On August 14, the UK audio company launched its new "Akurate" series of high-performance loudspeakers at Definitive Audio's sleek showroom in Seattle. (The company has more than 120 US dealers, and more than 500 worldwide, according to public relations manager Brian Morris.) Consisting of a full-range five-way column speaker (model 242), a compact 4-way minimonitor (212), a subwoofer (221), and a center channel speaker (225) the…
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If you've been hunting for loudspeakers that sound fantastic, look gorgeous, and don't require a second mortgage, Linn Products, Ltd. may have the solution.
An audio system even Nero could love: Pyrotechnical effects have apparently gotten slightly out of control with Philips Consumer Electronics MX920 speaker systems, 25,500 of which have been recalled due to fire hazards from overheating voice coils. Four such incidents have been reported since the MX920 went on sale in June 1997. No one has been injured, and property damage has been limited to one scorched rug.
Philips is cooperating with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which urged the recall after consumers reported that the speakers could burst into flames. The systems are…
The first fiscal quarter was a slow one for major electronics retailers. Eden Prairie, MN–based Best Buy reported a 3.1% drop in comparable-store sales, attributing the slowdown to diminished demand for personal computers. That figure is for stores open a year or longer; Best Buy's total sales for the quarter rose 25% to $3.69 billion from $2.96 billion, thanks to 11 new stores and the addition of the Musicland Group of music stores, which Best Buy acquired earlier this year. Although demand for hardware such as digital cameras, DVD players, and high-definition television sets was "brisk…
Following Apple Computer's lead in bringing high-resolution audio to the computing environment, Creative Technology announced last week several audio products intended to facilitate DVD-Audio playback via personal computer. The company is also offering suggestions for making a PC quiet enough for use in a dedictated listening system.
At a press conference in Singapore, the company unveiled its new Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound cards, which Creative claims will allow the millions of PC users who have DVD-ROM drives on their PCs to decode DVD-Audio discs at sample rates up to 24-bit/192kHz.…
Tyll Hertsens is on a mission. He strives to transform the ugly duckling bleat of portable audio into music that sings to an audiophile's heart.
This is not an easy task.
But then, Hertsens is no ordinary audio missionary, and he has succeeded in building his business, HeadRoom, into a modest empire by following his simple dictum: "Do a good job selling headphones, and make killer amps to go along with them."
With the appearance of an iPod review in Stereophile, and portable music players gaining in use and sophistication, it seemed like an appropriate time to sound Hertsens out…
On the face of it, 99¢ per track low-rez music downloads don't seem like a good deal. For the same price, or maybe even less, you can get an entire CD of the same music, along with a booklet, and without the Digital Rights Management crippleware that hobbles paid downloads.
The music-buying public apparently thinks otherwise. You can't beat the "I want it now!" convenience, and with the ability to cherry-pick only the "good" songs off an album, the pricing seems to add up. You might be thinking, "Kids these days don't know about quality sound any more, and are going to ruin it for the rest…
We were saddened to learn of the death of audio guru Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg, who died Monday, July 16 of an apparent heart attack. He was 59.
Rosenberg fell ill on a plane flight from Chicago to Evansville, IN, where he was headed to audition a new VAIC amplifier design. His hosts reportedly took him to a local medical center where neither the attending physician nor the emergency medical personnel who were called in were able to postpone the inevitable. The circumstances of his death were "consistent with a major myocardial infarction," according to those on the site. Rosenberg…
All but forgotten in the field of surround sound are the efforts of UK classical music label Nimbus Records. More than 25 years ago, Nimbus recorded with Peter Fellgett and Michael Gerzon's two-channel–compatible, matrixed UHJ Ambisonic Surround system, using multi-capsule Calrec Soundfield microphones. Other labels, including Unicorn-Kanchana, also supported Ambisonic, releasing such rarities as a UHJ Ambisonic recording of the soundtrack to North By Northwest on LP. Playback decoders were available from the UK's National Research and Development Council (NRDC) and speaker manufacturer IMF.…
Convergence has come to the automotive market. Clarion Corporation of America announced December 4 that it has developed the the world's first product that integrates car audio, computing functions, navigation, and wireless communications through hands-free voice activation. The Clarion AutoPC is a DIN unit that fits in the dash of an automobile, and is powered by the Microsoft Windows CE operating system.
The new product will be available throughout the US at hundreds of authorized Clarion retailers in January 1999, but early editions of the AutoPC can be seen at several locations in…
E-wisdom holds that one of the big advantages about retailing on the Internet is that, once a comany is online, the entire world of consumers is only a few mouse clicks away. This concept holds up much better in theory than in practice. Language barriers, shipping costs, and import/export red tape (such as agreements controlling which countries a retailer can even sell a product line to) have all made the reality less than ideal for e-merchants.
To solve the global sales problem, Hifi.com has decided to create websites specific to each country it sells to, and last week announced the…