of newer technology featured in the…

Added to the Archives This Week

Every once in a while, John Atkinson comes across a speaker that redefines the boundaries of what is possible with the moving-coil loudspeaker approach established 60 years ago by Rice and Kellogg. JA feels that the B&W John Bowers Silver Signature loudspeaker is just such a product, and puts it through its paces to reveal its significant virtues and minor faults.

Love at first sight? Jonathan Scull reviews the JMlab Utopia loudspeaker and writes: "The Utopia is undeniably elegant and sculptural, despite its weight of 275 lbs per side. The cabinetry and finish are truly extraordinary…

Linear Acquires Niles

Linear, LLC of Carlsbad, CA, an innovative firm specializing in radio frequency products, has announced its acquisition of Niles Audio Corporation, the Miami, FL company best known for its whole-house audio and video products.

Linear is a worldwide supplier of residential security systems, intercoms, garage door and gate openers, long- and short-range remote controls, and medical/emergency reporting systems. The company has been engaging in an aggressive acquisitions program over the last few years, picking up Channel Plus, Elan Home Systems, OmniMount, OpenHouse, Panamax, SpeakerCraft,…

CES 2004: Day Three

Yesterday, we talked with Microsoft about the high-resolution audio capabilities of Windows Media. Today, we met with one of their key competitors, Real, who also promised that, as the market matures, we will be seeing more options for audiophiles.

Presently, Real's own codecs support only your basic low-rez internet formats ranging up to a proprietary lossless encoding and decoding process similar to DVD-Audio's MLP scheme, only this time applied to a CD stream. The result is a file that is typically half a normal CD's size without any compression.

Real's latest player is called the…

Added to the Archives This Week

As Michael Fremer reports, critics have universally hailed Infinity's $8k flagship Prelude MTS. But can the success of the MTS trickle down to the lower price points? For his review of the $2000/pr Infinity Intermezzo 2.6 loudspeaker, Fremer set out to determine if the more modest sibling is a "worthwhile chip off the old block or just a marketing divot."

Robert J. Reina says that JBL speakers remind him of college. But as the new JBL S38 loudspeaker demonstrates, the company has come a long way from the days when Reina spent most of his time in the "boom and sizzle JBL rooms" of his…

Industry Roundup

RIAA lawsuits continue: Each month the recording industry launches a few hundred more lawsuits against suspected file-swappers, with such tedious regularity that we could simply re-run the previous month's news with a new figure inserted. This time around, the Recording Industry Association of America announced May 24 that it had filed suit against 493 more people believed to have illegally shared music over the Internet. Known only by their screen names and IP addresses, the unnamed defendants are subscribers with Internet service providers in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia…

RCA Living Stereo SACDs: Round Four

The fourth round of RCA Red Seal Living Stereo hybrid SACD/CDs hit the literal and virtual shelves on February 7. [Kalman Rubinson wrote about the first batch here.—Ed.] Remastered from the original two- and three-channel master tapes using the DSD process, these 10 new SACDs present the material exactly as it was recorded, without equalization, filtering, or other tampering.

For the three-channel recordings, which were made with microphones placed in the left, center, and right of the hall, all three front channels of the SACD format are used. This allows audiophiles with multichannel…

Industry Update

Signal savings: Signals SuperFi, LLC did something you don't see every day: It actually lowered its price for Stereovox Reference level SEI-600 interconnects. The SEI-600 is a line-level, single-ended, single-jacket "stereo" cable. Signals has dropped the price of a 1m pair from $999.99 to $749.99 (each extra 0.5m adds $250).

The SEI-600 interconnects utilize pure silver conductors within air-articulated PTFE insulators and helically wound silver-plated copper shields. They are terminated with Stereovox's Xhadow Reference RCA connectors. "I designed the SEI-600s as an entry-point to the…